Court Opinion

ID: 9695990
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:33:11.487708+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:17.819088
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mb. Justice Musmanno:
A simple misunderstanding or even a slight neglect has been fanned by tempers into a legal controversy all out of proportion to the unsubstantial incident which gave it birth.
On November 30, 1951, President Judge Braiiam of the Lawrence County Courts was presiding in Court Boom No. 1, while Judge Lamoree was presiding in Court Room No. 2. In accordance with arrangements concluded a week prior thereto, Court Room No. 2 had been designated as the sentencing court for that day, while preparations had been made that an elec*644tion dispute, two public assistance cases and the sentencing of two defendants were to be disposed of in Court Room No. 1.
It was the practice in Lawrence County, in the interests of orderly and expeditious procedure, where a large number of sentences were to be imposed on one particular day; for both the district attorney and the assistant district attorney to attend together in the sentencing court. The routine for a busy day, as this one promised to be, followed the usual procedure that while the district attorney or his assistant would be submitting one case to the Court, the other would be calling the next case, gathering witnesses, explaining to the defendants their right to have counsel and providing for volunteer lawyers where request was made, checking on past records, having guilty pleas signed, and so on. In many of the cases no grand jury indictments had yet been returned so that if the defendant in any instance pleaded guilty, the grand jury expense was saved to the county.
That this plan of operation was desirable and represented the wisdom of experience is evidenced by the fact that through its utilization on November 30, 1951, in Court Room No. 2, twenty-three cases were heard and disposed of. In addition, two applications for parole were entertained and the preliminaries for the fixing of a day of trial for a murder trial were attended to. Present in the operation of this court business that morning were two city police, three deputy sheriffs, one State policeman and eight attorneys.
While the district attorney Sherman K. Levine and his assistant, John S. Powers, were thus engaged in Court Room No. 2, Judge Bbai-iAM, at about 9:30 a.m. sent a messenger to that courtroom to ask Mr. Levine to report to Court Room No. 1. Mr. Levine replied, through the courier, that he was attending to *645court business in No. 2 and would report to No. 1 as soon as he could get away. Judge Bkaham repeated his request.
At about 10:15 or 10:30 Judge Lamoree declared a recess in No. 2 and this allowed the District Attorney an opportunity to proceed to No. 1. Upon arrival there, an angry exchange immediately occurred between him and the Presiding Judge. Judge Bkaham took amiss Mr. Levine’s failure to respond promptly to his summons, and Mr. Levine took umbrage because of Judge Braham’s criticism, which, according to his view, was unwarranted since he was attending to the duties previously mapped out for him for that morning.
However, despite their respective high offices, both the Judge and the District Attorney, being susceptible to the same emotions which influence mankind everywhere, became offended. But then, on the other hand, since they were both highly intelligent men, they should have realized that any demonstration of wrath could not possibly undo what had already taken place and could only whip into flame the spark of momentary clash which would otherwise have died away in goodnatured forbearance, of which quality both of these estimable personalities have enough to spare.
Judge Bkaham felt that the dignity of his Court had been wounded and spoke sharply to the District Attorney. Mr. Levine concluded that the honor of his position as District Attorney had been attacked and he responded tartly. And the teapot prepared to receive its tempest.
No one had been harmed by the District Attorney’s retarded arrival which, at the most, did not exceed an hour. When Mr. Levine failed to appear, Judge Braham, with maximum good sense proceeded to attend to the matters before him without a district at*646torney. And then when both the District Attorney and the Assistant District Attorney arrived, the remaining business in Court Eoom No. 1 was disposed of with judicial dispatch. Thus, the sheer extravagance of the thunderous charges, counter-charges, criminations and recriminations which followed the lightening flash of acerbity between these two men is made gem-clear in the fact that all the business in Court Eoom No. 1 for the entire day was finished by noontime, (12:30 p.m.) and all the business in Court Eoom No. 2, with one slight exception, was terminated by noon. Even from Judge Bbaham-’s point of view, no one was damaged, if, arguendo, Mr. Levine was tardy in presenting himself after being summoned to No. 1.
