holding judge cannot adjudicate contempt charges where he was “personally embroiled” in the alleged contemptuous conduct by having called the alleged contemnor “disgraceful and disreputable” and “unworthy of being a member of the [legal] profession,” and threating to have the “Marshal stick a gag in [the contemnor’s] mouth”
How later courts described this case
- holding judge cannot adjudicate contempt charges where he was “personally embroiled” in the alleged contemptuous conduct by having called the alleged contemnor “disgraceful and disreputable” and “unworthy of being a member of the [legal] profession,” and threating to have the “Marshal stick a gag in [the contemnor’s] mouth”
- finding a reduction in an attorney’s contempt sanction necessary where the judge presiding at the contempt hearing had become personally embroiled and displayed excessive, ongoing hostility towards the attorney during the attorney’s representation of a client in an underlying trial
- explaining that trial judge's becoming personally embroiled with defense counsel compromised the court's "at- mosphere of austerity" that is "consonant with a fair trial"
- stating that because “judges[sometimes] identify offense to self with obstruction to law,” an impartial adjudicator is required for contempt proceedings
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by McAllister v. McAllister, 95 N.J. Super. 426 (1967)
Offutt v. United States, 348 U.S. 11, 75 S.Ct. 11, 99 L.Ed. 11 (1954), relied upon by defendant, is factually distinguishable and for that reason inapposite.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Minton,
dissenting.
This case goes back to the District Court for hearing by another judge on charges as to which, on the record, this Court admits petitioner is guilty. It is only a question of how much punishment he shall receive. Two days, under all the circumstances, did not seem too much to the Court of Appeals that reviewed the conduct of judge and counsel, nor does it to me. I would not, after Sacher, apply the Cooke case to the circumstances of this proceeding. The writ of certiorari should be dismissed as improvidently granted.