Opinion ID: 718640
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The adjudication of contempt

Text: 97 It was entirely proper for Judge Zagel to have decided the issue of contempt. Article III courts and the judges appointed pursuant to Article III are vested with the judicial power, which is the power to decide those cases and controversies that fall under one of the enumerated categories of jurisdiction. U.S. CONST. art. III, §§ 1, 2; 28 U.S.C. § 1331. The Supreme Court has consistently stated that the power to punish contempt is part and parcel of the judicial power. Young, 481 U.S. at 800, 107 S.Ct. at 2134; Michaelson v. United States ex rel. Chicago, St. P., M., & O. Ry. Co., 266 U.S. 42, 65-66, 45 S.Ct. 18, 19-20, 69 L.Ed. 162 (1924). This is reinforced by the language of 18 U.S.C. § 401, which gives a court discretion to punish contempt for its authority as iterated in subsections (1), (2), and (3). Mr. Hill borrows several passages from Justice Scalia's concurring opinion in Young, 481 U.S. at 815, 107 S.Ct. at 2142, to suggest the inherent impropriety of Judge Zagel's role in the instant case. 98 Neither the holding in Young nor Justice Scalia's concurring opinion are on point. The Court in Young was faced with the appointment of counsel for an interested party to prosecute a criminal contempt proceeding. Id. at 791-92, 107 S.Ct. at 2129. The majority concluded that counsel for a party that is the beneficiary of a court order may not be appointed as prosecutor in a contempt action alleging a violation of that order. Id. at 809, 107 S.Ct. at 2138. Justice Scalia wrote a concurring opinion in which he stated that the district court's appointment of counsel to prosecute a violation of its earlier order was not an exercise of the judicial power conferred by Article III. Id. at 815, 107 S.Ct. at 2142. Mr. Hill's appeal does not present the situation addressed in Young, and Mr. Hill's reliance on that decision is misplaced. 99 Mr. Hill's contumacious conduct was his direct disobedience of the court's ruling on the scope of cross-examination. Determining Mr. Hill's defiance of that ruling was necessary to protect the court's integrity as a forum for resolving cases and controversies. The evidentiary rulings by Judge Zagel were neither equivalent nor analogous to the judgment at issue in Young. Judge Zagel's rulings determined the proper scope of Mr. Hill's cross-examination of Agents Moss and Maloney and are therefore outside the scope of both the majority opinion and Justice Scalia's concurring opinion in Young. 100 This facet of Mr. Hill's argument turns a time-honored metaphor on its head, for Mr. Hill has lost sight of the trees in his search for the forest. He would have us construe the holding in Young, which addressed a district court's appointment of prosecutors to prosecute contempt of that court's earlier injunction, 481 U.S. at 790-92, 107 S.Ct. at 2128-30, to prohibit any Article III judge from adjudicating an issue of contempt that he had framed. Mr. Hill attempts to establish this untenable position by relying on several decisions of our Fifth Circuit colleagues. 101 Neither of the Fifth Circuit cases cited in Mr. Hill's brief is apposite to the facts of this case. In both American Airlines, Inc. v. Allied Pilots Ass'n, 968 F.2d 523 (5th Cir.1992), and In re Davidson, 908 F.2d 1249 (5th Cir.1990), district judges conducted contempt hearings in the manner of prosecutors, putting questions to the parties and, in certain instances, dismissing their answers on the spot. 6 American Airlines, 968 F.2d at 529; Davidson, 908 F.2d at 1251. The proceedings in the case before us are unquestionably different. Judge Zagel did not act as a prosecutor but as the judge who had noted the conduct in question. In fact, he stated at the outset of the hearing that his only purpose was to provide Mr. Hill an opportunity to be heard regarding the specified incidents of conduct. Mr. Hill may regret his failure to use that opportunity to make his case, but his regret does not transmute the nature of the proceeding. 102 We find support in the Fifth Circuit's own assessment of those cases. It recently declined to apply the disqualification rule of American Airlines and Davidson in an appeal of a finding of criminal contempt where the district judge asked questions and called witnesses but did not assume a prosecutorial role. United States v. Time, 21 F.3d 635, 638-39 (5th Cir.1994). The analysis in Time confirms our belief that the crucial determinant in contempt cases is the extent of the judge's intrusion into the sphere of authority delegated to the executive department: the power to execute and enforce federal law. U.S. CONST. art. II, §§ 1, 3. See Steven G. Calabresi, The Vesting Clauses as Power Grants, 88 NW.U.L.REV. 1377 (1994). This concern, which animated Justice Scalia's concurring opinion in Young, is implicated when a district judge clothes himself in the vestments of Article II--which plainly did not happen in the present case. 103 More particularly, both American Airlines and Davidson involved conduct occurring outside the courtroom, so-called indirect contempt. The distinction between in-court and out-of-court contempts has been drawn not to define when a court has or has not the authority to initiate prosecution for contempt, but for the purpose of prescribing what procedures must attend the exercise of that authority. Young, 481 U.S. at 800, 107 S.Ct. at 2133. Prosecutions for out-of-court contempt command the trappings of normal adversary procedure. See Bloom v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 194, 204, 88 S.Ct. 1477, 1483, 20 L.Ed.2d 522 (1968); Cooke v. United States, 267 U.S. 517, 537, 45 S.Ct. 390, 395, 69 L.Ed. 767 (1925). The Fifth Circuit determined in American Airlines and Davidson that the defendants were not afforded those appropriate procedural protections. 104 In the case at bar, the conduct occurred in court during the course of a criminal trial, and Judge Zagel would have been well within his authority to have acted summarily under FED.R.CRIM.P. 42(a). See Ex parte Terry, 128 U.S. 289, 9 S.Ct. 77, 32 L.Ed. 405 (1888). His decision to postpone action and allow Mr. Hill notice and hearing under Rule 42(b) did not require him to abdicate his authority to conduct the delayed determination. 105