It cannot be gainsaid that Mr. Levine was attending to important functions of the office to which the people had elected him when the supposed contempt of court took place. Had Mr. Levine been absent from the courthouse, idly passing the time in places unknown, or immersed in private affairs, resentment on the part of Judge Braham would have been warranted. But a, fireman fighting a blaze, a policeman quelling a riot, a mailman delivering post, a doctor operating on a patient, or a judge charging a jury could not have been more meritoriously attending to his allotted task than was Mr. Levine when Judge Braham sent the court crier to summon him.
Even if we assume that Mr. Levine could have been more tactful and circumspections in the entire episode, I fail to see how he committed contempt of court because he did not instanter drop everything in Judge Lamobbe’s court to hurry to Judge Braham^s court. Mr. Levine also owed a duty to Judge Lamoree, who was in the midstream of doing his morning work too. According to Judge Bbaham-’s reasoning, Judge Lamobee would have been justified in holding Mr. *647Levine for contempt of court if he had deserted Court Room No. 2. But is it fair that a District Attorney conscientiously attending to his duties should be thrown between Scylla and Charybdis?
It is important to note that Judge Lamoeee, a veteran jurist and a former district attorney of distinguished reputation, testified at the hearing before Judge Bkaham that it was the practice for the district attorney and assistant district attorney to be in the sentencing court together on sentence day. He testified further that Mr. Levine had always been cooperative with the Court and that in his manner and conduct, Mr. Levine had always been “deferential with respect to the Court.”
At the opening of the contempt hearing on December 17, 1951, Judge Braham said: “The whole question is, who has the power and the authority to determine in how many of the Court rooms of this County, sessions of the Quarter Sessions of court may be heard at the same time. Does the Judge have the authority to settle that, or does the District Attorney?”
Did Judge Braham need to conduct a contempt of court hearing in order to answer that question which answers itself? Of course, it is the Court that has the power and the authority to determine all matters pertaining to the conduct of the Court of Quarter Sessions. All that Judge Braham, as president judge of Lawrence County, needed to do was to issue a Court order on the subject and that would have settled the question definitively and conclusively. The Court may naturally confer with the District Attorney in reaching its conclusion in matters of this kind, but it should not and cannot divide authority and responsibility.
At another place in the hearing Judge Braham said that the whole issue revolved around this point, “and *648it is a question of law.” It certainly did not require 197 printed pages of testimony to decide that question of law.
The Majority Opinion says that it agrees with Judge Braham that the District Attorney was guilty of a public insult to the Court in making the statement: “That’s the way with this court, always mixing things up; everything is set for one day.” But the record is barren as to any such language. And the transcript of testimony is equally empty of support for Judge Braham’s statement that the District Attorney “broke into a rude and insolent denunciation of the Court.”
Judge Braham called six witnesses in behalf of his rule on the District Attorney to show cause why he should not be held in contempt of Court. Not one of these witnesses quoted the words or described the conduct which Judge Braham ascribed to Mr. Levine. No one said that Mr. Levine was rude or insolent. One of the Judge’s witnesses was Clifford L. Vance who has been a Court crier of the Courts of Lawrence County for sixteen years. He is the one who carried the message to Mr. Levine and was present when Mr. Levine reported in Court Room No. 1. He testified that when Mr. Levine appeared, it was Judge Braham who spoke first, and the burden of the Court’s remarks was that Mr. Levine should account “for his delinquency” in not responding to the request of Judge Braham. The Judge said, according to Mr. Vance, that “the taxpayers were being defrauded” because both the District Attorney and the Assistant District Attorney were in Court Room No. 2.
To these strictures Mr. Levine replied that in his judgment “the tax payers were getting value received —dollar for dollar.” Mr. Vance explained that in this colloquy both Judge Braham and Mr. Levine were “visibly angry.”
