Paris Hilton claims she was ‘set up’ over drugs

Hotel heiress Paris Hilton, who faces up to four years' jail after Nevada police found nearly a gram of cocaine in her purse, is now apparently claiming that she was set up.
 
TMZ.com is reporting that Hilton, who was yesterday charged by Las Vegas prosecutors with possession of drugs, has changed her story.  The 29-year-old heiress originally denied that the bag and some of its contents were hers. She also said that she had thought the small packet of cocaine was chewing gum.
 
Now, according to new court papers which TMZ claims to have obtained, Hilton is saying that the purse was hers – but had been in possession of "a friend". According to that line of defence, that person probably left the cocaine in Hilton’s handbag and may have even set her up.
 
Hilton’s latest run-in with police began in the early hours of Saturday morning, when she and her 34-year-old boyfriend Cy Waits were driving along Las Vegas Boulevard. A motorcycle cop pulled the couple (pictured above in their mugshots) over outside a hotel. Prosecutors claim that the police officer could smell cannabis fumes coming from their Cadillac Escalade.
 
According to reports, police then asked Hilton to go inside the Wynn Hotel when a crowd of around 100 people gathered. Once inside the hotel, however, her night went from bad to worse as a small plastic bag tumbled from her purse in full view of the police.
 
Sgt John Sheahan, of the Las Vegas Police Department, told CBS News that Hilton "extracted a tube of lip balm from her purse. At that time a plastic bindle containing a substance believed to be cocaine fell from her purse in plain view of the metro lieutenant."
 
Hilton, 29, then told officers she had thought the cocaine "was chewing gum", Sheahan said. She also told police that "the purse was not hers, and that she had borrowed it from a friend".
 
The defence - that the drugs were not hers - is the same Hilton successfully used in South Africa in early July, when she was arrested on suspicion of possession of marijuana during a World Cup quarter-final match.
 
Hilton's latest charge carries a four-year term although she is more likely to get probation if convicted. The heiress has spent time in jail before, but she has a clean criminal record in the state of Nevada.
 
That jail time was served in California in 2007 for driving under the influence of alcohol. Afterwards she said she had been "scared straight". ·