Consecutive Sentences for Criminal Contempt

One of the first posts I wrote on this blog was about the punishment for criminal contempt. The post included a discussion about whether sentences for contempt could be run consecutively—something our appellate courts hadn’t yet ruled on at the time. In State v. Burrow, decided last week, the court of appeals approved a trial court’s orders sentencing a defendant to six consecutive 30-day terms of imprisonment for contempt. Burrow involved a defendant tried and convicted for attempted felony breaking or entering. He was also convicted of being a habitual felon, raising the punishment class for the attempted breaking or entering from Class I to Class E. The jury found an aggravating factor. The judge found that it outweighed the lone mitigating factor and sentenced the defendant from the top of the aggravated range for Prior Record Level VI: 63–88 months. In addition to the felony sentence, the court entered six orders finding the defendant guilty of direct criminal contempt. The appellate opinion in Burrow doesn’t give much detail about what happened, but the trial court orders themselves, available as part of the appellate record, do. The defendant did not challenge the substance of the contempt orders on appeal (indeed, the judgments imposing the contempt indicate that he pled guilty to it). He did not complain, for example, that his multiple uses of profanity were all part of a single contempt. Cf. United States v. Murphy, 326 F.3d 501 (4th Cir. 2003) (holding, under federal law, that the defendant’s outburst in which [...]