The Glamorous World Of Celebrity Crime

August 30, 2007

If only all of us could break the law with such style — and so little punishment

Weep, my friends, to imagine the recent jailhouse experience of Nicole Richie. Like her The Simple Life co-star, Paris Hilton, Richie was busted for driving under the influence (pot and Vicodin, in her case, while Paris relied on good ol’ booze), and, like Paris, was sent to the big house to do hard time. They say that once you’re inside, minutes pass like hours — which would mean Richie served the psychological equivalent of three-and-a-half days. In real time, her entire 82-minute stay fit neatly between lunch and an early supper: she checked in last Thursday at 3:15 p.m. and was out, sadder but wiser, at 4:37 p.m.

This thrifty approach to celebrity punishment is all the rage in the States. In June, Paris was initially sprung after only a few days, until public outrage and a judge sent her back for a few weeks. Last week, professional train-wreck Lindsay Lohan was sentenced to a prison term of one day. Out of all of them, Richie’s term was the most efficient.

You can imagine how it all went down for Richie: the initial rage, giving way to despair at the five-minute mark, then the slow process of hardening to her new prison realities, adjusting to the law of the jungle that rules the prison yard, where the strong survive and the weak become hapless slaves and/or sexual playthings. That takes us to 25 minutes. The escape attempt was hatched in secret at three-quarters of an hour, foiled in a hail of gunfire at 49 minutes when old Stumpy couldn’t make it over the wall (poor old Stumpy can’t remember life on the outside — he’s been in stir since last Tuesday). Eight minutes were added to the sentence for the escape attempt. She got religion at the one-hour mark and finished her time, unfortunately a little too soon to finish the “Love” and “Hate” tattoos on her knuckles, so it’s “Lo” and “Ha” for now — until her next afternoon siesta in the pokey.

Officials say Richie and her celeb pals are not being treated any differently than other defendants. On the other hand, some friends of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick claim he’s being discriminated against because of his race. Vick is facing jail time for running a dog-fighting ring and personally killing losing dogs. Apparently, Vick’s defenders feel that white folks can do anything and get away with it: If, say, a white NFL player like New England Patriot Tom Brady was convicted of the same offences, he would soon be busy endorsing new fast-food products like the Dog Whopper or the McMutt. I don’t think so. Then again, George W. Bush is white and he got to be President, so maybe they’ve got a point.

Whatever the reason, Vick will not escape as lightly as Richie or Lohan. Already suspended indefinitely by the league, he is facing the kind of jail time Richie could only dream of (assuming that Nicole is interested in starting a hip-hop career — 82 minutes may not be enough hard time to result in the chance to hang with 50 Cent). Unfortunately for Vick, Johnnie Cochrane is dead — as an accused NFL star, he’d have been better off if he could have hired O.J. Simpson’s attorney. Even better? Hiring O.J. Simpson’s jury. Too bad you couldn’t retain that group as part of a legal strategy — it would be a license to kill. If one of those genius jurists stuck a fork in an electrical socket, it would be ruled death by natural causes. In fact, by this time, all 12 must surely have killed themselves off, tying their shoelaces together at the Grand Canyon, locking themselves inside a car on a hot day, maybe walking out of a movie on an L.A.-to-New York flight. The Darwinian possibilities are endless.

There are ways for celebs to avoid all this bad publicity in the first place. Take Bill Murray, for instance. Murray was recently arrested in Stockholm on suspicion of drunk golf-carting, the real clincher being that he was stopped while driving the cart in downtown Stockholm (not necessarily erratically — a golf cart in downtown Stockholm is probably erratic by legal definition). Such a cute little crime wave. Before Murray, the last serious case involving a golf cart happened last month, when the Seattle Mariners mascot, the Mariner Moose, accidentally ran over Boston Red Sox fielder Coco Crisp while piloting a cart. A big fuzzy moose runs over a guy named Coco — that’s not a crime, it’s a Saturday morning cartoon. The headline Eight killed in golf-cart mayhem has never been written. Murray clearly knows how to do trouble.

And there’s still another way of handling such matters, a somewhat controversial method within the celebrity community. It involves not breaking the law. Pop singer and actor Mandy Moore recently commented on her own record of law-abiding behaviour — a record as long as her arm. “I’d rather be considered a goody-goody than a fuck-up,” she said.

However, Moore rarely makes the newspapers these days. As a result, her unconventional techniques are unlikely to catch on. The august fraternity of celebrity journalists breathes a sigh of relief for that. ?