Lawyer Jailed For Contempt Is Freed After 14 Years 408
H. Beatty Chadwick has been in a staring match with the judicial system for the past 14 years, and the system just blinked. Chadwick was ordered to pay his ex-wife $2.5 million after their divorce. He refused to pay saying that he couldn't because he lost the money in a series of "bad investments." The judge in the case didn't believe him and sent him to jail for contempt. That was 14 years ago. Last week another judge let Chadwick go saying that "continued imprisonment would be legal only if there was some likelihood that ultimately he would comply with the order; otherwise, the confinement would be merely punitive instead of coercive." Chadwick, now 73, is believed to have served the longest contempt sentence in US history.
Well... (Score:4, Funny)
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It might be gone already, if anyone else received the Nigerian-style scam (so I thought) letter from a PA prison as I did last year...
I guess (Score:5, Funny)
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Yup, to intentionally lose all your money in bad investments is spiteful enough, then you realize this was 14 years ago, BEFORE the current economic downturn or the dotcom crash. That must have taken effort!
Of course, his ex-wife is the judge who sent him to jail for it, so there's a lot of hate on both sides.
Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Wasn't it a bit obvious after say 6-12 months that the guy either didn't have the money or wasn't going to ever hand it over?
If he has it - and refuses to pay - in jail he stays. You can't allow mule headed stubbornness to defeat the law.
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, the guy should suffer forever because he made the mistake of getting married.
If this doesn't illustrate to men everywhere why getting married is a stupid idea, nothing ever will. You only have everything to lose by doing it. But no "she's not like that!" and "we're really in love and she'd never want anything from me!". Then it all goes south or she cheats on you and decides she wants 50% of everything you have or ever will have and becomes vindictive and spiteful and you end up giving her $2.5m or spending 20% of your life in prison. All because she decided you needed to pay for all those years of pussy after all (sounds like a retro-active hooker to me).
Jut imagine how much more fun you could have had without any commitment and for far less than 50% of everything you'll ever earn? Man, I wish I were a woman. It's no risk and all gain!
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Interesting)
And this is yet one more reason why the government shouldn't be giving people marriages. Anyone. Gay or straight. There's no reason to regulate marriages -- which are a religious institution and personal committment -- in any way, whatsoever. If there are financial things attached to a marriage, they should be handled as a private contract like anything else. And with the contractual obligations of marriage made explicit rather than existing in the legal code, I think this kind of garbage would end -- because two people in love wouldn't make each other sign grossly unfair contracts.
It's funny: I'm not particularly libertarian. I like government to do stuff. But I'm pretty staunchly libertarian on this because it seems like such a personal issue, and such an intrusion of government into the intimate parts of our lives which are simply not other people's business.
Some hypothetical questions and answers:
"Doesn't this mess up taxes?" Why does it need to? If someone is a dependent, it shouldn't matter why from the government's point of view.
"But what if an 80-year-old wants to marry a 10-year-old girl?" Then he's committing statutory rape. We don't need separate laws.
"But what if someone with AIDS marries someone without it? Shouldn't we require that people be tested?" Do we require government certification of sex partners in any other context?
"Don't we need a way to understand 'who is a couple' for adoption purposes?" Is it currently illegal for single people to adopt children? Or to raise children?
"But what about bigamists? Polyamorists?" The government doesn't snoop in people's homes to keep polyamorists from living together. Why should it care if people decide to make these kinds of arrangements long-term and official?
The end. That's what I think.
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Except you ignore the true ways marriage is used/abused and instead make up some wacky questions.
Marriage changes certain rights a person has, and allows legal claims that arose because of abuse, not the other way around:
- Would we allow families to marry off their daughter to older men in return for payment?
- How would monetary issues, property ownership, health care coverage, duties of care for minors, and land transfers be regulated? Would a couple participate in both, but would we need the proof of id
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Marriage changes certain rights a person has, and allows legal claims that arose because of abuse, not the other way around:
It shouldn't change anything; that's the point. The legal status of two people who are married should be no different to the legal status of any other two people who are dependents (e.g. cohabiting partners).
