Man Jailed for Insulting Judge After Case Ended

welcome once again to lato's law here's steve leto we've talked a lot about florida man and now it's time to talk about florida judge because a man from florida actually got in trouble for writing a letter to a florida judge telling him what he thought of him and as a result the judge threw the man in jail in jail and this is a crazy story because a judge shouldn't do that so from the south florida sun sentinel mark freeman wrote the article uh jamie sent it to me he got 30 days in jail for his letter cursing out the judge don't you have a right to criticize the court and keep in mind cursing out the judge we're simply talking about words on paper words on paper so a man wrote a letter slamming a south florida judge as incompetent and unfit to serve in a follow mouth letter and then spent 30 days in jail as a result the mans from royal palm beach he's 41 years old he's waging a free speech fight that could decide whether floridians have a right to tell a judge what they can do with their ruling a state appeals court panel is reviewing the case they express surprise that the man wound up in legal trouble for telling off a judge after his case was over so here is the situation man has a case in front of a judge the case ends after that the man writes a letter to the judge telling him what he thinks the judge the judge calls the man back in and has him thrown in jail and there's a distinction there to be made things that happen during litigation things that happen outside of or after litigation one of the judges at this recent hearing said if the case is over and a disgruntled litigant writes a judge and says look i think you did a lousy job you missed these points what's wrong with that i mean judges have to have a thick skin too and that's precisely what the man himself argued after the target of his letter filed the contempt charge against him we're talking about palm beach county circuit judge howard coates jr who held the man in contempt for writing him the letter the man had blasted the judge over his decision to dismiss a 500 million dollar civil lawsuit the man had filed against the palm beach county sheriff's office in this suit the man claimed the sheriff's office had wasted a friend's time over a seat belt citation now some of you are saying that steve that's a stupid lawsuit i'm not saying it wasn't stupid lawsuits could follow all the time and they get thrown out all the time but the point is that if you're a judge and you make a ruling the case is dismissed and one of the litigants writes you an angry letter is that something for which you can drag the letter writer into your courtroom and then have them locked up in his typewritten letter and by the way he took the time to type the letter up [Laughter] in his typewritten letter the man called the judge a effing hypocrite and added that he can't wait till the voters wake up and get rid of these effing clowns you call judges so he used the f word a couple times but he called the judge a hypocrite and a clown but noticed clowns was plural and so there he's actually criticizing the entire bench he's not criticizing just one man he's criticizing the entire bench the judge said the letter included statements and representations calculated to lessen the authority and dignity of the court and impugned my reputation in the community well the question is if you get a letter you open it up and you're reading it how many people in the community know about it none unless you consider yourself the community but that wouldn't make any sense and likewise how would it lessen the authority and dignity of the court again because this is between you and the letter writer so according to a court transcript the judge told the man you have accused me of being incompetent that causes personal harm but the harm goes beyond me it goes to the judicial system as well i'm going to make a point here okay and this is an extremely important point as a palm beach county circuit judge howard k coates jr who is incompetent the man is incompetent and i i want to make sure this is clear as possible my name is steve lato l-e-h-t-o i'm an attorney in the state of michigan i'm easy enough to find google me you'll get sick of me real fast and i'm stating for the record for the record my opinion is that judge howard k coates jr of the palm beach county circuit court is in fact incompetent and i believe he's incompetent because he does not understand that when someone writes you a letter personally insulting you that you can simply take it and throw it away and ignore it and no one know about it it wouldn't be published it wouldn't hurt you in the community the fact that you don't understand that makes you incompetent okay got it another judge was randomly assigned to rule on the contempt case found the letter amounted to a clear and presence danger to the orderly administration of justice he sentenced the man to six months of probation with the first 30 days be spent behind bars so another judge is actually just as incompetent there'll be judge robert panz p-a-n-s-e pans pants pansy i'm not sure and i apologize i'm not trying to make fun of the name i just don't know how to pronounce it after the man protested the judge explained the bounds of speech are not limitless and the man's scandalous and noxious allegations against the judge crossed a line they crossed a line you cannot assault a judge apparently in florida that led of course the man's challenging this to the fourth district court of appeals that's in west palm beach the judges could not be reached tuesday despite calls to their offices but judges typically do not comment on pending litigation the man by the way who's in trouble here because he was held in contempt for this works as a night shift security guard and also cleans carpets he was a combat soldier for the us army served three deployments in iraq and afghanistan and now suffers from ptsd in a statement released by his attorney um they called the battle over the letter a very challenging experience one of the points that's made by the attorney for the man who was held in contempt is that the letter couldn't harm the justice system because the lawsuit was over when the man sent it so the letter mr jenkins sent could have and should have simply been relegated to the trash bin meanwhile uh aaron kaplan a first amendment expert and professor at loyola law school in los angeles agreed saying all judge coats needed to do is take the letter and stick at the file and not worry himself about it kaplan says citizens can criticize a judge all they want but not in a courtroom or in a court filing on a pending issue and so that's the distinction and i've talked before about how you behave in a courtroom and as an attorney i'm very aware of it because when i go to court which i do more often than the average person i have to watch how i behave so you are very respectful to the court you're respectful to the other litigants you're respectful of people who are watching respectful everybody you're respectful in a courtroom so obviously in a courtroom you wouldn't call the judge on the bench names okay you wouldn't do that you wouldn't do that maybe the movies but not in real life likewise in litigation or paperwork you file with the court on a pending case you would have to watch what you say and there are court rules on this so in michigan they've got what's called the michigan court rules the mcrs and in the michigan court rules it actually addresses what you are allowed to put in pleadings what you cannot put in pleadings and if you put scandalous material or obscenities in pleadings you'll get in trouble for it and the court can strike the pleadings meaning that the court can actually say we've got your filing here but we're not going to accept we're going to toss and make you refile it without that stuff in there and likewise if you were to get out of control in the courtroom and start calling the judge names or the you know insulting the court itself uh there's rules on that also and the rules arise different places depending on whether you're a the actual litigant or an attorney attorneys are actually out to a higher standard so there are ethical rules that attorneys have got to follow when it comes to how they behave in a courtroom but this letter did not happen in a courtroom in that sense the man may have opened the letter in his chambers if that's where he got the mail but there was no pending case between the man who wrote the letter and the man who read the letter was a judge who was not presiding over any cases involving that man so at that point the man who wrote the letter is simply a typical person he's just a guy out there who wrote a letter and he has the right to be critical whether it's the nicest thing to do yeah you know i don't know but the point is that if you're going to get into politics you need to have a thick skin the idea that if you run for office and you want everyone to like you you're dreaming but if you also think that if someone comes after you and calls you names you're gonna get upset and bent out of shape and have someone thrown in jail for it uh you really need to rethink your calling in life i would argue that the first guy that we talked about the first judge that we talked about shouldn't even be a judge lacks the demeanor to be a judge judge howard k coates junior lacks the demeanor to be a judge and i would also say county judge robert panz uh who actually ruled on this case after the first judge complained about it um likewise and i don't know if he's doing that for his friend or why he would do that but you'd think the second judge would look at this and go wait the guy wrote you an insulting letter toss it toss it i mean now because you've publicized it it's made national news now everyone knows you're an incompetent judge and and and it kind of proves the man's point so i don't don't know what to tell you but like i said before in my opinion the first judge is incompetent the second judge likewise incompetent uh but i again i don't know the rationale behind the second judge actually agreeing with the first judge other than and this is what's sad about this so many people comment my videos and they go steve these judges are all in cahoots it's like you know boys club behind the closed doors they're all working with each other they're all taking care of each other and i'm always like yeah conspiracy theories whatever now it turns out once in a while you get an incompetent judge who can get another incompetent judge to help them out makes you think maybe they are i don't know i'm not saying they are in cahoots whatever that means i'm just saying it does not look good so the second judge should have told the first judge dude i'm sorry suck it up and it's gonna happen and all we can hope is that if these guys run for reelection which i think they do that a little more publicity gets out there on this and people can say wait a second that's the judge who if you insult him when you've got no cases pending before him he might have you dragged into court anyways and throw you in jail huh interesting so that's what you get i guess uh so again the man got 30 days in jail for a letter insulting the judge the question is don't you have a right to criticize the court in florida you might not but i suspect the court of appeals is going to spin this around i'll keep watching for it as soon as as soon as they do spin it around i'll let you know questions or comments put them below those talk to you later bye-bye thank you for watching lato's law the next time you have a thought let it go

Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 73,875

Rating: 4.9594235 out of 5

Keywords: lemon law, michigan lemon law, lemon law attorney, lemon law lawyer, http://www.lehtoslaw.com, steve lehto

Id: egjLcWHZPRA

Length: 12min 20sec (740 seconds)

Published: Sat May 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Plastic_Chair599]

Judges power to over ride the constitution is mind boggling. Open and shut free speech.

[u/stink_pickle]

The judge was wrong, but the guy doing it seems to have baited him and he fell for it. The case he was angry about was a $500M lawsuit against a sheriff's office for wasting his friend's time over a seat belt violation. The judge should have seen that coming a mile away along with the judge on the contempt ruling. SMH, idiots got played hard. lol

[u/WingedRyno]

Bouncers, Facebook administrators, forum moderators....these are all positions where horrible human nature of this variety, born of insecurity, can be found any day of the week.

But it's a whole new level when this same lack of self esteem finds a badge or a gavel to express itself.

[u/Whatsthisnotgoodcomp]

It's an absolute joke that worthless cowards that deserve contempt can claim it's illegal to contempt them.

[u/MisterDamage]

At 4:03 we see why I like Steve Lehto. He goes on the record, speaking of a judge who has just jailed someone for 30 days for calling him incompetent in a private letter, and publicly calls that judge incompetent. Then makes sure that he can be found if the judge wants to come after him for it. Thug life Steve.

[u/Tom_Wheeler]

Just post the article. Jesus.