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Parties Involved:
Sealed Case

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 15, 2010 Decided December 28, 2010

No. 09-3056

IN RE: SEALED CASE

______

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:00-cr-00248)

______

Tony Axam, Jr., Assistant Federal Public Defender, argued

the cause for the appellant.

Nicholas P. Coleman, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the

cause for the appellee.

Before: GINSBURG, HENDERSON and KAVANAUGH, Circuit

Judges.

KAREN LECRAFT HENDERSON, Circuit Judge: The district

court summarily convicted the appellant of criminal contempt

and imposed punishment of twelve months’ imprisonment after

the appellant uttered a vulgarity directed to the court in open

court. The appellant appeals his conviction and sentence,

arguing the evidence is insufficient to find him guilty of

contempt, the sentence is unreasonable in relation to his actions

and, because the sentence exceeds six months, he is entitled to

a jury trial. We affirm the contempt conviction but reduce the

appellant’s sentence to six months’ imprisonment.

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I.

In August 2000, the appellant pleaded guilty to one count of

possessing with intent to distribute five grams or more of

cocaine base, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and

(b)(1)(B)(iii), and one count of aiding and abetting in connection

with the possession count, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2. In July

2006, the district court sentenced him to time served plus five

years of supervised release. In March 2009, the appellant

pleaded guilty to second degree murder in the District of

Columbia Superior Court, for which conviction he was

sentenced to twenty-six years’ imprisonment followed by five

years of supervised release. The appellant’s commission of

second degree murder violated the terms of his supervised

release and, at a hearing on May 18, 2009, the district court

revoked his supervised release and sentenced him to thirty-six

months’ imprisonment to run consecutively to his sentence for

the murder conviction. During the hearing, the appellant

repeatedly attempted to interrupt the district judge and, after the

judge imposed his sentence, exclaimed “Fuck y’all.” Sentencing

Hr’g Tr. at 20, Crim. No. 00-248 (D.D.C. May 18, 2009) (Hr’g

Tr.). The judge immediately found “that [the appellant] ha[d]

committed contempt of court by uttering a profanity at me in my

presence, in my sight, and in a calculated way” and sentenced

the appellant to an additional year of imprisonment. Id. at 20-

21.

II.

A federal court is empowered to punish criminal contempt

by fine or imprisonment. 18 U.S.C. § 401. Criminal contempt

includes “[m]isbehavior of any person in its presence or so near

thereto as to obstruct the administration of justice.” Id.

§ 401(1); see also Fed. R. Crim. P. 42(b) (“Notwithstanding any

other provision of these rules, the court (other than a magistrate

judge) may summarily punish a person who commits criminal

contempt in its presence if the judge saw or heard the

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contemptuous conduct and so certifies . . . .”). Criminal

contempt requires: “misbehavior of a person, in or near to the

presence of the court, which obstructs the administration of

justice, and which is committed with the required degree of

criminal intent.” United States v. McGainey, 37 F.3d 682, 684

(D.C. Cir. 1994). The appellant admits he misbehaved in the

presence of the court but maintains he neither obstructed the

administration of justice nor acted with criminal intent. “In

deciding whether the evidence is sufficient to support a

contempt conviction, we use the familiar standard for any

criminal conviction, asking whether ‘a fair-minded and

reasonable trier of fact [could] accept the evidence as probative

of a defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.’ ” In re

Holloway, 995 F.2d 1080, 1082 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (alteration in

original) (quoting In re Joyce, 506 F.2d 373, 376 (5th Cir.

1975)), cert. denied, 511 U.S. 1030 (1994).

The appellant argues he did not obstruct the hearing because

“the proceedings were concluded and no other business was

being conducted” when he uttered the offensive statement.

Appellant’s Br. 12. We begin by rejecting the premise that an

obstruction of justice cannot occur in the absence of ongoing

court proceedings or once the proceedings have concluded.

Misbehavior in the courtroom, at any time, carries the potential

to obstruct justice. In the past, some courts have suggested that

a verbal insult unaccompanied by a “material disruption or

obstruction” of judicial proceedings cannot support a criminal

contempt conviction. E.g., United States v. Seale, 461 F.2d 345,

369 (7th Cir. 1972); see also id. (“[M]ere disrespect or affront

to the judge’s sense of dignity will not sustain a citation for

contempt.”). But see id. at 369-70 (“The line between insult and

obstruction, however, is not clearly delineated, and at some

point disrespect and insult become actual and material

obstruction.”). In so holding, those courts often relied on the

Supreme Court’s statement that “before the drastic procedures

of the summary contempt power may be invoked . . . there must

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be an actual obstruction of justice” in the form of “[a]n

obstruction to the performance of judicial duty.” In re

McConnell, 370 U.S. 230, 234 (1962) (quotation marks and

citation omitted). We agree with the Second Circuit, however,

that “[t]o read McConnell as holding that verbal ‘misbehavior’

alone cannot be punished under Section 401(1) may be a

considerable overreading of that decision.” United States v.

