Actress Lindsay Lohan dodged a felony bullet today.
Arriving at the Los Angeles County Court Building for a parole violation preliminary hearing, Lohan received some good news/bad news.
Good news: The felony grand theft charge was reduced to a misdemeanor. Bad news: She was sentanced to 120 days jail time for the parole violation.
The 24 year-old actress had been accused of felony grand theft in a missing necklace from Kamofie & Co. that Lohan was trying on and left the store wearing, all on surveillance video.
After hearing testimony from Kamofie & Co. store owner, Sofia Kaman, who believed Lohan’s friend (seen in the video chatting with Kaman at the counter) was a decoy, reviewing the video footage, and also taking into account that Lohan’s DUI conviction was 4 years ago, Judge Stephanie Sautner reduced the charge from a felony to a misdeamnor.
The Judge felt that Lohan’s record did not warrant a felony charge but does think there is something to the case, and therefore did not outright dismiss the charge.
While Lohan’s lawyer Shawn Holley, argued that it was a simple mistake, the Judge felt if that was the case, she should have contacted the store to make arrangement to return it, if that were the case, instead of hanging onto it for weeks and only coming forth after finding out a search warrant was being issued for the item.
She rule Lindsay was in violation of her parole and sentanced her to 120 days in jail and 480 hours of community service, 360 of those are to be served at a women’s center in L.A. and the rest in the county morgue.
Since the actress is appealing the ruling, she is allowed out on bail awaiting the ruling.
Lohan will be back in court May 11th, for a preliminary trial hearing and will once again have to decide if she will take a plea deal or face another trial.
[image: Ivan Nikolov/WENN]
