Harbinger for Hoffman?

The Supreme Court generally gives trial judges wide latitude in running their courtrooms--even to permitting the shackling, gagging or removal of obstreperous defendants. But last week the Justices unanimously curbed a judge's power to hand out contempt sentences for courtroom misbehavior. Using carefully uncritical language, the court held that a judge may cite a defendant at the moment of his contemptuous action, but that if the judge chooses to wait until the end of the trial, "it is generally wise where the marks of the unseemly conduct have left personal stings to ask a fellow judge to take his place." The decision reversed an eleven-to-22-year contempt sentence imposed by Pittsburgh Judge Albert Fiok on a defendant who had called him a "dirty son of a bitch" and a "dirty tyrannical old dog." It also seemed to apply squarely to last year's trial of the Chicago Seven. In that raucous proceeding, Judge Julius Hoffman waited until after the jury began deliberations, then declared the defendants and their lawyers in contempt and imposed sentences of as much as four years and 13 days. Under last week's ruling, it seems quite possible that those contempt sentences will now be reversed and that another judge will have the Seven back in court to consider whether they were in contempt and, if so, what the penalties should be.

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