LiLo officially a free woman as judge lifts probation

London: Lindsay Lohan’s formal probation has finally ended, after nearly two years of court hearings and the threat of jail time looming above the actress. Lohan thanked Superior Court Judge Stephanie Sautner and let out a sigh of relief as she exited the courtroom after the brief hearing. The judge had imposed a number of strict probation requirements including cleanup duty at the morgue and counselling sessions last year, and Lohan met all the requirements by Thursday’s deadline.

“I just want to say thank you for being fair. It’s really opened a lot of doors for me,” a leading daily has quoted her as saying. Judge Sautner reminded the controversial star that she will remain on informal probation until May 2014 for taking a necklace without permission last year. “You need to live your life in a more mature way, stop the nightclubbing and focus on your work,” the judge said. If the ‘Mean Girls’ star does get into more trouble, she could face a 245-day jail sentence in the necklace case. The judge said she understood that Lohan may be frustrated with constant scrutiny by paparazzi and others, but noted, “That’s the life you chose”. Roles have been hard to come by for Lohan in recent years, as she has been in-and-out of courtrooms, spent time in rehab and was sentenced to jail. Her failure to complete alcohol education classes in 2010 prompted a judge to sentence her to jail for the first time since she served 84 minutes for a pair of drunken driving arrests in 2007. A court-ordered rehab stint was cut short, but Lohan relapsed before year’s end and was sent by another judge to the Betty Ford Centre, where she was involved in a fight with a rehab worker. Within three weeks of her release in January 2011, Lohan was accused of stealing a 2,500-dollar necklace from a store near her Venice home and soon landed in Sautner’s court. The judge rejected rehab and tried to send Lohan to jail as punishment. Overcrowding reduced a November 2011 sentence to a few hours, although the actress did serve 35 days on house arrest earlier in the year. ANI