McNew/Pool
Lindsay Lohan with her lawyer, Shawn Chapman Holley, in court on March 10.LOS ANGELES - Lindsay Lohan has rejected a sweetened plea bargain in her necklace theft case and will fight to clear her name.
A court spokeswoman confirmed late Wednesday that Lohan will not appear before Judge Keith Schwartz on Friday to take the deal that came with guaranteed jail time.
Her next stop now is a preliminary hearing in front of a different judge April 22.
Prosecutors first offered six months jail and three years felony probation for a public mea culpa, sources told the Daily News.
But when the "Mean Girls" star turned them down, the judge signaled he'd whittle the jail sentence down to three months behind bars, TMZ.com reported.
With jail overcrowding, she would have been out in about three weeks.
One sticking point, TMZ said, was the three years probationary term.
Indeed, Lohan landed in jail twice in the last year over missteps with the misdemeanor probation stemming from her back-to-back DUIs in 2007.
Still, mom Dina Lohan said the embattled actress seriously considered making a no contest plea so she could move on with her life.
"Obviously, she's not pleading guilty. My children don't steal things. But the system is so strange out in Los Angeles. We're considering a couple options and just want to get this over with in the shortest amount of time," Dina Lohan told the News earlier this week.
Police say the former Disney ing�nue stole a $2,500 one-of-a-kind necklace from a Venice, Calif., jeweler on Jan. 22.
"I would never steal, in case people are wondering," Lohan wrote on Facebook. "I was not raised to lie, cheat, or steal."
She pleaded not guilty to grand theft Feb. 9 and maintains the store knowingly loaned her the bling.
"She was clearly loaned the necklace," Dina Lohan said. "And it should already be down to a misdemeanor because the necklace wasn't worth anywhere near what they claimed."
ndillon@nydailynews.com
Selita Ebanks Veronika Vaeková Amanda Peet Georgianna Robertson Christina Milian
No comments:
Post a Comment