Paris Hilton will be issued her get-out-of jail card on Tuesday after spending almost 3 1/2 weeks in the slammer. The release date, announced Friday, was determined by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Inmate Reception Center. The exact hour of Hilton’s release was not disclosed.
"There’s no set time," said Deputy Luis Castro, adding he didn’t know if any special arrangements had been made to return Hilton to her Hollywood Hills home.
The 26-year-old Hilton, who was sentenced to 45 days in jail for violating her probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case, surrendered on June 3.
Sheriff Lee Baca released her to electronically monitored house arrest on June 7, citing an undisclosed medical condition he said made her a better candidate to serve the rest of her time at home.
Her sentencing judge, who had specifically barred Hilton from house arrest, ordered her to court the next day and returned the sobbing hotel heiress to jail.
Although her sentence was for 45 days, authorities have said all along that with time off for good behavior and because of crowded jail conditions Hilton was likely to serve only 23. Tuesday will mark the 24th day since she surrendered following an appearance at the MTV Movie Awards.
Hilton’s release is scheduled for the same day Baca is to appear before the county Board of Supervisors, which is investigating whether her June 7 release amounted to preferential treatment.
The sheriff has said Hilton’s celebrity focused so much attention on her case that she actually served more time than an average person would have under the same circumstances.
TRANSITIONAL HOME FOR RELEASED INMATES?
With two more days left for her release, Paris Hilton has already planned her post-prison activities.
In a recent phone call with American television personality Ryan Seacrest, Hilton revealed that she wants to build a "transitional home" to help women when they are released from jail.
"These women just keep coming back because they have no place to go," Us Weekly quoted Hilton, as telling Seacrest.
The heiress said that the home can be "a place to get food and clothes on their backs," continuing that the habitual crime relapse rate is "a really bad cycle and if we stop it now, we can make our community a better place."
Hilton also divulged that her choice of companions in the future might be very different, after realising that they were apparently not a good influence on her.
After deals with ABC and NBC fell through last week, Paris Hilton will now give her first post-jail interview to Larry King on CNN on Wednesday night.
Mike Sitrick, a spokesman for the Hilton family, announced the agreement yesterday.
Ms. Hilton is expected to be released on Tuesday from jail in Los Angeles, where she has been serving a sentence since June 3 for charges related to traffic violations.
She and her representatives have been negotiating for the exclusive rights to the first interview for most of the past week. Both ABC and NBC were heavily involved in pursuing the interview, expecting it to attract high ratings.
But the negotiations turned sour late last week when news accounts described the interaction between the networks and representatives of the Hiltons, which involved potential cash payments for materials that the Hiltons would provide with the interview, like photographs and videos.
ABC had offered $100,000 for that deal but was told by the Hilton side that NBC was offering far more. On the print side, People magazine had made a deal to pay $300,000 for photos that would have accompanied an interview with Ms. Hilton.
In the wake of all the publicity about the financial negotiations, all deals were withdrawn. Mr. Sitrick issued a statement saying Ms. Hilton would not seek money for an interview. ABC and NBC still declined to put on the interview.
Instead, Mr. King will interview Ms. Hilton. A spokeswoman for his program, Bridget Leininger, said yesterday that no money had been paid for the interview. “Larry King never pays for interviews,” she said.
But Ms. Leininger said she was unsure whether the program was going to use any photos and whether any fee would be paid to Getty Images, a photo agency that had previously made a deal to acquire rights to the first pictures of Ms. Hilton home from jail.