Judge Calls Sellers ‘Flighty,’ Sets Bail at $100,000 : Courts: Actor’s daughter is charged with receiving stolen property. She had failed to surrender for booking.

Wearing a wrinkled shift and jacket with the downscale “LA County Jail” label, celebrity offspring Victoria Sellers took the witness stand in Municipal Court on Tuesday and said five days at Sybil Brand Institute had taught her a lesson.

She promised to obey the court if she were granted low bail. She shed a tear or two.

But Judge Michael S. Luros was unmoved.

“I believe she has shown herself to be somewhat flighty,” Luros observed as he set Sellers’ bail at $100,000--the amount requested by Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol Fisch.

Defense attorney Barry Hammond said the bail was 10 times the amount usually set for the offense Sellers is charged with--receiving stolen property. He said Sellers, who rents a $450-a-month apartment in West Hollywood, could not afford it.

But Luros, who ordered Sellers jailed last week when she failed to keep an agreement to surrender for booking, said her conduct justified the high bail.

He noted that Sellers, the 29-year-old daughter of the late British comic actor Peter Sellers and actress Britt Eckland, had changed lawyers and addresses, and that she had given authorities her theatrical agent’s address as her home address. When deputies went to the Hollywood home last week to arrest Sellers, the agent said she hadn’t seen Sellers in two months, the judge said.

Sellers testified that she didn’t realize she would be arrested if she didn’t surrender. She said she thought her lawyer would handle it.

“I was scared to go by myself and I wanted a lawyer to come with me to go through the procedure,” Sellers said. But she had trouble reaching Hammond, and Hammond had trouble reaching her because she had no phone and her pager broke, she said.

“I don’t have any excuse for that. I thought in my head that if I didn’t hear from you, you would page me and I would call you back,” she told Hammond during her testimony.

“Through my own fault, I did not call. I’m truly sorry I did not call,” she said.

Hammond said Sellers has no access to her family money and no one has offered to help, except “friends who don’t have any money.”

Luros ordered Sellers jailed last week after she failed to meet a deadline to surrender to detectives at the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley station for booking and fingerprinting.

Detective Joel Price testified that he told Sellers to call him, and she never did, even though the arrangements were meant to spare her an arrest that would be highly publicized.

Last summer, Sellers became a minor celebrity as a sidekick to alleged Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss, a longtime close friend, and accompanied Fleiss to court.

Sellers’ own day in court attracted several journalists with British accents--but no Fleiss.

Sellers was charged last month with receiving jewelry police say was taken in a series of armed robberies allegedly committed by her boyfriend and bodyguard. Detectives say they found stolen gold and gemstone jewelry in Sellers’ dresser drawers and under her bed during a search of the Northridge house she shared with the suspects.

Sellers appeared drawn following five days in jail. Luros refused to allow her to change into street clothes, even though Hammond had brought her a new dress. The lawyer toted the black print dress in a shopping bag, and its price tag was visible: $39.99.

The judge said the dress had not been dry-cleaned and sealed in a plastic bag, as required by court security rules.

At another hearing today in Superior Court, Hammond will ask Judge Stanley M. Weisberg to grant Sellers a lower bail so she can get out of jail. Hammond contended in court papers that Sellers has been held on illegally high bail.