*649Upon this meager episode a towering pyramid of unpleasant and wholly unnecessary litigation has been constructed. The Majority Opinion assumes that despite the direct evidence to the contrary in the record, Judge Bkaiiam’s conclusions must be affirmed because of his “findings.” The “findings” were not made on the day of the alleged occurrence, so therefore do not have spontaneity to support them, and, furthermore, they have no substantiation from the testimony presented at the time the whole episode was exhaustively treated from the witness stand.
The case of Schlesinger Petition, 367 Pa. 476, decided by this Court recently is a decision in point. In that case the Trial Judge asked Attorney Schlesinger if it was true that he belonged to the Communist Party or any other organization committed to overthrowing the government of the United States by force and violence. This interrogation (done in the absence of the jury, parties and witnesses) was necessitated because in questioning the jurors on their voir dire Attorney Schlesinger had inquired as to whether they had been influenced by the “alleged political associations” of the attorney, those associations obviously referring to press notices regarding his alleged Communistic affiliations. It had been asserted publicly before a Congressional committee that this attorney had said: “While we have a strong Communist Party in New York City, I don’t see how we can wage a successful revolution unless we build the party in Pittsburgh.”
When the Trial Judge questioned Schlesinger about these reputed Communistic activities, Schlesinger launched into a verbal denunciation of the Judge, using contemptuous language and engaging in contemptuous conduct. The Trial Judge made findings of fact on the actions of Attorney Schlesinger and enumerated those findings as follows: That Attorney Schlesinger *650“behaved in a disorderly, contemptuous and contumacious manner; that he made false statements to the Court; that he turned his back on the Court; that he contemptuously ■ declared he would not listen to the Court; that he would not show respect to the Court; that he tried to leave the Court while the Judge was speaking; that he charged the Judge with having personal animosity and venom toward him and when called upon to submit reasons for such a statement refused to present any reasons: that he was 70 minutes late for the trial and then stated a falsehood for his tardiness; that he constantly interrupted the Court when the Court was speaking; that he refused to answer, without giving reasons for his refusal, questions which went to the very core of his fidelity to the Court and to his oath of office as an officer of the Court.”
Latex1, while contempt proceedings against Schlesinger were pending; a deputy sheriff served on him a Court order issuing from the Court in which the asserted contempt had occurred. Schlesinger looked at the document and threw it into the refuse of the street.
The essentials of contempt are disobedience to the court or openly despising or opposing its authority or dignity. It may consist of evading or resisting the court’s process, indulging in disorderly or insolent behavior or language in the actual presence of the court, using language which is reproachful or scornful, or which tends to lessen the authority of the court or the respect for it. (Contempt by Edward M. Dangel, National Lawyers’ manual, p. 158.)
The Pennsylvania Act of 1836, P. L. 784, §23, 17 P.S. §2041, classifies contempts as follows: “The power of the several courts of this conxixionwealth to issue attachments and to inflict summary punishments for contempts of court shall be restricted to the following cases, to-wit: I. To the official misconduct of the *651officers of such courts respectively; II. To disobedience or neglect by officers, parties, jurors or witnesses of or to the lawful process of the court; III. To the misbehavior of any person in the presence of the court, thereby obstructing the administration of justice.”
Attorney Schlesinger’s act of contempt on May 24, 1951, occurred in the presence of the Court. His opprobrious language, his walking out, his refusal to listen, his false charges of “entrapment,” etc., all took place in the courtroom under the eye of the judge.
“ When the contempt is committed in the presence of the court, and the court acts upon view and without trial and inflicts the punishment, there will be no charge, no plea, no issue and no trial; and the record that shows the punishment will also show the offence, and the fact that the court had found the party guilty of the contempt; on appeal to this court any fact found by the court below would be taken as true, and every intendment would be made in favor of the action of the court.’” (Ex Parte Terry, ibid, 308.)
