A Post Filled with Contempt

Over the past few months I’ve been getting some really interesting questions about contempt. Disclaimer: The real experts on our faculty when it comes to contempt are John Saxon, Michael Crowell, and Cheryl Howell—I’m just dabbling here. But there’s a connection to my field (sentencing), in that many of the questions I’m getting relate to the permissible punishment for criminal contempt. Is criminal contempt a crime? At different times our courts have said different things. At various times they’ve called it “sui generis,” “quasi-criminal,” “criminal in nature,” and the more all-purpose “punitive.” But occasionally they put it to a finer point, writing (albeit in dicta) that “criminal contempts are crimes,” 313 N.C. 432 (1985), and “[c]riminal contempt is a crime,” 187 N.C. App. 55 (2007). Nowhere in Chapter 5A (the contempt chapter) does the General Assembly use the term “conviction” as applied to contempt, and we know from State v. Reaves, 142 N.C. App. 629 (2001), that contempt adjudications do not count as convictions for prior record level purposes in the sentencing of a later crime. There is no right to counsel at direct criminal contempt proceedings, and likewise no right to a jury trial for contempt, a “petty offense” (unless, perhaps, the sentence exceeds six months, Bloom v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 194 (1968)). What difference does it make? Well, first of all I had to justify to Jeff that this post belonged on the North Carolina Criminal Law blog at all. Second, what criminal contempt is arguably has a bearing [...]