Would we allow families to marry off their daughter to older men in return for payment?
Before I answer the question, remember that this happens anyway, whether or not the system p
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Wow, you chose a bunch of silly "arguments" as your straw men. It's amusing to see someone list five ridiculous "questions" that no one would ask; rebut them; then say, "Q.E.D.!"
Yeah, kindasorta. But can you think of any better arguments against the idea? Because I haven't. And I thought these were the kinds of concerns people would have. Maybe not people on Slashdot, but people in general.
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After 14 years, that is a pretty big if. Any sane person would have payed after a few months, so IMHO chances are that he didn't have the money and the judge wasted 14 years of his life, never mind a large sum of taxpayers money.
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Ok, so "stealing" $2.5M from your ex-wife carries a 14 year prison sentence, but robbing a bank of a similar sum probably carries a smaller punishment. How exactly is that just?
How is it that refusing to testify to a court should carry a lifetime prison sentence (if the judge feels so inclined)?
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, so "stealing" $2.5M from your ex-wife carries a 14 year prison sentence, but robbing a bank of a similar sum probably carries a smaller punishment. How exactly is that just?
How is it that refusing to testify to a court should carry a lifetime prison sentence (if the judge feels so inclined)?
Oh, it's better than that. He could have beaten her to death and gotten a lighter prison sentence.
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Insightful)
In 14 years there was no other way to ascertain if the guy really had the money? Really?
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How? The judge can't hire a private eye and an accountant to get to the bottom of every divorce case out there.
And they aren't supposed to.
The other side in the case _can_ do all those things. In fact, they should do all those things. Before a trial there is a period of time called discovery. As you would assume, it is the time to for both sides to discover stuff about the other side.
IANAL, and all that; nor do I know any specifics beyond what we have all read here. It is my belief that this guy is a 'victim' of assumed knowledge.
This guy being a lawyer, you can assume he has a lucrative career. You ca
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You can't allow mule headed stubbornness to defeat the law.
Right. It's not as if the law has anything to do with justice. It's all about the State, or one asshole judge, imposing its will.
And if the law is totally whacked - say forcing men who have been proven via DNA not to be fathers pay child support - too bad. That's the price of "social stability".
Fuck that.
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm more bothered by the continuing concept that someone deserves massive amounts of your wealth simply because they married you.
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I have no problem with the concept that all assets earned/obtained within a marriage by both people should be split equally should that marriage end.
At the end, there should be no upkeep requirement from one party to the other.
At the end, assets each person had going into the marriage shouldn't be taken into account, but retained by that person (or the value of that asset if sold off during the marriage). There is an argument that if you get married after a long relationship, that relationship period should
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:4, Insightful)
"They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B.F.
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For much less than the cost of housing him in prison for 14 years, they could have hired someone to find his assets.
Even then, his ex-wife is just one of many debtors that need to be paid. We have systems for dealing with that and they are out side the prison system.
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:4, Funny)
Thank God then, that we have Gitmo. At least there, people aren't subjected to the US Judicial Terror system.
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Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Informative)
They are very good questions. All the links tend to give the same information, so I did some more searching and found this...
"The petitioner, Mr. Chadwick, has been imprisoned without trial for eight years in Delaware County, Pennsylvania for 'civil' contempt because he has been unable to deposit with the court $2.5 million in cash, funds which he maintains were part of an illiquid overseas real estate investment he does not control."
http://www.amatterofjustice.org/amoj/cases/chadwick3.htm [amatterofjustice.org]
This news was from 2003, so its very disturbing if he has been held 14 years without trial?. Also surely they would know after 14 years the legal status of his overseas real estate investments?.
It seems the legal system and government suffers from systemic procedural bureaucracy so bad that its taken years more to final free him, but suffocatingly bad bureaucracy is no excuse to allow the legal system to behave the way we have been lead to believe only happens in police state countries.
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FWIW - I do have to say once the case went all the way to the supreme court and the guy *still* didn't comply - let him go (which is what finally happened but probably about 13 years too late).
