as usual please excuse my ignorance...but here goes......i have a jp who loves the truancy cases she has and is now holding parents in comtempt of court and confining them in jail for failing to complete a 20 page paper on the evils of truancy that she has required them to write.....confinement, in the order she submits to the sheriff, is to continue until the paper is completed.......no library in the county jail or internet access, mind you.....
here is my immediate question......my memeory is that contempt in JP court cannot exceed 3 days regardless of the type of contempt.....
forget the issue of whether the jp has the authority to place the defendant in jail to begin with for failing to abide by the terms of the order...i am still looking into that one.....
ANY HELP?

[This message was edited by mhartman on 08-24-09 at .]

The punishment for contempt of a justice court or municipal court is a fine of not more than $100 or confinement in the county or city jail for not more than three days, or both such a fine and confinement in jail. Tex. Gov't Code Sec. 21.002

Very touchy area.

It's true that for criminal contempt (punishing a past act of contempt, as opposed to attempting to coerce present/future compliance with an order) the max for a JP court is as pointed out above.

But there is also Government Code 21.002 (e): Except as provided by Subsection (h), this section does not affect a court's power to confine a contemnor to compel the contemnor to obey a court order.

Assuming the original order was not void, the question of whether the JP could confine a person is probably not your biggest issue. More likely, the issues will be due process issues in how the hearing and confinement procedure happened: Was the contemnor properly warned? Was the right to counsel properly protected? Was the process appropriate and fair? Was the paperwork appropriate?

For an interesting array of municipal and/or justice court judges (and sometimes other levels of the judiciary) being admonished or disciplined for going overboard on use of their contempt powers, you need only look at the public or private disciplines meted out at the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct site: http://www.scjc.state.tx.us/

Contempt is an area of which the Commission takes special note to ensure that the rights of the accused were properly protected. As shown in the list of admonishments and sanctions at the Commission's website, it is not all that rare for a judge to proceed to confine a contemnor without really following all the required safeguards.

I am sure all the procedural safeguards were in place and all admonishments given.....aren't they always in a Justice Court?
Thanks for your responses.....just starting to look into this....

As the insidious Cobb put it in Silverado:

"We're gonna give you a fair trial ... followed by a first-class hangin'."

Of some note will be whether the contempt was direct ("Go to a place where it's really warm. I ain't writin' no stupid essay.") or constructive (deadline for submission of essay passes without submission of essay; i.e., occurs outside judge's presence or court's facilities). Direct contempt may not require the level of notice and opportunity for hearing that constructive contempt requires. Still, I think Ann's admonishment about TCJC's willingness to ding JPs for contempt slip-ups is appropos.

Wow! Is this why Ira has so many new kids this year? Enforcing truancy orders is an exercise in futility, which is why I didn't want these cases when I was in municipal court. Not to mention that I think these parents are probably entitled to attorney's when they are facing jail time via contempt. I didn't think the city would be happy paying for court appointed attorney's on Class "c" cases. Our JP was only too happy to get them for some reason.

An idea .... many of these parents are likely on probation in one of our courts. Why don't we just file MTR's alleging JP contempt? I'd only require a 10 page paper.

riiight...and the fact that our JP won't copy your JP led to us losing megabucks for the Juvenile Probation Office. The school pulled out of the partnership (close to 1/3 of our funding) because we won't treat people like Snyder does...!

Lisa L. Peterson
Nolan County Attorney

Wasnt that an old alice cooper song?
who knew he was talkin bout renegade JPs....
i wasnt involved in the proceeding....just heard about it after the fact.....
Think we all have better things to do than shepard parents of 17 year olds who wont go to school....multi thousand $ fines on numerous counts.....with an overcrowed jail to boot
Come on brumley gotta be another song or movie quote that fits here too!

gee- now I wish I was going to make it to Corpus..just to hear what Bromley & Co do with this one. Do I hear a banjo???

Lisa L. Peterson
Nolan County Attorney

Its really more of a working title. Sorry to hear you won't make it Lisa.

from detention to, well......detention....would that be considered a lateral transfer?