In The Court For County, Tennessee: Fill & Download for Free

A story out of Knox County, Tennessee in the early 2000s had a man arraigned for stealing a car. The judge asked the man if he wished to plead guilty or not guilty.The man stood and said, ‘I would like to explain why I stole the car’…He was found guilty.(Update: I am aware that this particular instance does not technically constitute a full-fledged trial, with jury, witnesses and the like. I apologize for the misinterpretation.)

You should be ashamed of yourself, Quora. No one answering this seems to even be aware of United States v. Shipp (203 U.S. 563 (1906)), the only time the Supreme Court had to hold a criminal trial.The charge was contempt. The defendants were a Tennessee sheriff, and several of his deputies who, the Court alleged, had willfully ignored a notice that it had stayed the execution of Ed Johnson, an African-American who alleged his conviction for raping a white woman had been tainted by the deliberate exclusion of other blacks from the jury that heard the case and that mobs intimidating his lawyer from filing for a change of venue had thus denied him the effective assistance of counsel, all adding up to a fatal (literally as well as legally, as it turned out) denial of due process.If you are familiar enough with American history, you will guess how this ends: The sheriff, upon learning that there is even the remotest chance that the Supreme Court will disturb the racial order, decides instead not so much to take the law into his own hands (hell, at that time and that place that’s probably SOP) as to wash his hands of the law, and lets an angry mob (is there any other kind?) into the county jail to break Johnson out for a lynchin’.There was no other recourse for the Court but to try Shipp and his deputies for contempt. He would be personally prosecuted by both the Attorney General and Solicitor General (I wonder if the latter did so wearing the traditional frock coat, which might still have been in fashion at the time anyway), His lawyers argued that the Court could not try him since, by charging him, it had become a party to the case. Justice Holmes wrote unanimously for the Court because they as justices weren’t personally affected in anyway; instead it was the Court as an institution that would suffer a loss of prestige and be adversely affected if it allowed some backwoods sheriff to just up and let the locals lynch a capital defendant before the Court could consider his appeal. So, no conflict of interest that mattered (Although I wonder from a modern perspective whether appointing a special master or three to hear the case might not have been the best solution).All the defendants were found guilty as charged, by the court that charged them, and sentenced to about three months. Most of them earned time off for good behavior.This would make a good movie.

There is a bailiff in the Henry County, Tennessee courthouse who pisses me off to NO end. I will only tell the one that really pissed me off.My boyfriend at the time was in jail for aggravated assault. The police kind of tricked him though. In Tennessee, you can get leniency for your first offence. So they charged him with disturbing the peace and did not charge him for the assault. The case was dismissed and they immediately charged him with the assault. The police even told me that they were going to do that and I thought it was pure bull.So, I felt I had to address the situation and help him in court. I went to all of his court dates and there was this woman bailiff who was always giving me a hard time. I carry a messenger bag and even though the only thing in it was my credit card, she wouldn’t let me bring it in the court. Now keep in mind, they let women bring their purses into the court. But for some reason, I couldn’t do it.Well, on the last day, I talked to the DA. They offered him a time served sentence when he pled guilty in a lesser charge. When I left the DA’s room, I saw my then ex-boyfriend and I winked at him and gave him a thumbs up to let him know he would be getting out of jail.I walked towards the door to leave the court. The bailiff was in front of the door and she was shaking her head. Then she said, “You don’t talk to the inmates.”That was the last straw. I told her, “Do you have a sign that says I can’t? No. Have you or the judge ever told us not to do that? No. I will talk to whoever I want to. And if you want to continue to be a bitch, I will sue your ass off for trying to suppress my first amendment rights. I am sick and tired of you bullying me every time I am here, so get the fuck out of my way, I am leaving.”It was loud. The judge heard me and she laughed. I walked out the door.Talking to the lawyer later, he told me there were no rules that you couldn’t talk to the inmates. I had seen plenty of other people do it and she didn’t chastise them. I was right, the bailiff was a bully who was abusing her authority.Now, I will admit, I probably shouldn’t have done that. But she pushed further and further every time I was there.