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He didn't get into prison because he was convicted of withholding money, he was in prison because he didn't follow a court order. So the prison was to coerce money out of him, not to punish him for something.
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anybody else see this distinction as being rather weak?
IMHO, prison time should require a jury verdict to sustain it. I'm all for punishing people for perjury or interference with the functioning of the courts, but that should be a criminal charge like any other.
This guy spent 14 years in prison based solely on the decision of a single judge, without any kind of trial. That is just over the top.
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Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Insightful)
There was the story a few weeks ago about a guy that raped a 4-year-old and was sentenced to 1 year in prison.
This guy spends 14 years in jail because a judge just doesn't believe he doesn't have his wife's allowance to give.
People in power that don't have a shred of sense and ruin people's lives aught to be shipped off to a non-existant island somewhere.
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Interesting)
Was this an abuse of the power to hold people in contempt of court? Absolutely.
The power of a judge to keep his court orderly, however, is of utmost importance to the continued functioning of our legal system. Furthermore, the man obviously was telling the court to fuck off. I am sure he could have proved he didn't have the money. I can't imagine him losing 5 million dollars and not being able to show just how he pissed it away. And I don't see a lawyer not keeping legal paperwork to cover his ass in this instance.
Thus, I conclude that he was telling his ex-wife, via the court system, to fuck off. I don't admire him for treating our court system with contempt, but I have to say the man has balls of steel if he is willing to go to prison for 14 years all for the sake of spite. Maybe not wise, but definitely very ballsy. I can even see the conversation in prison.
"What are you in here for."
"I got a couple of million stashed in offshore holdings and was willing to go to prison rather than let my bitch of an ex-wife have a penny of it."
"Well, shit, I don't blame you. My ex-wife was a bitch too. That's why I stabbed her with an ice-pick."
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Interesting)
No evidence is required. The fact that he owes $2.5m is not in contention. If he says he can't pay then he's bankrupt. He needs to go through bankruptcy proceedings to follow through on that. And the ex-wife would then get in line for a share of what he does own. That he does not either pay or go through with bankruptcy is contempt. No "belief" or evidence is needed.
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Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, in this case there doesn't appear to be any evidence that he can actually produce the property at stake. If you're going to put somebody in prison there ought to be evidence to back this up. If you have evidence, then you should have no trouble convincing a jury to back up the sentence with a verdict.
Contempt of court should be a crime exactly like any other crime. If you commit it then you must be charged and tried and a jury should decide your fate.
Otherwise if a judge is ticked at you they can basically toss you in prison and your only recourse is an appeal. If judges and appeals were so infallible, then why is it the right of every citizen in every civilized nation to be tried by a jury of their peers?
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That makes no sense at all. In order for there to be a jury, something needs to be in dispute. In the case of contempt of court, there is nothing in dispute. He was ordered to pay, he didn't pay, end of story. No jury could possibly find any other way than he was in contempt. All of the evidence as to whether or not he had the money was presented already, at the original trial, and he was ordered to pay it. He already had his day in court. Now, if your assertion is that he shouldn't have had to pay
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In order for there to be a jury, something needs to be in dispute. In the case of contempt of court, there is nothing in dispute. He was ordered to pay, he didn't pay, end of story.
Except, there was a fact in dispute - where he could pay. Additionally, I don't think that there are any circumstances where a man can be sent to prison for a long term based on a summary judgment without the ruling of a jury (or a guilty plea). That is - other than contempt.
In your little fantasy world, where does that process
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't a criminal case. The guy DOES owe his ex-wife $2.5m. If he's not going to pay because he says he doesn't have it, then he needs to allow access to his financial affairs so that the court can see that he doesn't have it. To not do so is contempt and is imprisonable without charge or further trial. This is not a flaw of the system.
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If he doesn;t have the money he still oes $2.5m and needs to go through insolvency so that his creditors (including his wife) can be paid from what assets he DOES have.
There's no need for a jury. This isn't a question of a crime that needs proving. That he is disobeying the court is a matter of record. It's a civil matter, compounded with contempt for not following the remedy instructed by the court. There is nothing for a jury to do.
