Plastered Paris
She got off easy.
Some people may wonder about the conditions, but they obviously haven’t had a recent DWI/DUI. Three years probation, $1,500 fine, alcohol program, suspended license, and an official charge of reckless driving is some good lawyering, which is why she pled guilty.
She was given a warning in January about driving with a suspended license, you or I would have been in jail after that one, and had our car impounded.
In this latest episode she was driving with a suspended license, driving without headlights at night, and speeding. She has not enrolled in an alcohol program, she arrived late to court, she presented bogus testimony. You or I would be facing 3 years in jail without the parole or probation option.
The judge wasn’t going to give her a break of any kind, and probably wanted to impose the three years after the hearing, but chose to simply approve the prosecutor’s recommendation. This was a probation hearing and she violated her probation on multiple points. She tossed out any of the lesser options because this was a probation hearing.
Her claim of not understanding the rules of her license suspension are absurd – hey, you can’t drive. You have to jump through the hoops before the privilege of operating a motor vehicle on the public roads is restored. If you want a “work exemption” you have to apply for it.
She was treated differently, because she could afford multiple attorneys to work for her. She is probably going to have her license revoked after the February incident, because she still hasn’t answered those charges, and she will probably receive more jail time because she has violated parole on the initial charge.
She was given the opportunity to avoid jail and she choose to violate the conditions of her probation. She obviously didn’t understand that she was being shown leniency, so now society has to teach her what she has never learned: there are consequences for your actions.
6 comments
It’s never too late to learn. Maybe this is the shock treatment she needs.
I wasn’t going to write about this, but then I saw people complaining about what happened to her, and how she was being picked on.
I have a neighbor who got nailed for a DUI and he would have loved to trade original sentences with her. He paid three times as much in fines and court costs, is paying an arm and a leg for the alcohol program, has community service, has to take time off work for probation appointments, sold his truck because the storage fees when it was impounded are more than he can manage with everything else.
She had a good deal and she blew it.
Let me answer those complainers from the other perspective, and in light of the “share the road” plate you posted downstream.
About two years ago, one of my fellow members of the local Amnesty International (and a very active member at that) commuted almost everywhere by bicycle. Richard, who was scrupulous about bicycle maintenance and legal behavior on the road, was knocked off his bicycle by a drunk driver. His injuries left him in a coma. Six months later, he died.
Richard was in his early thirties, a likable fellow who cheerfully helped anyone with their Linux or UNIX problems, a fellow who knew his way around a radio station studio and mastered radio tapes for Amnesty and other nonprofits, a fellow whose belief in human rights ran as deep as my own.
Compared to Richard’s punishment for someone else’s DUI… what is Paris’s, and what does she have to complain about?
I have drunk alcohol beyond a sip of wine as part of toast in 20 years because of investigating DUIs and their aftermaths. I have no sympathy at all for people who get nailed, because it’s not exactly news that it’s illegal. If more people pulled jail time there would be fewer drunks on the road.
As you know, I drink, but I don’t drink and drive. If I have had alcohol at home, I don’t go out, not with myself behind the wheel. If I’m out with Stella and she’s driving (she rarely drinks), I may have something with dinner. But losing Richard led me to be even more restrained about drinking if there is any reasonable possibility of my having to drive somewhere later. It just isn’t worth it. Why a famous rich girl with an empty head cannot understand that simple connection is beyond me: if you’re going to get soused, don’t make someone else pay for your excess with their life.
She can afford a driver, she can afford to go everywhere by a damn limo. There is absolutely no reason for her to drink and drive.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she lost her license on the most recent charges, Speeding with your lights off at night certainly qualifies as reckless driving to me. Revoking her driving privileges is certainly on the table with two major violations in six-months.