Court Opinion

ID: 9466746
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:26:10.460198+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:55.764231
License: Public Domain

JAMES DICKSON PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge,
concurring and dissenting:
On this appeal Chaplain raised several issues: whether the scope of the conduct charged to him in his summary convictions could properly be considered to extend past that specifically identified by the district judge at the time of the convictions; whether, properly considered as to scope, the conduct charged could properly have been adjudged to constitute direct contempt; and whether in any event the district judge who adjudged him in direct contempt was disqualified at the time to do so. The majority holds against Chaplain on each of these issues. I fully concur with the holdings and with the court’s opinion on all but the last issue. On that, I respectfully disagree, believing that, regrettably, the district judge had become so openly embroiled in personal controversy with Chaplain that his impartiality to adjudge guilt was reasonably open to question and that in consequence he was disqualified to convict summarily.
*1278I
As the majority rightly points out, the judicial power summarily to convict and punish for contempt of court is an inherent power based upon a fundamental necessity in the administration of justice. Maj. op. 1275. Equally fundamental, however, and undoubtedly of even more eminent heritage is the right of any person accused of crime1 to have guilt adjudicated by an impartial tribunal. See Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 47 S.Ct. 437, 71 L.Ed. 749 (1927). Of necessity, in summary contempt convictions, inherent judicial power may clash with individual right. So they do here where the impartiality of a sorely-pressed trial judge to adjudicate guilt summarily was duly challenged below and here on appeal. The issue being thus squarely raised, we must try to strike the proper balance in this admittedly hard case.2
II
By its very nature the summary contempt power contemplates that it shall be exercised by the judge in whose presence the contumacious conduct occurs. Accordingly, the rule governing criminal contempt proceedings literally provides for disqualification of the judge only in cases of indirect contempt where “the contempt charged involves disrespect to or criticism of [the] judge,” and where a plenary proceeding may be provided. Fed.R.Crim.P. 42(b). Nevertheless, a series of Supreme Court decisions has established that disqualification may sometimes be required as well in the face of conduct constituting direct contempt. This can occur when the judge has become “so embroil[ed] ... in controversy that he cannot ‘hold the balance nice, clear and true between the state and the accused . . . Taylor v. Hayes, 418 U.S. 488, 501, 94 S.Ct. 2697, 2704, 41 L.Ed.2d 897 (1974) (quoting Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 532, 47 S.Ct. 437, 444, 71 L.Ed. 749 (1927)); accord, Mayberry v. Pennsylvania, 400 U.S. 455, 91 S.Ct. 499, 27 L.Ed.2d 532 (1975); Offutt v. United States, 348 U.S. 11, 75 S.Ct. 11, 99 L.Ed. 11 (1954).
“Embroilment” is of course simply a shorthand characterization of a complex human situation incapable of accurate general definition for all possible circumstances. Just as contumacious conduct is infinite in its possible variety, so must be the variety of conduct properly thought to constitute disqualifying embroilment of judge with contemnor. As the majority has rightly written, conduct may be contumacious without being violent, vituperative, or physically obstructive. By like token, disqualifying embroilment must be thought to include conduct not comparably dramatic. Referred to the undergirding principle of impartiality in adjudicating criminal guilt that it implements, I would consider the *1279term to connote any words or actions by a trial judge that in context would convey to a disinterested and fair-minded observer of his court the definite impression that he had at the moment of adjudication so far lost himself in anger or irritation that he could not then “hold the balance nice, clear and true.” This of course emphasizes the appearance over the fact of bias, and this it seems to me is the emphasis in the better reasoned decisions applying the principle. See, e. g., In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133, 136, 75 S.Ct. 623, 625, 99 L.Ed. 942 (1955).
The logical consequence of this is plain, and should be flatly recognized: a judge may in effect lose the power of summary contempt by becoming so embroiled. See United States v. Meyer, 462 F.2d 827, 841 (D.C.Cir.1972). Assessing whether he has so far crossed the line that he cannot properly invoke the power lies of course with the trial judge himself in the first instance; but enforcement of the principle ultimately devolves upon the appellate courts. In this, they face the difficult task of assessing the matter on the basis of a cold written record. Undoubtedly this may sometimes lead to disservice to a conscientious trial judge, the more so because the record must be read with a view to appearances, and not to the ascertainment of actual bias. For it has been recognized that “ ‘[s]uch a stringent rule may sometimes bar trial by judges who have no actual bias and who would do their very best to weigh the scales of justice equally between contending parties,’ but due process of law requires no less.” Taylor v. Hayes, 418 U.S. at 501, 94 S.Ct. at 2704-05 (quoting In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133, 136, 75 S.Ct. 623, 625, 99 L.Ed. 942 (1955)). Notwithstanding the difficulty, the obligation of review requires the assessment.
Fair monitoring of the principle also requires that the appellate court identify the conduct upon which it reaches its conclusion that particular conduct does or does not constitute disqualifying embroilment. Only so may standards emerge. This too poses a danger of disservice as particular words or conduct may be inadvertently lifted from true context. But again, the obligation of fair review requires this, particularly if disqualification is found.3 My review of the record leads me to conclude that the district judge should have disqualified himself here.
When the judge arrived in court, he found a second court reporter present at the behest of Chaplain. The judge immediately ordered the reporter to the back of the courtroom and stated in response to Chaplain’s proffered explanation of his presence, “Well, if you’re inferring that my reporter or this Court is going to misquote you — .” Later, when Chaplain attempted to explain his failure to have certain records with him by adverting to his lack of knowledge about the court’s regulations, the judge commented, “Just because you’re ignorant, Mr. Chaplain . . . .” When Chaplain insisted that he could produce evidence that the government had stolen the records in question, the judge suggested a continuance until the same afternoon so that he might obtain the evidence. Both Chaplain and his *1280daughter then vehemently insisted that this was unfair. Upon this, the obviously harried judge exclaimed, “[Y]ou keep getting up here and saying that people are going to testify that the government has stolen your records, and I’m going to make you prove it.” When Mrs. Goldsticker took over the questioning seconds later, the judge anticipated her performance with the statement “I don’t want to be as rude to you as I was to Mr. Chaplain.” While the record may well demonstrate sufficient provocation for rudeness in ordinary human affairs, the statement seems at least a tacit concession by the judge himself that his personal involvement with Chaplain had reached an unacceptable state in the judicial forum where unequal status imposes unequal burdens of restraint. Shortly thereafter, the court warned Chaplain of the proximity of a contempt citation. “But if you make one more remark and if you talk when I’m talking, you’re going back to the lockup and you’re going to sit there until I cool off. Now you just — and I cool mighty slow. So just settle down.”
As indicated in the majority opinion, it was following this warning that the judge sometime later, directly responding to two comments of a relatively innocuous nature when viewed in isolation, twice summarily convicted Chaplain of criminal contempt. On this record, applying the standard earlier articulated, I would hold that the district judge had become so embroiled in controversy with Chaplain that his apparent impartiality had been compromised to the point that he was disqualified to convict summarily of direct contempt.4
Ill
Because I agree with the majority that Chaplain’s conviction is not reversible as a matter of law, I would hold that he might, though he need not, be found guilty of direct contempt by another judge on the present or an expanded record. So holding I would vacate the judgment of conviction, remit his fine and remand for possible re-prosecution by any of the persons authorized to prosecute for contempt under Fed.R. Crim.P. 42(b) with the charges confined to the conduct defined in the majority opinion as that properly chargeable to him.
I am authorized to state that WINTER and BUTZNER, JJ., join in this opinion.

