[apro]

"To my knowledge, Baca has never released any one sauer has sentenced in this manner. Yes, Baca can send people home early at his discretion, so long as it doesn't conflict with the sentence. "

Not according to this report, this article states " a long-standing fight between the Sheriff's Department and the courts over time actually served." :

Because of overcrowding in Los Angeles County jails, release criteria now call for female offenders to be freed after serving 10% of their projected sentence. So for an inmate who, like Hilton, was sentenced to 45 days, serving no more than four days would be the norm. (There are no statistics on how much time probation violators serve in jail.) But in Hilton's case, Sauer issued specific instructions for a longer sentence: no private jail, no electronic monitoring, no early release. Her release despite the judge's objections highlights a long-standing fight between the Sheriff's Department and the courts over time actually served. Regardless of what the judge said, time actually served by county inmates is still determined by the sheriff, who is allowed to release them early under federal orders to reduce crowded conditions. Since mid-2002, when Baca shut down thousands of jail beds in the midst of a county budget crisis, more than 200,000 inmates have gone home after serving only fractions of their sentences. In addition, Baca has the ability to give "compassionate releases" to misdemeanor offenders.

[soccermom]

Actually your article confirms exactly what I said. This is the first time, to my knowledge — and your link doesn’t suggest otherwise — that Baca’s action specifically defied the judge’s instruction. It may be an established tradition that inmates get early release due to over-crowding etc and the court system may, indeed, be annoyed by this. And those instances may, indeed, be within the sheriff’s discretion. And the judge, knowing this, gave very specific limitations to close that loophole in this case. That is the point. To my knowledge, there has been no other case in which Baca deliberately defied the court’s instruction. Baca knew he needed the judge to sign off on the release and chose to skirt that.