Tensions boiled over in a Beverly Hills courtroom Friday as Winona Ryder was sentenced to three years of supervised probation for two felony convictions stemming from her headline-making shoplifting spree.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Elden S. Fox also ordered the 31-year-old Ryder to complete 480 hours of community service, complete drug and psychiatric counseling and pay up some $10,000 in fines and restitution.
Perhaps most foreboding, Fox issued Ryder a stern warning: "If you steal again, you will go to jail."
Ryder, clad in an all-black ensemble, typical of her courtroom wardrobe, took Fox's sentence impassively. When asked by the judge if she understood his mandate, the actress told the court, "Yes, your honor, I do."
Fox said he did not intend to make an example of Ryder. But he also said he was concerned that the two-time Oscar nominee had "refused" to accept responsibility for her crimes.
Ryder, who did not take the stand in her defense, declined the chance to address the court at sentencing. But, after, she released a statement through publicist Mara Buxbaum in which she did own up to Saksgate.
"Winona accepts responsibility for what happened on [the day of her arrest]," the statement said. "She will fulfill her sentence as laid out by the judge."
Ryder said she'd already begun community service on her own, working with two missing-children foundations.
Friday's sentencing itself proved anticlimactic to the fireworks that preceded it.
In making his final appeal to the court, defense attorney Mark Geragos talked up Ryder's prior good deeds--a documentary she financed on the sex-slave trade in India, the "hundreds of thousands" of dollars she contributed to charity and the effort she led to seek the return of Polly Klaas, a 12-year-old girl kidnapped from the star's Petaluma, California, hometown in 1993. (Klaas was eventually found murdered.)
In her rebuttal time, prosecutor Ann Rundle, who hammered away at Ryder throughout trial, took out the heavy tools one more time, accusing the actress and Geragos of trying to win sympathy by "trotting out the body of a dead child."
The not-indirect reference to Klaas sent Ryder bolting from her seat, open-mouthed and aghast, and Geragos voicing an objection.
At the behest of a bailiff, Ryder soon returned to her seat but struggled to find her game face. She glared at Rundle, shook her head and muttered a disdainful "Oh, my God..." when the prosecutor finally wrapped.
In all, another rough day in a rough year for the Girl, Interrupted star.
It was on December 12, 2001, that Ryder was arrested at the Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue, accused of trying to walk off with more than 20 pricey hair bows, handbags, socks and whatnot from the department store.
On November 6, a jury convicted the actress of felony grand theft and vandalism.
The conviction could have brought Ryder two years in jail. But even hard-nosed prosecutors said they never wanted to put her behind bars.
Instead, they asked for--and got--probation, counseling, restitution and community service. About the only break Ryder caught from Fox was in the fines department--prosecutors had wanted the star to pony up $26,000; the judge ordered her to pay less than half of that amount, $10,055.40 (including $6355.40 in restitution to Saks).
While Ryder avoided jail (and Fox actually did sentence her to one day in the cooler but credited her with time served), she did not avoid the longish arm of the law.
For the next three years, she'll be required to check in with a probation officer when she leaves the county for a vacation or even a movie set.
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Her community service--to be performed at the City of Hope cancer center in Duarte, California, the Foundation for the Junior Blind and the Caring for Babies with AIDS Foundation--must be completed by April. To log her 480 hours by then, Ryder essentially will have to take on a full-time, 40-hour a week job for three months.
Overkill for a first-time convicted shoplifter? Not to Rundle. In court Friday, she reiterated the district attorney's theme: "This defendant should be treated no differently than any other defendant."
Geragos begged to differ. He said, "She's been treated, in my opinion, unlike anybody else."
The attorney took prosecutors to task for invading his client's privacy, refusing to resolve the case before trial and holding her up to ridicule.
"They wanted a dog-and-pony show at every single point," Geragos said. "[And] they got their felony conviction--after they had done everything possible to destroy this woman."
Ryder's latest less-than-flattering moment came this week from two documents released by the D.A. The first contained a lengthy list of pharmaceuticals found on her on the day of her arrest, many obtained under an alias. The second was a probation report the defense tried to keep sealed, showing Ryder had received 37 painkiller prescriptions from 20 doctors between January 1996 and December 1998. (For the complete probation report, see the Smoking Gun.) In addition to her drug counseling, Ryder will no longer be able to assume a false name to get medication.
Outside the courtroom, Polly Klaas' father, Mark Klaas, a frequent courtroom visitor during trial, told reporters that Ryder "may be a double felon, but she's a double felon with a very big heart and spirit." (Mark Klaas' KlassKids Foundation is one of the organizations for which Ryder has performed her self-styled community service.)
In her statement, Ryder's publicist said, "Winona is relieved to finally put this behind her and is hopeful that she will be able to restore some modicum of privacy."