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There is nothing for a jury to do.
Except convict him. There have been other cases in history where there was "nothing for a jury to do" and yet a jury verdict was still necessary. There have even been cases where the judge basically instructed the jury to return a guilty verdict because no facts were in dispute, and yet the verdict was still required.
If he doesn;t have the money he still oes $2.5m and needs to go through insolvency so that his creditors (including his wife) can be paid from what assets he
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Insightful)
Read the link I posted.
Contempt of court is not something you can file a motion and get out of. It is absolute unfettered power of one judge over any individual who pisses him off (inside or outside of his courtroom).
Further, there is no constitutional basis for it. It is a power simply usurped by the Judicial branch.
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Insightful)
Contempt of court cannot be used by a judge on someone who is not violating a court order or disrupting court proceedings. A judge can't like the taste of his drink and find the server in contempt. If you're referring to indirect contempt (ignoring a court order outside of the presence of the judge), someone accused of contempt must be served and provided a hearing during which rebuttal evidence can be presented.
The ability for a judge to summarily punish someone in direct contempt has been upheld for a very long time. It's the only manner in which a judge can attempt to force the compliance of someone who would otherwise subvert the course of justice. It may have been abusive in this case, but calling it unfettered completely ignores the very widely-covered appeals to other judges and to appellate courts of contempt findings against journalists that withhold information.
I did go looking for information pertaining to this case, though. I found the following background from a ruling from the US District Court of Maine in 2003 (citations and mid-paragraph line breaks have been removed). In short, he moved money out of the country, it was returned, and then he fled the jurisdiction when told by the court that he had to turn over the money that had been shown to have been available to him. His accounts were then seized, he was arrested and imprisoned six months later, and his 14 attempts at appeal (at the time of the ruling) seeking his release have apparently all been turned down. (There goes the rest of your "unfettered" argument. Fourteen appeals is a significant quantity.)
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With the recent economy, even if he had the money then, its gone now.
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You assume that our justice system makes sense.
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So you are sent to jail for not paying, but let out of jail if you can't pay. Some would say they can just donate all their money to charity, but the court would seize that money.
What would they do if I got a hold of the cash and literally burnt it? Would I avoid jail?
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Depending on the country, you'd do time for burning money.
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Informative)
So you are sent to jail for not paying, but let out of jail if you can't pay.
He didn't go to jail for not paying. He went to jail for contempt of court.
He was getting divorced from his wife, and his wife alleged that he hid $2.5M in overseas accounts. He never contested the existence of the $2.5M, but claimed that he lost it all in bad business transactions.
The judge said, "OK, show me documentation of these bad business transactions or show me the money." He said, "No." So the judge held in in contempt of court, not as a punishment for not paying, but to coerce him into paying (or at least showing what happened to all that money).
The whole point of holding someone in contempt is not to punish that person--it is to coerce that person into complying with a lawful court order.
The new judge found that after 14 years, Chadwick was not going to be coerced into complying with the order by further confinement, so holding him in contempt could no longer be considered a form of coercion. At that point, holding him further would have to be considered punishment without a trial. And as you surely are aware, it is illegal to deprive someone of life, liberty, or property in the US without due process of law (see US Constitution, Amendments 5 and 14).
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Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're fundamentally different things. (Score:2, Informative)
Not after 14 years.
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get contempt. Why should judges have the power to imprison people at all?
By all means, make lying to a judge a crime. Then when somebody does it, they are charged with it, a jury rules against them, and then they are sentenced to a finite prison term.
Contempt of court essentially allows people to be imprisoned without the consent of a jury - that is just wrong.
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Lying under oath already is a crime - it's called perjury. However, trying someone for perjury requires that you prove your case "beyond reasonable doubt".
If a man claims not to have $2 million (and we assume that if he does he isn't stupid enough to hold it in bank accounts that can be easily traced to him), how on Earth do you prove he's lying "beyond reasonable doubt"?
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Insightful)
That just shows that he was smart enough not to get caught committing a crime.
