Calling Up Trouble
By: Indigo Null
About 30 minutes into the 9am rent court docket in courtroom two, someone’s cell phone went off for a few seconds. It was silenced rapidly, but the bailiffs moved quickly to locate the person it belonged to.
Bailiffs identified a younger white man with a lot of tattoos sitting a few rows back from the front of the courtroom on the side typically occupied by tenants, and demanded the man give them his phone. When the bailiffs had begun searching for the culprit, the man had pulled a flip phone out of his pocket for a few seconds (according to him, to check and make sure it wasn’t his making noise) but the bailiffs spotted him with his phone out and assumed he was responsible for the disruption. The bailiffs told him he shouldn’t have a cell phone turned on in the courtroom at all, and demanded he hand it over, but he refused and said it had not been his phone that had rang. The exchange got heated and the confrontation escalated, and the man got angry and got up, saying he was going to leave. The bailiffs blocked him and said that wasn’t an option, then demanded he hand over the phone. They grabbed him by the arms and led him into the hallway, then onlookers in the courtroom watched the bailiffs handcuff him roughly before leading him to another part of the courthouse.
Toward the end of the docket, around 10:30, he was led back into the courtroom when his case was called. At this point it was revealed he was actually a landlord, not a tenant as may have been implied by where he was sitting in the courtroom. Judge Boles told the landlord that they’d talk about his case in a minute, after they discussed the situation with the cell phone. The Judge told the bailiffs to unlock the landlord’s handcuffs and explained to the landlord that he could be held in contempt of court, for which he would likely be given either jail time or a serious fine. The judge gave him two options: he can either go through with a contempt hearing, or apologize to the people in the courtroom.
The landlord turned to the people sitting in the benches of courtroom two and apologized for “disrespecting” everyone and “interrupting” the court proceedings. Judge Boles dismissed the contempt charges and proceeded with the failure to pay rent hearing.
The tenant had not shown up, but after reviewing the complaint, the judge noted that there was no license or lead inspection information listed. He said it was clear that the landlord had not filed the complaint since someone else’s name was listed on it, but he couldn’t allow him to correct it and dismissed the case entirely.
As the landlord left, Judge Boles informed him he could pick up his phone at the end of the day.
It is concerning, regardless of who you are, that something as simple as forgetting to silence your cell phone in a courthouse, or just checking to make sure it is silenced, could lead to fines and jail time. While it is good that Judge Boles gave the landlord a chance to avoid such extreme consequences, it is unsettling to see a firsthand example of the way everyday behavior and human mistakes are criminalized in the courthouse.