LYNWOOD, Calif. – Nicole Richie was released from jail Thursday after serving 82 minutes of a four-day sentence for driving under the influence of drugs.
The reality show star, who checked into jail in this Los Angeles suburb at 3:15 p.m., was released at 4:37 p.m. “based on her sentence and federal guidelines,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Maribel Rizo said without elaborating.
When asked whether Richie, who is four months pregnant, spent her brief sentence in a jail cell, Rizo replied: “I have no further comment.”
A call to Richie’s attorney, Shawn Chapman Holley, was not immediately returned Thursday. An e-mail message to her publicist Nicole Perna was not immediately answered.
The brief jail stint took place at the county jail for women, the same place her “The Simple Life” co-star Paris Hilton was housed for nearly three weeks after she was convicted of driving on a suspended license while on probation for an alcohol-related reckless driving case.
Richie pleaded guilty in late July to a misdemeanor DUI charge in a deal with prosecutors that helped her avoid a potential year in jail on a second alcohol-related conviction.
Her first conviction was in 2003, for driving under the influence of alcohol.
She was arrested again on Dec. 11, 2006, after witnesses reported seeing her black Mercedes-Benz sport utility vehicle headed the wrong way on a freeway in Burbank. The California Highway Patrol said they found her parked in the car-pool lane.
Richie, the daughter of Lionel Richie, told authorities she had smoked marijuana and taken the prescription painkiller Vicodin, a CHP officer said at the time. No drugs were found on her or in the car.
Richie had the option of serving 90 hours either in county jail or at any city jail. She would have had to serve the full sentence in a city lockup.
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