A judge should be able to jail someone and direct a prosecutor to file charges. Contempt of court should be a criminal charge that requires a jury conviction.
In this case the guy alledgedly committed perjury or fraud, maybe even both, but is held in contempt. If the prosecution can't prove it then he shouldn't be imprisoned.
What if you went to court and the judge demanded that you produce the secret moon rock presented to Mickey Mouse by Dirk Diggler the night of the Roswell "incident"? You obviously can't do what he asks, do you want to spend 14 years imprisoned until you do?
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Under most circumstances, you can appeal a contempt order.
If a judge ordered you to provide something obviously ridiculous, your contempt conviction would be overturned by an appeal court.
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You can appeal a conviction also. So, why do we need juries?
We need them because the power of the courts need to be held in check by the citizenry. It is not merely enough to have an avenue of appeal.
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Insightful)
If a man claims not to have $2 million (and we assume that if he does he isn't stupid enough to hold it in bank accounts that can be easily traced to him), how on Earth do you prove he's lying "beyond reasonable doubt"?
Yeah, and it can be hard to prove that somebody is a terrorist as well. Does that mean that gitmo is a perfectly reasonable solution?
Yes, it is quite unfortunate that in order to convict somebody of a crime you actually need to have some proof. That is, it is unfortunate up until the point where you are accused of a crime you didn't commit. Then it turns out to be pretty handy.
If there is evidence the guy lied, then try and punish him. If there is no evidence, let him go. It is better to set the gulity free than to punish the innocent.
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason one can be jailed indefinitely for contempt is that one "has the keys to one's own cell", and by complying with the judge's order, they will be immediately released.
When I divorced, my ex could not buy me out of the house, but we wanted the kids to continue to live there. So, she got title (which, surprisingly, she never registered, presumably to not be on the hook for property taxes while I remained on it), while I remained responsible to the lender for the mortgage. Now, the divorce decree required my ex to make the actual payments. My relief, if she did not, was to have a [b]power of sale[/b] over the property, once I demonstrated that I was making the lender whole (making the payments).
Well, she never made a single payment, I sued, got that power of sale, and hired a real estate agent to sell it.
We lost two buyers in a falling market because my ex [b]refused to sign[/b] the agreement of purchase and sale (see, I could offer it for sale, but I could not sell it). I went back to court, seeking, among other things, a finding of [b]contempt[/b] for her ignoring the judge's order to cooperate with the sale.
She would be jailed if found guilty, until she signed, which she could easily do. (It's not clear, in this case, if the respondent could comply.)
In the end, she could have dragged the contempt hearings out for two or three visits ("I haven't got a lawyer, yet."), costing me close to $1000 every time we returned to court, and losing yet another buyer as we got close to winter. I agreed to drop the contempt charge in exchange for an irrevocable [b]power of attorney[/b] to sign the purchase and sale agreement in place of her, and the only matter left for the court to rule upon was the matter of the reimbursement of my legal fees (of which I recovered only a small fraction).
So, given that it's "obvious" that a defendant or respondent can comply with a judge's order, jailing for contempt is not the "big stick" it is made out to be, to be used against those that can't comply, as a "fast track" to imprisonment. It's no different than being held without bail until a speedy trial. In this case, respondent could have offered the defense that he can't comply. But, I gather that he chose 14 year in jail instead of making the legal case.
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this would make a complete mockery of the protections that the Framers intended.
AFAIK Contempt is a common law principle you inherited from us here in the UK. Your framers would have been quite aware of it.
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:4, Interesting)
this would make a complete mockery of the protections that the Framers intended.
AFAIK Contempt is a common law principle you inherited from us here in the UK. Your framers would have been quite aware of it.
Oh, I'm sure they were aware of it. But, you know, part of the reason we went through the whole American Revolution thing (did you hear about that? it was in all the papers), wrote and ratified a Constitution, a Bill of Rights, etc. was to establish greater personal freedoms and liberties than the English legal system permitted at the time.
