Court Opinion

ID: 9851868
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:20:48.100541+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:18.181916
License: Public Domain

OPINION
COATS, Judge.
Kenneth Wayne Webber and Christine Anne Webber were granted a decree of divorce in 1983. Since then, there have been continuous proceedings in the superi- or court before Judge Victor D. Carlson regarding visitation of the parties’ minor children and contact between the parties. On June 27, 1984, Judge Carlson ordered Kenneth Webber to have no contact with the minor children of the marriage for a period of four months. Judge Carlson also prohibited him from having contact with his former wife or her family.
Webber was charged with criminal contempt of court for violating the “no contact” order. At Webber’s arraignment, his counsel attempted to peremptorily challenge Judge Carlson. Judge Carlson de*330nied the challenge as untimely. Webber now appeals.
The sole issue for our determination is whether a defendant in a criminal contempt proceeding is entitled to peremptorily challenge a trial court judge who has actually presided over the civil matter out of which the contempt charge arose. Apparently, Webber’s counsel attempted to exercise the peremptory challenge pursuant to Alaska Rule of Criminal Procedure 25(d). That rule states in part:
(1) Entitlement. In any criminal case in superior or district court, the prosecution and the defense shall each be entitled as a matter of right to one change of judge.
The disobeyance of the trial court’s order, outside its presence, amounts, in this case, to an “indirect criminal contempt” which, if Webber is convicted, potentially exposes him to a term of imprisonment. See AS 09.50.020. Webber argues the criminal contempt charge is a sufficiently new action under AS 09.50.020 to entitle him to “all criminal procedural safeguards,” including the right to peremptorily challenge Judge Carlson under Criminal Rule 25. See also AS 22.20.022. Appellee, on the other hand, argues the action was merely a continuing part of the divorce action, and that Webber waived his challenge to Judge Carlson in that underlying civil proceeding. See Alaska R.Civ.P. 42(c)(3) and (4).
In resolving this issue, we have found the case of McClenny v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County, 60 Cal.2d 677, 36 Cal.Rptr. 459, 388 P.2d 691 (1964), to be persuasive. That case arose out of a domestic relations action similar to Webber’s. The court in that case found that the criminal contempt action was a continuation of the original civil proceeding because it involved “substantially the same issues” as the original action and because the matters presented in the criminal contempt proceeding were “matters necessarily relevant and. material to the issues involved in the [original] action_” Id. 388 P.2d at 696 (emphasis in original). The McClenny court reasoned as follows:
In domestic relations actions the courts must exercise a continuing jurisdiction over the parties and over the subject matter of the action. The trial court must perform continuing supervisory and enforcing functions, and the contempt proceeding is one of the court’s two principal means of performing these functions.[1]

To hold that the contempt proceeding in the present case constitutes a separate and independent action would unduly impede the administration of justice. As respondent court recognized, “many defendants are constantly before the courts on contempt matters, and if each of these is to be considered a separate proceeding for the purpose of [the provision authorizing peremptory challenges], a not inconsiderable amount of judicial juggling will be required.”
Id. at 699 (footnotes omitted).
We similarly conclude that the action charging Webber with criminal contempt was ancillary to and a continuation of the underlying domestic relations action. We therefore conclude that since Webber waived his right to challenge Judge Carlson in the domestic relations proceeding, he waived the right to peremptorily challenge Judge Carlson in the ancillary criminal contempt proceeding. We affirm Judge Carlson’s ruling denying Webber’s peremptory challenge motion as untimely.
AFFIRMED.
SINGLETON, J., concurs.
BRYNER, C.J., dissents.

. In a footnote, the court quoted 2 California Family Lawyer (Cont.Ed.Bar, 1963) p. 1386: "The most common methods used to enforce divorce judgments and orders are contempt proceedings and, as in ordinary judgments, execution." Id. at 699 n. 22.