Lawyers' Free Speech Upheld

A jury's finding that a lawyer's accusatory statements about a judge in a pleading prejudiced the administration of justice is not enough to uphold the lawyer's conviction for contempt against a First Amendment challenge, the Missouri Supreme Court decided May 11. “Before a lawyer can be found guilty of criminal contempt for what is written in his or her pleadings, there must be some finding that the lawyer's statements were made with actual knowledge of their falsity or that the statements were in fact false and were made with reckless disregard of whether they were true or false,” the court decided. (Smith v. Pace, Mo., No. SC 90425, 5/11/10)
The lawyer in this case was sentenced to a few months' imprisonment for statements he made about a judge in an action to quash a grand jury subpoena. The judge had denied the attorney's motion to quash a subpoena duces tecum directed to the lawyer's secretary for records ostensibly related to his representation of a client who was under investigation. In a subsequent appellate pleading attacking the denial of the motion to quash, the lawyer stated that the actions of the judge and a county prosecutor in relation to the grand jury were, “in the least, an appearance of impropriety and, at most, a conspiracy by these officers of the court to threaten, instill fear and imprison innocent persons to cover-up and chill public awareness of their own apparent misconduct using the power of their positions to do so.” The petition also stated that the grand jury was “being used by those in power in the judicial system as a covert tool to threaten, intimidate and silence any opposition to their personal control.”
The jury found the lawyer guilty of indirect criminal contempt after being asked to find whether the prosecution had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the lawyer's statements prejudiced the administration of justice.