You kept the English legal system as it was then almost entirely the same*, that includes contempt. I'm not intimately familiar with the US constitution but I don't see anything that makes this unconstitutional. Had your founders seen fit, they had the chance to abolish it, they didn't. I doubt they saw anything wrong with it. Indeed, even in this extreme case from everything I've read it seems to have been used appropriately, they guy seems to have gone through several judges who all believed he had the money but was refusing to comply with the court order, so he remained in contempt. He's had the keys to his cell from day one.
*Aspects of the current US legal system are closer to the old english one than parts of the current English one, e.g. we no longer have jury selection.
Re:Why didn't this happen sooner? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh yeah, because insane, out of sync punishment as deterrent works so well.
The RIAA sues for amounts that exceed anything sensible, did it stop people from copying? We outright KILL people if they killed someone else, did the killing stop?
If you want to fight crime, fight the reasons to commit it. Unless you're willing to do that, punishment will be no deterrent. It will serve as an act of revenge, it will serve as a tool to ensure the same person will not commit it again, but you will not turn anyone who didn't commit it yet away from it.
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So in this case, where a guy was either hiding money from his wife, or refusing to show the judge any evidence that he lost it in the bad investments he says took away his $2.5 million, you're suggesting
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So you're saying he was guilty of contempt unless or until he could prove otherwise? Something sounds wrong with that......
What's wrong is that a judge can actually give someone an indefinite sentence without any proof of guilt whatsoever All he has to do is call it "contempt" and petulantly pound on his desk with a hammer.
If the original judge actually HAD proof that the defendant had the money, he could have issued a court order to have it handed over to the wife. 14 years later, he apparently could not f
Why is this slashdot worthy? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not like this is an RNO story. Chadwick wasn't imprisoned for taking a moral stand. Divorce isn't especially nerdy. What's the relevancy to my life that this story brings?
I'm not trolling, either; I just want to know if there's some angle that I'm missing.
Re:Why is this slashdot worthy? (Score:5, Insightful)
He was imprisoned because the just -though- he was lying. No proof, just a judge's whim. You can't see how that affects you?
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I wouldn't call it a "judges whim". A judge, in a court of law, ordered a plaintiff to comply with an order, i.e.
"Show me the money or show me the proof you lost the money"
An answer of "No" isn't either A or B. You are in contempt of a direct order from a judge of the court. He could have either produced the proof, even if it was a letter from a business partner saying "We lo
Re:Why is this slashdot worthy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot isn't "Technology news for nerds"...just "News for nerds". And before you jump on that, "nerd" doesn't just mean computer programming or whatever. Nerds have a passion for a variety of topics, and one subject I find they are often passionate about is civil rights/constitutional violations/etc. So open up your nerd horizons. Don't feel the need to be stereotyped into sitting behind your computer with a pocket protector and tape on your glasses. If legal rights isn't your cup of tea, that's fine...we all have our individual interests, so just pass on the story without posting. I promise I'll do the same the next time there's a Firefly story or something.
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Re:Why is this slashdot worthy? (Score:5, Insightful)
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If a judge says you must turn over your SSH/PGP private keys, then you are legally obligated to do so.
You are free to appeal, that's what appeals are for. You're free to fight it, again that's how the system is supposed to work, but if in the end you are ordered to turn over the keys, you are legally obligated to do so.
If you believe that having to turn over those keys is something you cannot live with, you are free to take a stand and refuse to turn them over, that's your right as a human being and one of
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... I do not however have any problem at all with people being tossed in jail for however long for failing to comply with a court order. If we didn't allow that we'd have far less justice than we have now.
What if the order was confiscatory, as is apparently the problem in this particular case? If you don't have 2.5 million dollars to give to your ex, you are unable to comply, period. There should be at least some evidence that YOU DO have the money, not just some idle speculation.
This sort of thing scares the hell out of me, because I am in a divorce situation, and to think I could be thrown in jail for noncompliance with a confiscatory order for an indefinite amount of time!
I would rather have a non-fu
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Slashdot is for nerds. Law is code. Peculiar behavior in code is a possible bug worth looking into. This is pretty peculiar behavior, and we code specialists should examine it to see if it indicates a bug.