Marshall, 371 F.3d 42, 47 (2d Cir. 2004). In McConnell, the

trial judge barred (erroneously, as it turned out) a line of

questioning and summarily convicted of criminal contempt the

plaintiff’s lawyer when the lawyer, concerned about preserving

the issue for appeal, persisted in the prohibited questioning. As

the Second Circuit noted in Marshall, it is “less than clear” that

any verbal misbehavior occurred in McConnell. 371 F.3d at 47;

see also McConnell, 370 U.S. at 236 (acknowledging

importance of judge “hav[ing] the power to protect himself from

actual obstruction in the courtroom” but explaining “it is also

essential to a fair administration of justice that lawyers be able

to make honest good-faith efforts to present their clients’

cases”). The lawyer’s “conduct might not, therefore, violate

Section 401(1) unless it constituted a literal obstruction of

justice, one type of misbehavior.” Marshall, 371 F.3d at 47. By

contrast, the appellant plainly and admittedly engaged in verbal

misconduct. An outburst of foul language directed at the court

is intolerable misbehavior in the courtroom and falls within the

prohibition of section 401(1) and Federal Rule of Criminal

Procedure 42(b). See Marshall, 371 F.3d at 48 (“[A] verbal

attack can be so unnecessary and so insulting to judicial

authority as to constitute, without prior warning, contempt.”).

Such conduct is inherently disruptive. As the First Circuit has

explained:

One must appreciate that courtrooms, especially in

criminal cases, are theaters of extreme

emotion—stoked by the facts of the alleged

crimes, the tensions of striving lawyers and hostile

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cross examination, and the fearsome stakes. 

Every trial judge knows how easy it is for matters

to get out of hand. Indeed, the black robe, the call

“all rise,” and the deference exacted by judges

have their main warrant in the need for order. By

its tendency to undermine order, a party’s

deliberate cursing of a judge in open court can

depending on the circumstances readily be viewed

as obstructive.

United States v. Browne, 318 F.3d 261, 266 (1st Cir. 2003), cert.

denied, 540 U.S. 907 (2003), reh’g denied, 540 U.S. 1070

(2003). We agree with the Second Circuit’s reading of

McConnell and endorse the First Circuit’s vivid but accurate

description of the reasoning behind a court’s insistence on

immediately quelling and sanctioning misbehavior to maintain

order.

We also reject the appellant’s contention that he did not

intend to obstruct the administration of justice. His outburst was

“calculated, egregious, in the presence of, and directed at, the

court.” Marshall, 371 F.3d at 46. “It was self-evidently

intended to show contempt for the court . . . .” Id.; see also

Browne, 318 F.3d at 266 (“Directed as it is to conduct within the

courthouse, we have no trouble reading [section 401(1)] to

embrace any deliberate misconduct that may foreseeably disrupt

or interfere with court proceedings, whether or not that was the

subjective intent of the contemnor.”). We accordingly uphold

the appellant’s criminal contempt conviction under Section

401(1).

Although we affirm his contempt conviction, we conclude,

as we must, that his twelve-month sentence cannot be upheld.

The court cannot sentence a defendant to a period of

incarceration exceeding six months without a jury trial unless

the defendant has waived his right thereto. Codispoti v.

Pennsylvania, 418 U.S. 506, 511-12 (1974). We are authorized,

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however, to reduce the sentence ourselves. See Holloway, 995

F.2d at 1087 (court of appeals has authority to revise sentence

for criminal contempt). Because the record manifests that the

district judge intended to impose the maximum sentence

consistent with his summary finding of criminal contempt,

which sentence he mistakenly believed to be one year, there is

no reason for remand. Compare Hr’g Tr. 20-21 (“The court

finds that [the appellant] has committed contempt of court by

uttering a profanity at me in my presence, in my sight, and in a

calculated way.”) with Fed. R. Crim. P. 42(b) (“[T]he court . . .

may summarily punish a person who commits criminal contempt

in its presence if the judge saw or heard the contemptuous

conduct and so certifies . . . .”). Contrary to the appellant’s

argument, moreover, a six-month sentence is substantively

reasonable under the circumstances. See, e.g., Marshall, 371

F.3d at 48-49.1

Accordingly, we affirm the appellant’s criminal contempt

conviction and reduce his sentence therefor to six months’

imprisonment, to be served consecutively to the twenty-six

years’ imprisonment imposed by the superior court on March 6,

2009 for second degree murder, as well as to the thirty-six

months’ imprisonment imposed by the district court on May 18,

2009 for violation of supervised release.

So ordered.

1

 The appellant also claims that he has a right to allocute before

being sentenced for criminal contempt. Rule 42(b), however, was

specifically “amended to make it clear that a court may summarily

punish a person for committing contempt in the court’s presence

without regard to whether other rules, such as Rule 32 (sentencing

procedures), might otherwise apply.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 42(b) advisory

committee’s note (2002 Amendments).

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