Court Opinion

ID: 9550328
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:34:02.613224+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:21:23.607322
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
with whom HODGES and KAUGER, Justices, join, dissenting.
The court withholds today from a person imprisoned for indirect “civil” contempt of court the benefits provided in 57 O.S.1981 § 65.1 I would hold that all persons con*643fined in jail under a commitment for contempt — direct or indirect, civil or criminal— are entitled to the credit prescribed in 57 O.S.1981 §§ 202 and 65.
Just as Oklahoma repealed common law crimes3 so has she abolished all common law forms of contempt.4 By force of this State’s fundamental law,5 the latter transgressions are subject solely to constitutional and statutory regulation.6 Power withheld from the judiciary by an explicit provision of the Constitution may not be claimed as “inherent”. Inherent power, whose use is limited to that which is declared essential to a court’s capability for the discharge of its constitutionally mandated mission, always must be derived from the Constitution alone. While it need not be either expressed or even implied, it is never available for invocation if its exercise is explicitly prohibited by the State’s supreme law.7
Statutory law makes no distinction between civil and criminal contempt. That divisional scheme comes from judicial resurrection of common-law gloss.8 Even if its espousal was warranted for application elsewhere in our jurisprudence, the civil/criminal contempt dichotomy is strangely out of place in today’s case. The Legislature did not see fit to preserve it in fashioning the range of penalty that may be imposed. Legislative prescription for punishment of contempt does not allow the judiciary to single out incarcerated civil con-temnors for less favorable treatment than that which is to be accorded any other subclass sentenced under the terms of 21 *644O.S.Supp.1984 § 566.9
Although in Oklahoma contempt of court is classified as sui generis,10 the penal code’s provisions for punishment of contempt — direct and indirect, civil and criminal — bear the unmistakable attributes of a penal sanction. For purposes of jail-time computation, all convicted con-temnors incarcerated in conformity to the terms of § 566 must stand on equal footing and receive like treatment, regardless of the verbal garb chosen by judicial parlance for the culpable conduct which led to their incarceration.11 All these persons comprise but a single and indivisible class of statutory offenders. The judiciary clearly is powerless to dichotomize them for imposition of a different calculation-of-confinement regime.

. The terms of 57 O.S.1981 § 65 are:
"Any person in this state convicted of a crime, who is serving time as a prisoner in the county jail of any county in the State of Oklahoma as a, result of said conviction of crime, shall be entitled to receive five (5) days credit for every four (4) days’ time in said county jail provided stud prisoner shall have obeyed the rules and regulations promulgated by the *643sheriff in charge of said county jail in a satisfactory manner. Each prisoner shall also, in addition thereto, be entitled to a deduction of three (3) days for each pint of his blood he donates during his first thirty (30) days of confinement in the county jail, and to five (5) days for each pint of his blood he donates during any sixty-day period thereafter to the American Red Cross or to a hospital approved for such purpose by the sheriff. And the sheriff of said county is hereby authorized to order said credit to be given to said prisoner on the records of the court out of which said conviction is had.”

. The terms of 57 O.S.1981 § 20 are:
“Every county, city or town convict in this state, whether required to work upon the public highways of such county, city or town, in accordance with the laws of this state, or merely confined in the county, city or town prison, shall receive credit upon his or her fine and costs of One Dollar ($1.00) for each day so confined in prison, or worked upon the public highways, rock pile, or rock crusher, or public work; provided that those prisoners or convicts doing and performing the most efficient work and making the best prisoners, shall be entitled to an additional credit of one (1) day for every five (5) days of work, the guard or custodian of such prison to determine at the end of each five (5) days of such imprisonment whether or not such prisoner is entitled to such credit, and to make a record of such decision and notify the prisoner of the same."

. 21 O.S.1981 § 2.

. See Fulreader v. State, Okl., 408 P.2d 775, 779 [1965]; Best v. Evans, Okl., 297 P.2d 379, 381 [1956] and Seay v. Howell, Okl., 311 P.2d 207, 209 [1957].

. The terms of Art. 2, § 25, Okl. Const., are:
“The legislature shall pass laws defining con-tempts and regulating the proceedings and punishment in matters of contempt: Provided, that any person accused of violating or disobeying, when not in the presence of hearing of the court, or judge sitting as such, any order of injunction, or restraint, made or entered by any court or judge of the State shall, before penalty or punishment is imposed, be entitled to a trial by jury as to the guilt or innocence of the accused. In no case shall a penalty or punishment be imposed for contempt, until an opportunity to be heard is given.” [Emphasis supplied.]

. Contempts of court in Oklahoma are governed by constitutional and statutory provisions, and not by common law. Best v. Evans, supra note 4; Seay v. Howell, supra note 4; Smith v. State ex rel Raburn, Okl.Cr., 536 P.2d 976, 979 [1975] and Deskins v. State, 62 Okl.Cr. 314, 71 P.2d 502, 503 [1937].

. Ratzlaff v. State, 102 Okl. 263, 229 P. 278, 279 [1924]; In re Integration of State Bar of Oklahoma, 185 Okl. 505, 95 P.2d 113, 115 [1939]; Best v. Evans, supra note 4 at 381; Seay v. Howell, supra note 4 at 209; Hopkins v. Barnhardt, 223 N.C. 617, 27 S.E.2d 644, 646 [1943]; State v. Superior Court, 78 Ariz. 74, 275 P.2d 887, 889-890 [1954]; People v. Little, 89 Misc.2d 742, 392 N.Y.S.2d 831 [1977].

. Goldfarb, The Contempt Power, pp. 45-61 [1971].

. The terms of 21 O.S.Supp.1984 § 566, effective Nov. 1, 1984, provide:
"Unless otherwise provided for by law, punishment for direct or indirect contempt shall be by the imposition of a fine in a sum not exceeding Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00) or by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding six (6) months, or by both, at the discretion of the court." [Emphasis supplied.]

. Fulreader v. State, supra note 4 at 777.

. “It would be absurd to distinguish criminal [from] ... civil incarceration; from the perspective of the person incarcerated, the jail is just as bleak no matter which label is used. * * *" Walker v. McLain, 768 F.2d 1181, 1183 [10th Cir.1985].