Court Opinion

ID: 9713429
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:15:15.955195+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:18.719402
License: Public Domain

NIX, Justice,
dissenting.
I vigorously dissent from today’s majority opinion. The majority of this Court believes that attorney Cogan’s “misconduct cannot be condoned” and that it contravenes Disciplinary Rule 7-106(C)(6) of our Code of Professional Responsibility. It further characterizes appellant’s conduct as “impolite,” “unwise, unseemly and exaggerated,” as well as “discourteous,” “inappropriate and ill-mannered.” These characterizations correspond with those made by the trial judge in his opinion. There it is stated that appellant *285“spoke in a manner demeaning to the Court in both tone and facial expressions,” appellant was “arrogant and disrespectful” and at one point he “lashed out, screaming at the Court.”
The trial court found that appellant’s misconduct had disrupted the dignity, order and decorum of his courtroom and found appellant in contempt, citing Commonwealth v. Snyder, 443 Pa. 433, 275 A.2d 312 (1971). In that case Chief Justice Bell wrote the following for a unanimous Court:
As this Court so pertinently said in Levine Contempt Case, 372 Pa. 612, page 618, 95 A.2d 222, page 225: “Generally speaking, one is guilty of contempt when his conduct tends to bring the authority and administration of the law into disrespect.”
As the Supreme Court of the United States so pertinently said in its recent decision in Illinois v. Allen, 397 U.S. 337, 90 S.Ct. 1057, page 1061, 25 L.Ed.2d 353 pages 343-44, 346-47: “It is essential to the proper administration of criminal justice that dignity, order, and decorum be the hallmarks of all court proceedings in our country. The flagrant disregard in the courtroom of elementary standards of proper conduct should not and cannot be tolerated. .
“. . . But our courts, palladiums of liberty as they are, cannot be treated disrespectfully with impunity. . It would degrade our country and judicial system to permit our courts to be bullied, insulted, and humiliated . . [I]f our courts are to remain what the Founders intended, the citadels of justice, their proceeding cannot and must not be infected with the sort of scurrilous, abusive language and conduct paraded before the (Pennsylvania) trial judge in this case.”
443 Pa. at 439-40, 275 A.2d at 316-317.
I agree with the trial judge that appellant’s conduct was contumacious. I disagree with today’s majority opinion that *286In re Johnson, 467 Pa. 552, 359 A.2d 739 (1976), changes the law set forth in Snyder.
I therefore dissent.