Via Doug Berman, it appears that a Utah judge is trying to keep more under wraps than secret holy underwear.
Susan Henwood, a mother of four, has been sentenced to 30 days in the Tooele County Jail because she sent a text message about a court hearing she was observing.
“She shouldn’t be there. She did nothing wrong,” her husband, Joshua Henwood, said.
In early April, Joshua was sick and couldn’t make his court appearance in a debt collection case. He sent Susan to ask for a continuance and to keep him updated, so she sent a text that said: “It doesn’t look good for you” and “They’re coming for the Polaris Ranger.”
Now I can well appreciate that a judge would be upset by someone using a communications device in the courtroom. After all, that could cause, well, communications from a courtroom, and we can’t have that. Seriously, if she disturbed the proceedings, then she deserved to be admonished and to have her thingy (the specific type of texting device is not mentioned) taken away until she leaves the room. Maybe even worse, keep it for the whole day, and make her sit around until the end of court to get it back. That’s got to be painful.
But jailing someone is another matter. Even for a day, no less 30.
The explanation is that she wasn’t held in contempt for texting, but for content of her text. As if they could tell that from a distance. But even if we assume that to be true, can the judge make the leap from what was actually texted to the assumption of improper purpose? Ah, free speech. We are so quick to know what’s in the hearts and minds of others.
Had Henwood texted “quick, hide the Polaris Ranger so the jerks can’t seize it,” perhaps the judge would have something. But she didn’t. She transmitted information, likely quite accurately. Does that mean that her son would take that information, alight from his sickbed and bury the Polaris Ranger in the front yard to keep it out of the hands of the creditor? Maybe, but maybe not. Who is this judge to jump to such assumption?
The tolerance for speech is a curious thing. We protect it dearly, when it’s our speech at stake. Yet we’re quick to shut it down when it’s someone else’s, whether because it annoys us, or because it interferes with ours being the exclusive voice, or because, as here, we find it so very easy to assume a malevolent hidden purpose and then rationalize why we are justified int silencing it.
But 30 days? Will our debtors prisons be able to accommodate all the free speech moms?
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Wow – that is disturbing. Some judges seem to forget that court proceedings are open to the public. There’s nothing more wrong with texting what is happening in a hearing (aside from the actual texting, which I can understand courts wanting to limit due to the recent spate of Twittering juries, etc) than for the person you’re texting to be sitting right there in the room. It’s one thing to prevent electronic devices from being brought into the courthouse, but quite another to punish with jail time those who use them to report (accurately) on the proceedings.
Recently I noted in a local high-profile criminal trial that news coverage was being provided on a real-time basis by a reporter sitting in the courtroom and tweeting the proceedings. Hard to see what the difference is here, so long as the device being used doesn’t start ringing.
Lawyers throughout the country, both defense attorneys and prosecutors, are making a habit of texting, checking emails, etc. in the courtroom. If this occurred 10 years ago or so and the woman wrote down the same content on a piece of paper as a note to herself and then called her husband once outside the courtroom, would the judge intervene and impose the same sentence? If she is not charged with anything and she was not held in contempt, why is she facing 30 days?
She was held in contempt and sentenced to 30 days. She’s not “facing”, but doing.