KEY POINTS:
Hours after a beaming Paris Hilton was freed from three weeks in jail, the sheriff criticised for briefly putting her under house arrest said he allowed her out because he feared for her life.
While stopping short of saying Hilton had been in danger of harming herself, Sheriff Lee Baca raised the issue of suicide in explaining why he released her to home detention - a move that was swiftly overruled by a judge after a public uproar over whether she was given special treatment.
"I think we all in this room know something about suicide," Mr Baca, who runs the Los Angeles County jail system, told a hearing called by the five-member county board of supervisors.
"As the sheriff of this county, I'm not going to let any inmate die in our jails," he said. "If I know something that can be done that solves the medical problem ... What's worth more? Serving time in the county jail for driving on a suspended driver's licence, or a person losing their life?"
Hilton's publicist, Elliot Mintz, declined to comment on Mr Baca's remarks.
Hilton, 26, star of the reality TV show The Simple Life, originally was sentenced to 45 days in jail for violating probation in a drunken-driving case by driving her car on a suspended licence.
After she had served just three full days behind bars, Mr Baca placed her under home confinement with electronic monitoring, citing unspecified medical problems that he subsequently described as psychological.
Hilton later said she suffered from claustrophobia.
Mr Baca's move sparked an uproar over what many, including some county supervisors, saw as preferential treatment.
Detractors said many county jail inmates suffered all manner of medical problems that went untreated.
The judge ordered Hilton back into custody a day later, ruling that Mr Baca had overstepped his authority.
Hilton trembled and wept throughout those proceedings, and she was initially transferred to the medical ward of another facility.
The multimillionaire socialite ended up serving 22 days - including her day-long home confinement - after her sentence was cut in half under a standard credit applied for good behaviour. Even so, Mr Baca has insisted that her punishment far exceeded the time served by most county inmates for similar offences - a conclusion supported by a Los Angeles Times analysis of 1500 cases similar to hers since 2002.
Explaining his decision to send Hilton home, Mr Baca said there was various types of medications she needed for treatment of a health problem and that the doctors who prescribed them were unavailable to provide clarification.
"Ultimately, she was at a place where we couldn't fix whatever that medical problem was with the resources we had," he told the board of supervisors.
The desperate situation described by Mr Baca contrasted sharply with the celebrity's exuberant demeanour as she left the jail this week, red-carpet Hollywood style, waving and smiling to scores of reporters and photographers.
Hilton, who has vowed to change her party-going ways and give new meaning to her life, was set to give her first post-jail interview on CNN's Larry King Live show overnight.
- REUTERS
