Judging Himself Not To Be Above The Rules
I loved this story from last week about a Michigan judge who fined himself for disrupting his own hearing when his cellphone rang. Via the AP:
The Sentinel-Standard of Ionia and MLive.com report Judge Raymond Voet has a posted policy at Ionia County 64A District Court. It states that electronic devices causing a disturbance during court sessions will result in the owner being cited with contempt.On Friday afternoon, during a prosecutor's closing argument during a jury trial, Voet's new smartphone began to emit sounds requesting phone voice commands.
The judge, who says he thinks he may have bumped the phone, fined himself $25.
(If only people would hand out money to the rest of us when they hijack our attention with the inanities they bellow into their phones in public.)
via @Overlawyered
That is a man with integrity.
Jim P. at April 22, 2013 7:03 AM
Seems somewhat silly to me. First of all, this was an accident. Suppose you're seated in a courtroom, and you put your phone down on the bench as you're opening your purse to stash it. If your phone is set on vibrate, and it happens to go off, the bench would cause the sound to be amplified to annoying levels. It is appropriate to be punished for it?
What if you apologized to the Court for it, and promptly stashed the phone so that it wouldn't create a disturbance again.
Also, while income levels may vary, $25.00 is hardly a contempt citation. It doesn't even amount to a slap on the wrist.
Patrick at April 22, 2013 8:43 AM
$25 is still more than I want to spend on a ringing phone. hopefully it will convince people to turn it off. Accidents happen when people aren't paying attention. $25 is just enough to make people pay attention but not enough to be a real burden.
MonicaP at April 22, 2013 9:38 AM
The expectation of "quiet" in public places seems like such a first world problem.
Before the days of telephone lines running into quiet booths, and people' s homes, public life was noisy and stinky.
The streets were filled with roosters crowing, horses neighing,, street vendors hawking their wares, and people shouting over the background noise in order to be heard.
While I agree that yelling on your cell phone is generally rude, the general noisiness of existence in proximity to other humans, is the price we pay for those civilized support systems we want to have immediately on call, when things go tits up.
If you want peace and quiet, get yourself some headphones, or become a hermit.
Isab at April 22, 2013 5:06 PM
It is not unreasonable to expect quiet in a courtroom, Isab.
Sabrina at April 23, 2013 8:26 AM
"The streets were filled with roosters crowing, horses neighing,, street vendors hawking their wares,"
What is this, medieval England? Even in the 1900's you wouldn't find rooster's crowing in the streets, not in the city, and phones didn't get into many outlying areas until the 40's or 50's.
It is a first world problem though. In official proceedings however, a certain amount of decorum is expected. Totally agree with the fines.
In other settings, ringing phones are just plain rude.
wtf at April 23, 2013 11:28 AM
Up until World War II horse drawn wagons, (and stables and barn yards) were ubiquitous even in the largest American and European cities.
Meat and produce and other consumables didn't ride into the cities on those magic flying Canadian carpets (that were ultimately rendered obsolete by trucks)
A train is less useful than you might think because it only goes to a couple of points in the city, and goods had to be transported from the rail head by horse drawn wagon.
isab at April 23, 2013 7:14 PM
Alrighty then....I guess I missed all those photos of chickens on Wall Street.
wtf at April 25, 2013 1:18 PM
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