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ACLU SUPPORTS FAVORABLE RULING AFTER FILING AMICUS IN FREE SPEECH CASE
ST. LOUIS, May 20, 2010-- The American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri applauded a ruling issued May 11 by Missouri Supreme Court Judge Michael A. Wolff. The Supreme Court decided that an attorney may be disciplined for contempt of court but could not be imprisoned for it.
The decision came in a case filed in 2008 by petitioner Carl Smith, an attorney. Smith had been held in criminal contempt of court for written comments he made in a pleading to the court of appeals seeking to quash a subpoena issued for a grand jury in Douglas County. Referring to the prosecuting attorney and the judge overseeing the grand jury, Smith wrote: “Their participating in the convening, overseeing, and handling the [sic] proceedings of this grand jury are, in the least, an appearance of impropriety and, at most, a conspiracy by these officers of the court to threaten, instill fear and imprison innocent persons to cover-up and chill public awareness of their own apparent misconduct using the power of their positions to do so.”
In the opinion Judge Wolff states: “The First Amendment has been held to trump restrictions on lawyers’ speech. This Court does not accept the proposition that First Amendment rights bar punishment of contemptuous speech, but does recognize that the values and limits of the constitutional right must inform the development of the elements of criminal contempt. This is especially true of cases of indirect contempt, which do not take place in the court’s presence.”?The American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri (ACLU-EM) filed an amicus brief on behalf of the defendant. ACLU-EM Legal Director Anthony Rothert stated: “The Supreme Court recognized that lawyers do not shed their First Amendment rights at the courthouse door. It is important that attorneys have some latitude to speak candidly in order to zealously advocate for their clients. The justice system would quickly come to a halt if lawyers had to ponder the possibility of going to jail for each statement before they spoke.”
