Lohan returns to court amid call for jail sentence

[October 19, 2011]  LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Another court date, another jail threat for Lindsay Lohan.

A city prosecutor will recommend Wednesday that the troubled starlet be sent back to jail because she had been ousted from a community service assignment at a women's shelter.

Lohan had been ordered in April to serve 360 hours at the Downtown Women's Center, an agency that helps homeless women. It is unclear how many hours she completed there, but she was terminated by the center and has been serving hours lately with the American Red Cross.

Deputy City Attorney Melanie Chavira will ask that Lohan be found in violation of her probation and be sentenced to jail, city attorney's spokesman Frank Mateljan said Tuesday.

It will ultimately be up to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stephanie Sautner to decide whether Lohan warrants another probation revocation hearing and a return to jail, where she has been sent four previous times only to be released early due to jail overcrowding. If the judge determines Lohan has violated her probation, she will have to schedule an evidentiary hearing for a later date, after which any punishment would be determined.

The judge has said she thought the women's shelter assignment would do Lohan some good.

Lohan's spokesman Steve Honig said the actress is now doing her service with the American Red Cross.

He declined comment on the recommendation that Lohan be sent back to jail.

He said the "Mean Girls" star has been working hard to satisfy the terms of her release, including psychological counseling and completing a Shoplifters Anonymous course.

"She's really pounding away," Honig said, adding that Lohan has been also working to complete her Shoplifter's Anonymous course.

"She's on a good track," Honig said Tuesday. "We're optimistic the judge will see that."

Lohan took to Twitter on Tuesday evening and posted, "I just want it to be known, that just because I was not followed&photographed during the times I've gone to community service, does NOT mean that I wasn't following my obligations (by going) to the court."

Lohan, who aside from a role in last year's film "Machete" has seen her acting career evaporate in recent years, has been in perpetual trouble since May 2010.

Another judge determined she violated her probation a 2007 drunken driving case and sentenced her to jail and rehab. She faltered after being released from a rehab facility early and was sent to the Betty Ford Center, where she got in an altercation with a rehab worker who later sued.

Within weeks of her release from Betty Ford, Lohan was accused of taking a $2,500 necklace without permission from an upscale jewelry store near her home in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles. Sautner determined the January incident constituted a probation violation and Lohan was ordered to undergo psychological counseling and perform 480 hours of community, with 120 hours to be spent at the county morgue.

Lohan later pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge in the necklace theft case, and served 35 days of a four-month sentence on house arrest.

Honig said he did not know how many hours of community service Lohan had completed and that information would be given to Sautner on Wednesday.

Mateljan said he had not personally reviewed the probation report and did not know why Lohan was booted from serving at the Downtown Women's Center.

"We feel that her being terminated from it is a violation," Mateljan said.

[Associated Press; By ANTHONY McCARTNEY]

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP.

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