. Criminal contempt is a crime in all fundamental respects affecting the charged person’s rights. Bloom v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 194, 201, 88 S.Ct. 1477, 1481, 20 L.Ed.2d 522 (1968).

. I say this to emphasize my awareness of the particular kinds of difficulty presented for the trial judge in this proceeding. While the highly charged criminal trial in which aggressive defense counsel and defendants deliberately test the mettle of the judge as a trial tactic undoubtedly poses the most dramatic problems of control and maintenance of principle, some features of the proceeding in this case may pose more difficult problems. In the first place, this type of special proceeding — here the hearing of a motion to enforce a civil subpoena — as distinguished from the plenary civil or criminal trial, may invite a more informal approach in which contumacious conduct emerges gradually rather than erupting. Coupled with this was the pro se appearance of the two respondents with all the encouragement thereby created to avoid holding them to rigid requirements of form and decorum. Finally to be considered is the very real difficulty faced by a trial judge in assessing the motivation behind the kind of conduct involved here. Unlike the openly and palpably aggressive conduct that announces its character immediately, the sort encountered in this proceeding needs assessment while it develops to ascertain whether it proceeds from mere correctable unawareness or from contumacious design. These special difficulties must be taken into account in the application of contempt principles, but those principles must nevertheless be applied to this as any other judicial proceeding, lest the hard case make bad contempt law.

. It might be thought more appropriate to omit from a dissenting opinion any specific identification of conduct considered by the dissenter to constitute disqualifying embroilment. Since this dissenting view does not emerge as the court’s standard for precedential purposes, the danger of disservice to the trial judge by specific reference could be thought the dominant institutional consideration. But the danger of disservice by a nonspecific conclusion of disqualification seems to me a much greater one, and one that imposes an obligation on a dissenting judge to lay his perceptions on the line. Where, as here, the district judge’s conduct is by no means egregious and involves no more than completely understandable exasperation and irritation, the greater disservice would be to leave open any implication from a conclusory suggestion of disqualification that it was of a different character. There seems to me also an obligation owed by a dissenter to the majority of the court to avoid any implication that it is approving conduct that could only be vaguely hinted at in a dissenting conclusion of disqualification. I therefore identify the conduct here for these reasons only, and with the greatest respect for a fine trial judge sorely pressed in circumstances quite different from those in which this opinion is written.

. Counsel has not directed us to any case, nor has my research developed any, where disqualification for this reason has been found by an appellate court in respect of a summary conviction imposed immediately upon occurrence of the charged conduct. In both Taylor and May-berry, for example, where disqualification was found, the conviction, though summary, had been delayed until the end of the proceeding. Accord, Paul v. Pleasants, 551 F.2d 575 (4th Cir. 1977) (not disqualified). In Howell v. Jones, 516 F.2d 53, 59 (5th Cir. 1975), and In re Williams, 500 F.2d 403, 405 (2d Cir. 1974) (per curiam), disqualification for this reason was considered in respect of immediate summary conviction but was found not required. While the remedy of disqualification is obviously much easier to apply to situations where the trial judge has not immediately acted, I see no difference in underlying principle as applied to the two situations.
Of course, the option existed here to cite decisively for contempt and defer adjudication to a later time by another judge. While the obligation to disqualify may obviously not be based upon hindsight evaluations by appellate courts of the relative effectiveness of summary conviction or citation for deferred adjudication, the record here strongly suggests to me that the latter would have been at least as effectual here. There was no noticeable change in either the tone or the progress of the proceedings following the summary convictions. The whole proceeding lasted only about two and one-half hours.