The Paris Hilton imbroglio is not about Ms. Hilton. If it were neither Earl Ofari Hutchinson nor I would be writing about. Mr. Hutchinson got it right that Sheriff Baca didn’t do anything out of the ordinary in granting her early release. The great question is if Baca’s ordinary process and procedure is legal.

We have three branches of government—the executive, legislative and judicial—and they regularly contend with each other in a kind of dynamic tension. This is as it should be. Added to the three constitutional branches, we like to think of the press as the fourth estate—an overseer and process observer.

Sheriff Baca’s early release process introduces himself as another player that is extra-constitutional. The court, legislature or executive may delegate certain duties and rights, they may constitute parole boards, but where is it written that the Sheriff or Chief of Police can act as judge, jury and parole board all at once? Where is the process that insures due process for those sent to jail?

Though he may have acted with Ms. Hilton in a way consistent with past practice, what assurances does the public have, in the absence of a legally authorized series of checks and balances, that all will be treated fairly? It is almost always true that a benign despot offers efficiency, but the historic question has been how to assure continued benevolence?

There is a far deeper legal issue here and that is if the Sheriff must obey the court? It is one thing to regularly release prisoners early, and it is quite another to ignore the specific terms, signed into the sentence by the judge that forbad him from granting release at 10% of sentence and specifically enjoined the Sheriff from granting home release—even monitored. Can the sheriff ignore a court order?

If Sheriff Baca had a problem with the conditions of the sentence, the proper procedure would have been to take it to the judge or to take it up to the appellate level. Ignoring judges is a bad idea for Baca, but more importantly, it is a bad idea for our system of justice.