LOS ANGELES, June 8 -- A sobbing, shouting Paris Hilton was led from the courtroom Friday and ordered by a judge to return to jail to serve out the remainder of her 45-day sentence.
"It's not right," yelled Hilton, rising from her seat at the defendant's table.
"Mom! Mom! Mom!" she cried out to her mother, Kathy, who collapsed in tears in the front row of the courtroom.
Hilton, who was brought from her home to the court in handcuffs in a sheriff's car, entered the courtroom red-eyed and trembling, and she cried throughout the hour-long hearing, dabbing her face with tissues, biting her knuckles, and shaking her head. She sat slumped at the table throughout the proceeding, wearing a gray sweater, her blond hair pinned up.
Hilton was released from the county jail Thursday by Sheriff Lee Baca because of an undisclosed medical condition, and the sheriff said she would serve the duration of her term confined to her home in the hills above Sunset Strip, wearing an electronic ankle bracelet to monitor her movements. Late in the day, however, she was ordered back to court Friday so Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer could review the situation.
But the hearing was delayed after Hilton's efforts to participate over a telephone link were turned down by the judge and sheriff's deputies were dispatched to her home to bring her to court.
Sauer rejected the argument of Hilton's lawyer, Richard Hutton, who said the court did not have the power to overrule a county sheriff.
Assistant City Attorney Dan Jeffries said "no good cause" was shown by the sheriff for overruling the judge's earlier decision that Hilton serve her time in jail. Jeffries said Hilton's early release "erodes confidence in the judicial system."
Hutton offered to have a private hearing in the judge's chambers to discuss Hilton's condition, but Sauer declined. The judge said he had been promised a medical explanation for her release, but never received it.
Hilton was led off sobbing by sheriff's deputies, while her mother cried and nearly fell to her knees.
On Monday, she began serving her sentence for violating the terms of her probation by driving with a suspended license following a drunk-driving plea. Hilton had been kept in 23-hour-a-day isolation in a small cell at the women's jail, and the gossip columns have alternatively reported that she was crying and not eating, or was holding up and doing fine.