explaining that the right to counsel and other due process requirements are not implicated in contempt cases involving “charges of misconduct, in open court, in the presence of the judge, which disturbs the court’s business, where all of the essential elements of the misconduct are under the eye of the court, are actually observed by the court, and where immediate punishment is essential to prevent demoralization of -8- the court’s authority before the public” (internal quotations and ellipses omitted)
How later courts described this case
- explaining that the right to counsel and other due process requirements are not implicated in contempt cases involving “charges of misconduct, in open court, in the presence of the judge, which disturbs the court’s business, where all of the essential elements of the misconduct are under the eye of the court, are actually observed by the court, and where immediate punishment is essential to prevent demoralization of -8- the court’s authority before the public” (internal quotations and ellipses omitted)
- explaining that in order to qualify as direct criminal contempt and thus satisfy the “narrow exception” to general due process requirements, the misconduct must have occurred “in open court, in the presence of the judge ... where all of the essential elements of the misconduct are under the eye of the court”
- explaining criminal defendants’ due process right to be free from "secret proceedings,” citing "this nation’s historic distrust of secret proceedings, their inherent dangers to freedom, and the universal requirement of our federal and state governments that criminal trials be public”
- explaining that the right to a “public trial” is founded, in part, on the premise that “[t]he knowledge that every criminal trial is subject to contemporaneous review in the forum of public opinion is an effective restraint on possible abuse of judicial power”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by In Re Grand Jury Investigation of Swan, 92 Ill. App. 3d 856 (1981)
Oliver, however, is distinguishable from the present case, as it involved a statutory system under which a judge acted as the grand jury.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Jackson,
with whom
Mr. Justice Frankfurter agrees, dissenting.
The principal ground assigned for reversal of the judgment of conviction is the alleged secrecy of the contempt procedure. That ground was not assigned for review in the petition for certiorari to this Court. Nor was it raised in the petition for writ of habeas corpus in the state courts. Therefore, it has not been litigated and the record has not been made with reference to it. On the other hand, the principal question raised by the petition to this Court and argued by the State is not decided by the Court’s opinion.
When a case here from a state court involves a question not litigated below, not raised by petitioner here and which the state court has had no opportunity to pass upon, we should remand the case for its further consideration, as was just done in Musser v. Utah, 333 U. S. 95 .