Lawyers have a better grasp on the practice of law, but we are pretty good at analyzing the mechanical aspects. The public should take an interest in ensuring that law does not serve only lawyers, and we geeks have a skill that lets us help with that oversight. It's a duty we should take seriously, IMO.
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By that logic, any news is therefore applicable to this site, right.
Any news which also engages our civic duty, yes.
Just to get you up to speed -- the United States has been in decline for about 25 years, with various tonics to alleviate the symptoms from time to time. Those tonics have let the disease fester, and now we are faced with a very difficult road ahead. We all, not just geeks, need to figure out how our skills can help bring the nation about or we will go down. Worse yet, we're so tied into the g
What a waste of taxpayers money. (Score:5, Insightful)
I fail to see where the benefit is in keeping an old man in jail for so long, at taxpayers expense, is.
14 years? I've seen figures of $30,000 PA to keep a prisoner captive. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_cost_of_one_prisoner_in_the_U.S [answers.com].
So we're talking $420,000 so far spent on this man. Instead he could have had assets seized and been forced into work, and paying tax, and having some money garnished. Or his actual money would have shown up after a few years when he thought people weren't looking.
It's not as if he was a danger to people on the street - the number one reason to put someone into jail.
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This reminds me of a joke I heard from a court clerk:
Q: Do you know what they call an attorney with an IQ under 80?
A: Your Honor
What a surprise, a misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Lawyer Jailed for Contempt Freed After 14 Years
The fact that he was a lawyer has little relation the story - he could've just as easily been a baker, a banker, a doctor...
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The fact that he was a lawyer has little relation the story - he could've just as easily been a baker, a banker, a doctor...
Actually the fact that he is a lawyer is probably the most important part of this.
You see, the judge is a lawyer too, and he knows that the lawyer in front of him is full of shit and trying to get away with stuff. The only proof required is that he's a lawyer.
Needless to say, throwing all lawyers in jail would be against the interests of the profession in general, so the *real* reason that he's in jail is that the judge is pissed at him for a prank he played on him at the Country Club.
You don't fuck with a
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probably not a banker, [s]he'd have got a bailout by now...
I get your current-events joke. Setting that aside, I don't think you can get bailed out of jail for a contempt charge.
Prove he has the money? (Score:2)
How hard is it to prove he has the money?
Wow, life fail (Score:2)
This has got to be one of the scariest stories that I've ever read. No trial and not even evidence was necessary to put this guy in jail for 14 years. If that doesn't make you question the legal system nothing will. I think there is need for contempt of court punishments but they seriously need to be looked at in light of this case. For example, anything over two weeks should need the agreement of three judges and there should be a cap of a year. I would argue that in cases like this there should be a jury
Re:Wow, life fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes shit like this is necessary. I can't say whether it was in this case, because I don't know the details, but sometimes it is necessary. Personally, from what I've seen in the vast majority of cases where some millionaire divorces his wife and then claims poor, he sure as hell does still have the money and knows damned sure where it is.
There can't be a cap on contempt of court, because if there was, there wouldn't be any court. If I can get sued, lose, and basically say "fuck you, I'm not turning over that money" and just wait three weeks in jail, then what's the motivation for ever paying that money. You'd just wait three weeks and walk away free and clear without having to pay a cent. That's what contempt of court means,
This isn't an issue of trial or no trial, there was a court case, the divorce was a court case, he had ample opportunity within that case to prove he didn't have 5 million dollars(presuming a 50/50 split), he obviously failed to do so. Then the court case was decided, all nice and legal like, and he seemingly cried poor and said he couldn't pay. He again couldn't prove that, so they tossed his ass in jail. Contempt isn't something magical with no trial, and it's not generally the stuff you see on tv where someone just acts a bit like an ass in a court. This is failure to comply with a court order contempt, which is breaking the law. There doesn't need to be a trial on the contempt charge because quite obviously he is in contempt, he's been ordered by a court to do something, and he hasn't done it. It's a bit like being found guilty of murder and then saying, well I don't feel like going to prison. Only difference is they can drag your ass down to jail whereas they can't get back the money you hid offshore, so they do what they can to try and make you do what you should.
