This story aptly demonstrates the palpable effect of re-alignment and the overcrowding of the county jails all over Los Angeles County.

As a criminal defense attorney who has handled hundreds of DUI cases in Los Angeles County, I am not really surprised that Bobby Brown only served 8 hours of his 55 day sentence for his DUI case.  This is not a case of "celebrity justice" but rather a reality after re-alignment.  For those that are not up on the criminal justice news in Los Angeles, re-alignment caused thousands of inmates who were convicted of low grade felonies to be moved from state prison to county jail to serve out their sentences.  Re-alignment does not apply to sex offenders, people convicted of violent crimes, or those inmates who have prior strike felony convictions.

The effect of re-alignment was to free up state prison for the truly "deserving" inmates and to allow low level offenders to serve out their sentences in county jail until the beds got too full.   As most criminal defense attorneys know, an inmate serving a sentence in Los Angeles county jail (not a sex crime or violent crime) will serve anywhere from 10% of their sentence up to 50%.  However, there is a pecking order in jail and usually minor offenders, like people sentenced for DUI cases, get kicked out earliest, and first, thus resulting in a period of incarceration even under 10% of the original sentence like in the case of Bobby Brown.