Already the media pundits are predicting "hard time" for Paris Hilton after last night's arrest in Las Vegas on a cocaine possession charge.

I doubt it. First off, while possession of cocaine is a class E felony in Nevada, the statute mandates probation except in certain instances, and Paris doesn't fit any of the exceptions. Nevada, like most states, also has deferred sentencing for those who are guilty of such offenses, allowing them to end up without a permanent conviction on their record.

Paris' prior conviction in CA was for alcohol-related reckless driving, a misdemeanor. She's no longer on probation. [More...]

NYTimes:

A federal grand jury has indicted Roger Clemens on charges of making false statements to Congress about his use of performance-enhancing drugs. The 19-page indictment charges Clemens with three counts of making false statements and two counts of perjury in connection with his February 2008 testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. According to the United States attorney’s office, Clemens faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine, but under the current sentencing guidelines, a conviction would likely bring 15-21 months.

Clemens’s allegedly false testimony came in a public hearing in which Clemens and his former trainer Brian McNamee, testifying under oath, directly contradicted each other about whether Clemens had used the banned substances.

A crime is a crime (Indictment (PDF), but the real issue to me is what in blazes was Congress doing asking stupid questions about issues that have nothing to do with their jobs? I mean is Congress going to pass laws on PEDs in sports? Really? When does the big Lance Armstrong investigation start? Just stupid.

Speaking for me only

This security camera video of 25 year old Melodi Dushane freaking out at the drive-up window of McDonalds because they were only serving breakfast and not McNuggets at 6:30 a.m., is hilarious. It also cost Dushane 60 days in jail and $1,500 in restitution to McDonalds.

The encounter begins normally, and around 1:10 in, the freakout begins. She escalates from berating the employee, to forcing the window open and trying to climb in, to bashing the employee. She then gets back in her car, only to get out and go back up to the window, smashing it with a bottle.

A few seconds after she finally leaves, another car drives up, and the employee, not missing a beat and still holding something to her bruised head, calmly hands over the order. I bet Jet Blue would like to hire someone with her work ethic.

Steven Slater, hero. Melodi? Misfit.

Back in March, I wrote Free Koua Fong Lee From His Toyota Camry Nightmare. Mr. Lee, a recent Hmong immigrant, was driving his family home from church in 2006 when his Toyota Camry sped up a ramp and hit another car. Three people died and two were injured. Mr. Lee insisted he did everything he could to avoid the accident and hit the brakes. He was convicted and sentenced to 8 years in prison.

While in prison, Toyota revealed the problems with its gas pedals. The Innocence Project of Minnesota took up his case, and the prosecutor agreed to revisit it.

Today, a judge freed Mr. Lee from prison, ordering a new trial. The prosecutor said there isn't going to be one, ""I think it's time to bring this very sad situation to a close." [More...]

Rudy Giuliani's daughter, Caroline Giuliani, a 20 year old Harvard student, was arrested Wednesday afternoon for shoplifting $100 of cosmetics from Sephora on the Upper East Side of New York, near her mother's apartment.

The store says when it learned who she was, it tried to call of the cops and told them it didn't want to press charges. The cops said it was too late.

The store video reportedly shows Ms. Giuliani putting about 5 different products in her pockets. She was given a desk ticket and the DA will decide whether to file charges. [More...]

At 1:35 am this morning, Lindsay Lohan was released from jail, ushered into a van, and en route to rehab. She served 13 days of her 90 day sentence, getting out early due to overcrowding.

TMZ reports Lindsay will be at the Morningside Recovery Center at UCLA, in a unit that has "an intense specialized program to deal with psychological, as well as addiction problems."

Reports she favors Meth and is bi-polar are fabrications. As TMZ says,she takes prescription Adderall.

Adderall, which is an amphetamine. Experts in the field of rehab and addiction tell TMZ there is a difference between amphetamine and methamphetamine. We're told it would not be common for a rehab facility to consider Adderall and methamphetamine the same drug.

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered the Chief Judge from the Northern District of Illinois, removed from a drug case in the middle of trial.

The Judge had excluded fingerprint evidence. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald took an immediate appeal and the 7th Circuit ordered Judge James Holderman removed and directed the Judges to assign someone else and keep the trial going.

The 7th Circuit gave no reason for the extraordinary action and said an opinion will be forthcoming. Here's what the order, called a "Final Order in Original Proceeding" says: [More...]

The House of Representatives today passed the Crime Commission bill, now known as H.R. 5143, the National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2010 (originally the idea of Sen. Jim Webb.) Despite the praise by progressive groups for the creation of a bi-partisan committee to spend 18 months studying what's wrong with our criminal justice system, I remain unimpressed.

We don't need an 18 month moratorium on the passage of much needed crime bills that have been languishing for months and years, like bills to equalize the penalties for crack and powder cocaine (unlikely to happen at all now that the House is set to vote to make them 18:1 instead of 100:1 with the reduction being prospective only, doing nothing for the thousands already sentenced), bills to reduce or eliminate mandatory minimum sentences, or increase federal good time. Or even a bill to reduce the draconian child p*rn guidelines. It will be just more "hurry up and wait."[More...]

Warren Steed Jeffs, the leader of a Utah polygamy sect convicted of two counts of accomplice rape, will get a new trial. The reason: errors in jury instructions.

The opinion is here. Jeffs was convicted for his role in the compelled marriage of fourteen-year-old Elissa Wall to her nineteen-year-old first cousin, Allen Steed, and the resulting sexual intercourse between them. [More..]

After serving two years of his sentence, Conrad Black has been freed on $2 million bail.

His attorney Miguel Estrada had said he expected his client to return to his home in Palm Beach.

Is that Miguel Estrada who former President Bush wanted on the U.S. Court of Appeals? Yes.

Black's conviction for honest services fraud was vacated in June following the Supreme Court decision placing limits on the use of the statute. In Black's case, the jury instructions used an improper interpretation of the statute and that the fraud did not involve bribes or kickbacks. [More...]

This is not a good sign for our jury system. The judge in the upcoming Anna Nicole Smith trial of Drs. Sanjeep Kapoor and Khristine Eroshevich and boyfriend Howard K. Stern has ordered prospective jurors to disclose their medical histories, including listing the prescription drugs they have taken. The three are charged with conspiring to provide Smith with sedatives and opiates. (They are not charged with causing her death.)

While the judge has nixed cameras in the courtroom, he has ordered jurors names be kept secret from the lawyers in the case and is going to have his staff periodically check the jurors' Facebook and social media sites. [More...]

Lord Conrad Black has been serving his sentence for honest services fraud since March, 2008. The 7th Circuit just granted his release on bail.

Black’s request for bail followed a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June that narrowed the scope of a federal statute used at his trial, returning the Hollinger executive’s case to the appeals court. Black and three associates had been found guilty in the theft of $6.1 million from Hollinger International -- once the world’s third-largest publisher of English-language newspapers -- as they engineered its sale of assets.

The order is here. [Hat tip to Sentencing Law and Policy.]