You are in contempt!!
We often hear about judges jailing people for being ‘in
contempt of court’. But what does it mean?
A finding of contempt declares that someone has either disobeyed
a court order or been otherwise disrespectful of the authority of a court. The sanction is a fine by the court or in
more flagrant disobedience, imprisonment.
Disobedience of a court order is the more clear cut of the
two types. Contempt in that sense comes
about often in the context of injunctions, for instance domestic violence
injunctions, which are ignored, often
with very serious consequences. In the context of serious domestic violence,
injunctions have powers of automatic arrest by the police for breach, attached to them when first made. Otherwise,
an application has to be made for a ‘penal notice’ first and the order has to
be served again, which makes enforcement more cumbersome but ultimately has the
same effect.
Injunctions can cover many other things. A few years back a
woman, otherwise law –abiding, was jailed for failing to obey a final court
order to cut her hedge. The whole basis of contempt is that justice will fall
into disarray and will be worthless if
court orders are not followed and courts respected, so it makes no difference how big or small a
thing the contemptuous party was ordered to do.
It is also contempt
not to attend court after service of a witness order to do so.
In the wider sense of disrespect to a judge, this can take many forms. In my criminal law
days, I had a case when a young tearaway was finally imprisoned and his father
uttered a threat to ‘get’ the presiding
magistrate. That was clear contempt.
Many examples involve disruption of court process in various ways,
ranging from such threats to speaking ‘out of turn’ or even yawning (although
in such milder cases it is likely the judge will give a strong and probably
repeated warning before finding the perpetrator in contempt) . Others involve the press. It is a contempt of
court to publish material which will prejudice a fair trial. This kind of
contempt is defined by statute.
Contempt can even enter the political arena. The ex-Northern Ireland Minister, Peter Hain,
is currently facing a prosecution by the NI Attorney- General for writing in
his autobiography that Lord Justice Girvan was ‘off his rocker’ in connection
with his questioning of decisions by civil servants in an old case when he was
minister. Such a prosecution many think
goes too far. It is a opinion expressed
in an historical memoir: even if no doubt it helps to sell the book too, so too
will the prosecution. This prosecution
is actually for ‘scandalising’ the judge.
Another case of that was in 1900 when the editor of the Birmingham Angus
was convicted of describing Justice Darling as ‘an impudent little man in
horsehair’. Ouch.