Applying these standards of proof to the facts in the Schlesinger case, the Trial Judge found the lawyer guilty of contempt of court and ordered him committed to the Allegheny County Jail until he should purge himself of the contempt. He appealed to this Court and this Court not only exonerated him but severely criticized the Trial Judge, declaring that the Judge had no right to ask the lawyer, in spite of the state of the record, if the lawyer was a member of any organization committed to overthrowing the government by force and violence. This Court said further that Schlesinger was justified in treating the Trial Judge in the manner in which he did and that he was not guilty of any contempt of Court in throwing a Court order into the street since the Court order was ineffective.
*652In the case at bar, the Majority have declared, that Sherman K. Levine did not commit any contempt when he failed to report to Judge Braham, but committed contempt when he broke “into a rude and insolent denunciation of the court.” Since there is nothing in the record to support the finding that Levine broke into a rude and insolent denunciation, this assumed happening can only be accepted as true because it was made a finding by Judge Braham. But this Court ignored the finding of the Trial Judge in the Bchlesinger case when the Trial Judge said that Schlesinger had turned his back on the Court, had interrupted the Court when the Court was speaking, stated he would not show any respect to the Court, and so on.
The majority here have found that Levine was free of contempt for failure to respond to Judge Braham’s summons, but have found him guilty of contempt when he spoke to the Judge in the manner already discussed. How does that differ from the Bchlesinger case? There, this Court held that the lawyer committed no contempt when he refused to answer the Judge’s questions which put him, at that point, where Levine was when he came into Judge Braham’s court. But whereas this Court found that Schlesinger was not guilty of contempt for acting contemptuously in the presence of the Court, it has found here that Levine was guilty of speaking contemptuously even though the remarks he made were only predicated upon his failure to arrive in Court Boom No. 2 on time, which this Court holds does not constitute contempt.
The Bchlesinger case and the Levine case cannot possibly stand together. Either the Supreme Court erred in the Bchlesinger case or it has erred here.
If it is not contempt of Court when a lawyer flouts the authority of the Court to its face and casts away *653as rubbish documents bearing the Court’s seal, I fail to see how Mr. Levine’s conduct can be considered contemptuous.
If, on November 30, 1951, Mr. Levine acted in the manner Judge Braham said he did, it is strange that Judge Braham did not find him guilty of contempt at that very moment. If the cloak of dignity was rent by conduct that was rude and insolent, the mending should have been accomplished at once. A reprimand from the bench would have been the catalytic, bringing order out of disorder, calm out of turbulence, respect out of assumed disrespect. Judge Braham explained that he could not bring himself to doing this because he was too angry. He could not master the situation because he could not master himseif, but it is possible that the delay increased rather than decreased the choler. Certainly it threw the picture out of focus and it could also have ruffled the pool of memory.
No one becomes bad in a day and certainly not in an hour or minute. Judge Braham himself said that Mr. Levine had done “good work in his office as District Attorney.” In his adjudication in this case he stated: “The District Attorney in his two years of office has performed much meritorious service.” We have seen how Judge Lamorre also spoke well of Mr. Levine. If Mr. Levine, therefore, was an efficient public servant, a good citizen and a reputable attorney during all his years at the bar and no one has suggested to the contrary, it is improbable that he could suddenly decide to become contemptuous of the very Court in which he must earn his living. On his past performance and his good conduct, a little patience on the part of the CoujT would have been in order and this unfortunate long, drawn-out controversy would never have taken place.
*654There is but one other matter to consider and that is the letter written by Mr. Levine to Judge Braham. There is no doubt that this letter was ill-advised, but it does not seem that the letter which Judge Braham wrote to Mr. Levine was the acme in advisability either. It began with a cheerful “Good Morning” and ended with an equally cheerful “Good Morning,” but in between those “Good Mornings,” there were sandwiched in many omens of a bad morning for Sherman K. Levine, the District Attorney of Lawrence County, Pennsylvania.
Although the majority of this Court has sustained the contempt findings, I believe there is still time for a genuine, cheerful “Good Morning” on the part of Judge Braham by remitting the fine imposed on Mr. Levine.