Mo. Lawyer Rants Against Judge, Gets 4 Months in Jail
Asking a Missouri judge “Are you a pedophile?” was but one of the “rude and angry” comments that reportedly helped persuade the jurist to slap a 120-day contempt sentence on a Kansas City lawyer.
Attorney Carlos Romious also caught the attention of Greene County Circuit Court Judge Tom Mountjoy by failing to show up for his client’s jury trial last month, reports the News-Leader. And, among other claimed misbehavior by counsel, the contempt judgment “also references an instance where Romious took a document from his opposing counsel, wadded it up, and threw it on the floor, smashing the papers with his shoe,” the newspaper recounts.
The newspaper provides a copy of Mountjoy’s judgment (PDF) last week in the contempt case. He ordered Romious to begin serving his 120 days immediately after the July 24 ruling.
It appears that Romious might have had a good excuse for failing to appear for the jury trial, if it had been properly presented to Mountjoy: Court records show that he was scheduled to be in federal court in Kansas, as a defendant, that day. He was charged in May with assaulting a court security officer after he allegedly refused go through a courthouse metal detector.
Hat tip: Wall Street Journal Law Blog.
