Court Opinion

ID: 9539478
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:04:51.711772+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:51.343339
License: Public Domain

Marshall, Presiding Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent to the conclusion of the majority that the statements by the appellant do not constitute criminal contempt.
I cannot conceive of more contemptuous statements, short of obscenity, than those made by the appellant: “That the trial court had conducted ‘a sham proceeding’; that the trial court’s ‘conducting an inquisition was unlawful and improper’; that ‘[t] his is a political effort to turn a tragedy into political hay for’ the trial judge and that ‘it stinks’; ...” Paraphrased, appellant accused the judge of running a “Kangaroo court,” acting as an inquisitor, using the court as a political vehicle, and, in sum, conducting an operation that smells to high heaven. Such statements cannot fail to obstruct justice in the South Georgia Circuit and the State of Georgia.
In about 14 years as a trial judge in the Southwestern Judicial Circuit and while sitting in superior courts in 25 different counties, I never held a lawyer in contempt. I hasten to add that no lawyer’s statements before me ever approached the degree of contempt evi*793denced by the appellant in his statements concerning Judge Cato.