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No amount of weeping was going to save Lucyna Turyk-Wawrynowicz, the sticky-fingered maid who relieved Robert De Niro and Candace Bergen of tens of thousands of dollars in valuables, from the righteous sting of celebrity justice. A judge denied her tearful request to be sent home to Poland, instead slapping her with one to three years in jail:

State Supreme Court Justice Renee White ignored the pleas of a weeping Lucyna Turyk-Wawrynowicz to let her return immediately to Poland. [...]


"I would like the judge to allow me to go home," Turyk-Wawrynowicz, 35, said through tears and a Polish interpreter. She said her sister died recently, leaving several young children. "They have no one to take care of them," she told the judge.

White told the maid she had "shown no remorse for your actions, but only remorse for your predicament," so she would impose the sentence.

Perhaps if she'd maintained her initial pose as a vigilante crusader who stole only from those deserving some payback, the courts might've been persuaded to go easy on her to send a message to inconsiderate, entitled celebrity employers everywhere. Unfortunately, her crocodile tears and last-minute plea for deportation seemed to harden the judge's heart, and the rich and famous can now return to beating the help with a sack full of oranges every time they discover dust on their Oscar without fear of losing their jewelry in retaliation.