Opinion ID: 2995486
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Civil or Criminal Contempt

Text: Rinaldi first asserted that the district court found him in criminal contempt, and thus that he was denied the appropriate procedural safeguards afforded a criminal defendant. We first determined that the district court found Rinaldi in civil contempt. We noted that we were not bound by the trial court’s designation of whether the sanction was civil or criminal./2 See United States v. Lippitt, 180 F.3d 873, 877 n.6 (7th Cir. 1999). The test for determining whether a contempt order is civil or criminal is well-established. A contempt order is considered civil if the sanctions imposed are designed primarily to coerce the contemnor into complying with the court’s demands, and criminal if its purpose is to punish the contemnor, vindicate the court’s authority, or deter future misconduct. See id. at 876. As most sanctions contain both coercive and punitive elements, we examine the character of the relief itself. See id. at 877. If the contemnor retains the ability to purge the contempt and obtain his release by committing an affirmative act--and thereby carries the keys of his prison in his own pocket, Gompers v. Bucks Stove & Range Co., 221 U.S. 418, 442, 31 S. Ct. 492, 55 L. Ed. 797 (1911)- -the order is coercive, and therefore civil. See Lippitt, 180 F.3d at 877. Thus, [t]he paradigmatic, coercive, civil contempt sanction . . . involves confining a contemnor indefinitely until he complies with an affirmative command such as an order to produce documents or property. Id. (citation omitted). Conversely, prison terms of a definite, pre-determined length without the contemnor’s ability to purge are generally considered punitive and therefore criminal contempt. See id. In Lippitt, the contemnor failed to pay a fine imposed by the district court, and the court found the contemnor in contempt. See id. at 875. On appeal, the contemnor argued that the contempt was criminal and therefore implicated the Double Jeopardy Clause. See id. at 876. In determining the nature of the district court’s contempt order, we noted that the order did not set a definite term of imprisonment. See id. at 877. We stated that the term of imprisonment was indefinite because the order permitted the defendant to purge the contempt by complying with the order and paying the fine or by making all reasonable efforts to pay the fine. See id. We then held that because the contemnor retained the ability to purge his contempt by paying the fine, the contempt order was civil. See id. In the present case, the district court found that the records did exist and that Rinaldi was not going to furnish the records voluntarily, because [Rinaldi] d[id]n’t think the Government ha[d] a right to them. Therefore, the district court wanted to coerce Rinaldi into involuntarily producing the responsive documents. Further, although the order stated that Rinaldi could be imprisoned for up to six months, the order specified that Rinaldi was to be released . . . at any time, upon his furnishing the records called for by and to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. (Emphasis added). Likewise, the fine was to be imposed only until Rinaldi complie[d] with [the] grand jury subpoena. At the August 13, 2001 hearing, the district court stated that it did not want to keep [Rinaldi] in jail one minute, and all [he had] to do to get out [was] tell [the court] what happened to those records. Therefore, Rinaldi’s key to being released required him to either produce the documents or to convince the court that the documents no longer existed. As in Lippitt, the court did not order a set prison term, but rather allowed Rinaldi to be released if he complied with its order. Therefore, because Rinaldi retained the ability to purge the contempt, the court’s order was a paradigmatic, coercive, civil sanction. See id. at 877.