Realistically the only reason this old geezer got freed was because he was 74 and the judge reckoned if he'd put up with 14 years he'd put up with another 20 and they got sick of feeding him, not because he was innocent or anything, he's still presumably failing to comply with a legal court order and is so still guilty of contempt of court(since he won this great game of chicken, he presumably has even more contempt for the court.
FFS people, I know slashdot is largely male and largely single and full of contempt and bitterness for women and marriage, but whether or not you feel that a wife getting a portion of the families assets is right or wrong, if you let people refuse to follow the orders of the court you may as well scrap the whole system.
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The problem is you are saying he has to prove that he doesn't have the money. That's totally back to front. The other party should have to prove he does have the money. Making him prove he doesn't have something opens the system to abuse by his wife who presumably hates the guy because she left him to rot in a cell for 14 years (I'm assuming that if she waved the money the judge would probably have let the guy go).
Note that I'm not saying the other party has to know exactly where the money is just build a s
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This shouldn't be a hard matter. The wife can get a civil judgement based upon a preponderance of the evidence (it is more likely that he has $2.5M than not).
Then she can seek to enforce it, and ask him to tesify about the location of the money.
He can say that it doesn't exist or refuse to testify. So, then he can be charged with interference with collection of a lawful debt or perjury or whatever the crime is.
Then a jury needs to decide if there is evidence beyond reasonable doubt that he lied. He does
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:He's just a stubborn liar (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, he was a real asshole. The problem I have with this is that the legal system is supposed to be about what you can prove, not what you "know". You, the judge and I all know that this asshole isn't really broke. But if the judge and his ex-wife's lawyers can't prove that he has the money, then it's not right to hold him in a cell for so long.
LK
Re:He's just a stubborn liar (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it was a complete waste to ever stick him in prison. As others have said, let him loose, tax the hell out of him, garnish his wages, and make him pay what he owed. But sitting in prison has simply cost the tax payers money, prevented him from paying his owed debt by working, and potentially collecting the money he "hid". The judge was a fool in this case and accomplished nothing.
In fact this is a good example of why it's stupid to ever stick someone in prison because they owe money to someone else. It's far better to keep them out of prison, make sure they're working, and then collect the money owed. In fact, what are the odds that instead, they could have let him go, watched his bank transactions for a bit, then frozen his accounts and paid his debts? If he really did still have access to the money.
Re:He's just a stubborn liar (Score:5, Insightful)
Which means that he should have been tried in a court of law with a jury, and the prosecution should have had to prove that he did have he money.
Just because we think someone is an asshole should not mean we get to imprison them.
Re:He's just a stubborn liar (Score:4, Insightful)
Then when she sued for divorce he hid all his money in some offshore company and pretended it was lost in a "bad investment". It was a blatant lie. This guy deserves to rot in prison until he decides to come clean.
No, he deserves to be charged with purjury, which is the crime of lying under oath. Then a jury needs to be convinced beyond reasonable doubt that he did in fact lie. Then he gets punished per the laws passed by the appropriate legislative body (which probably won't include 14 year prison sentences).
People should go to jail for committing crimes. Crimes should be established by laws passed by legislative bodies. Whether somebody has committed a serious crime should be determined by a jury of their peers.
Re:He's just a stubborn liar (Score:4, Insightful)
"This guy is a real tool....This guy deserves to rot in prison"
Yeah, but what happens when some judge thinks you are a real tool, and deserves to rot in prison for 14 years? With no trial? No evidence? No jury?
Abuse of power (Score:3, Interesting)
More reason to never get married! (Score:2, Insightful)
Like the songs says... (Score:2)
That's what ya get folks
For Makin Whoopee
Truly Insane... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is NOT the type of country I want to live in. I would rather live in the old Soviet Union!
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Guess you'd make a good judge, with that reasoning
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You sir, are in contempt.
Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect 200 dollars.
Stay there for 14 years.