Where’s Leroy?

Back in the summer of 1976, Lips Leroy was the man to go to when you wanted to get yo head tight. They called him Lips because you know that part you have between yo lips and yo nose, well Leroy didn’t have that. It was nose then lips. His girlfriend used to put a handkerchief over his face before she kissed him. Anyway Lips use to do his thing on the corner of 5th and Decatur St in upper nw DC. One day Lips got caught up and they took him to 5D on Georgia Av. A couple days later they took him to Central booking and then to court at 500 Indiana. Now Leroy hadn’t slept since they rolled up on him and when he was brought from the back and chained to his lawyers table, he went to sleep. Leroy was tired. He set at his lawyers table snoring and gasping and spitting and sh!tt. The jury wanted him put in jail just for that. The bailiff came in and said, “All rise for the Honorable Uneva C Daliteagin.” Leroy’s attorney, Gat D. Monie, shook Leroy and told him to stand up, the judge is entering the court! Well, Leroy looked at Monie and and then looked at the judge and said something about they mama and the animal shelter on North Capitol. He then said he wouldn’t stand even if he was a flag pole in front of the #@@!$$ White House!! Of course this made Judge Deliteagin furious!! “Boy you gonna stand in this court with it or without it.” Now Leroy had some real big hands too, just his thumb must have been five inches long… and when he gave the judge the finger, the judge hollered, “Clear the @##!! courtroom!!” Its been two years now and everyone is wondering where’s Leroy.

So this brings us to today’s article. Do you have to stand when the judge enters the courtroom? Is it decorum or is it law? In my research I found two prevailing views. One view says it out of respect for the court. In the old days when the world’s countries were trying to emulate English law and custom, the judge would walk into court with a Bible. So you stood to honor the Bible and show respect for the king or queen and for the man representing them. Its pretty much the same thing today according to some scholars. Being a nation of laws, we are not standing for the man or woman, but for the laws that hold us together as a society. So what we have here is some judges holding people in contempt because they are not showing respect for the law. Other judges say that not standing signals to the judge that you do not agree with authority the judge or the court has over you. So they put you in jail until you show some #@@!! respect.

But is this legal? Not according to the United States 4th Circuit Court Of Appeals: United States v. Snider. In this case Lyle and Sue Snider were Quakers living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The case actually involved two legal questions. One dealing with taxes and one questioning a violation which prohibits “misbehavior … as to obstruct the administration of justice.” The misbehavior came from the fact that the Quakers refused to stand for the judge and he started feeling some kinda way. Here is the court’s findings for contempt:

“As to the contempt charges, the court first explained that the purposes of contempt are to ensure the smooth operation of court proceedings, and to protect the dignity of the court system. The majority cautioned, however, “against [judges’] confusing offenses to their sensibilities with obstruction to the administration of justice.” In other words, there must be some “material obstruction” to the court’s duties that is to be prevented. Even if refusing to stand is a distraction to others in the court room, “we think the fault may better be resolved by compelling silence and attention than by coercing a gesture of respect.”

While declining to address the Sniders’ argument that their contempt conviction violated the Free Exercise Clause, the court did suggest that a rule that refusing to stand was automatically contempt would violate citizens’ rights to freedom of expression. The court quoted an earlier Supreme Court case finding that a school system could not force students to salute the American flag:

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

Thus the Sniders’ action did not fall within the meaning of contempt as described by the law under which they were charged, and so their convictions were dismissed.”

This question of whether it is legal or illegal with regards to standing when a judge enters the courtroom has not been tested in the Supreme Court, so do not try this. Just go ahead and stand and call it a day. Don’t be like Leroy, where ever he is.

Reprint Hill1News 2019

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