Tuesday, October 18, 2016

No stay in criminal contempt case

In today's case announcements, the Court denied a motion to stay imposition of a five-day sentence for indirect criminal contempt. The contemnor, Crysta Pleatman, had raised due process and First Amendment defenses to the contempt charge, both of which were rejected by both the trial court and the First District.



The case is something of a local phenomenon in Cincinnati; it has a long history which has been enthusiastically covered by the Enquirer. The gist is that the Pleatmans at one point agreed to buy a home, but backed out of the purchase when they later learned that a neighbor in 2003 had attacked and been imprisoned for attacking a jogger. The Pleatmans backed out of the deal. The seller sued for damages.

None of that is extraordinary, but as the case wore on, Crysta Pleatman apparently began repeatedly calling and emailing other parties, their lawyers, and their real estate agents. It got bad enough that one of the other parties asked the trial court to order her to stop. The court did, but Pleatman didn't. She was ultimately found in indirect criminal contempt and sentenced to five days in the Hamilton County Justice Center. (Criminal proceedings were also initiated; see below.) Pleatman appealed, and imposition of the contempt sentence was repeatedly delayed, apparently because Pleatman was caring for her husband while he received cancer treatment in Boston. He recently died, and Pleatman is scheduled to start her sentence tomorrow, October 19.

The First District opinion is a good little primer on contempt sanctions and the due process requirements associated with them. It also discusses her First Amendment defense, though the court spends only a few paragraphs on it. In essence, the court held that a trial court has inherent power to regulate conduct of the parties before it, and to limit frivolous conduct. I found this to be something of an odd way of framing the issue, because "frivolous conduct" is generally (though not exclusively) defined as filing papers in civil actions, and there is no shortage of other case law holding that the use of no-contact orders to address charges of harassment does not violate the First Amendment.

Pleatman moved for a stay of the sentence in the First District, which was summarily denied last month. With the Supreme Court denying the stay as well, and with the five-day sentence scheduled to start tomorrow, my guess is that the appeal itself will be declined in the near future.

Perhaps happily for followers of the case, the criminal proceedings continue. Pleatman was charged with telecommunications harassment, convicted, and sentenced to 180 days in jail with 140 suspended. That appeal has been fully briefed in the First District and was argued a few weeks ago; in addition to the First Amendment issues, there are some confrontation clause arguments and weight-and-sufficiency argument. A decision is likely to arrive by the end of the year, and it all but surely will be taken to the Supreme Court yet again.

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