Circuit Judge Daniel Rozak obviously does not like yawning in the courtroom. He sentenced Clifton Williams to six months in jail after he let out a loud yawn when his cousin was being sentenced on a felony drug charge. The cousin actually received probation.
The incident occurred in the Will County Courthouse in Joliet.
The judge (and the prosecutor) believed that the yawn was an intentional effort to disrupt the proceedings. However, the Tribune has found that Rozak routinely jails people for everything from cellphone calls to speaking loudly. Indeed, of the 30 judges in the 12th Judicial Circuit, he is responsible for one-third of the contempt charges.
I am very sympathetic to the judge’s effort to respond to disruptions and this may have been a rather transparent effort to interrupt the proceedings or mock the court. However, six months is a ridiculous sentence and Rozak is clearly too-quick-on-the-trigger with contempt sanctions.
I am also curious how Rozak can eliminate the possibility of an involuntary yawn as a matter of intent. There is a big difference between shouting in a courtroom — which is clearly voluntary — and a yawn that (while suspicious) could be innocent.
He is not alone in such excessive responses to courtroom misconduct, here and here and here and here.
For the full story, click here.
Can the person with the Sleep Apnea ask a trial by a Jury?
How can a judge imprison by a spur of a moment a person?
Where is the ACLU???
Where is the Constitution???
Where are its protectors???
This judge should be impeached!
donatella, Chris Matthews interviewed the man this evening on his show He claims to be a Ron Paul voter and is fairly well spoken. Hee did have an earpiece as you noted but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he is a plant of some sort. What do you think is going on? In who’s employ do you think he is, if any ones?
BIL, I followed your link, thanks. I think my newspaper dropped the strip because I don’t recall the run being anywhere near as long as indicated. It had a very short run as I recall and the end as stated in your link is a total surprise. WoW!
My city paper put Doonesbury on the editorial page very early on. They actually censored it by dropping certain daily installments and were thinking about dropping it entirely but got a lot of letters condemning their position so they moved it from the comics page to editorial. They started polling their readers on the popularity of their comics and dropped a lot of the comics I liked (while retaining things like ‘Hi and Lois’) as the tone of the paper became more conservative. I just stopped even looking at the comics page well before I canceled the subscription.
Well somebody smacked down buddha. Gotta love it!
Mike Spindell: Watch the first video LK posted and notice his ear piece. This is a BS sensationalist story.
Still reading comic books, eh buddhaspank!
Rafflaw(?), why don’t you go play on the freeway, preferably with a bag over your shrunken head. You savvy, cockroach?
Lotta,
The name of the strip you are thinking of is Outland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outland_(comics)
The trolls are multiplying. Whatever your name is now, it is time to go home because your birther club meeting is about to start. If you are going to be a pain in the backside, so be it, but leave your filthy mouth out of it.
I love to read all of your self-serving juvenile posts. It reminds me of a bunch of old ladies sitting in a musty room gossiping about the beautiful young lady who just moved into town. Talk about “LAW”, don’t talk about the “troll” who gets your goat! Don’t feed into it, you are all to predictable and easy. I love to mess with a bunch of dorks who sit in front of a computer all night blogging and text messaging each other. You dorks give me a barrels worth of entertainment! Buddhapest is my personal favorite, he is in the upper bracket of braindead sycophant!
The best way to deal with a troll is to ignore him/her/it. “Don’t feed the trolls” is good advice. Trolls like all people who post on blogs want others to notice what they say and are rewarded and encouraged by responses, if only everyone would ignore them they would give up and go elsewhere.
C.Everett Kook: that sounds like Berke Breathed’s comic strip after he retired Bloom County
(Delighted screech) AACK, OF COURSE IT WAS!! Bill the Cat and Opus and the whole gang laying naked in the Perriwinkle patch or sitting on the mens couch in their underware… Thank you.
As Dan Quayle so correctly observed, “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind” LOL
The man given 6 months in the big house was not just yawning, he was yawning while black which is a much more serious crime.
C.Everett Kook: dog yawning 🙂
I have a vocal cat- sometimes I just wile away my time mirroring the cats inflection with my meowing replies to him to see which one of us gets bored and quits first.
C.Everett, we are having ‘staring contests’ with our critters… Awesome!
lottakatz :
that sounds like Berke Breathed’s comic strip after he retired Bloom County
BIL, The Far Side was always one of my favorite comics. At the very end of the FS and before Boondocks he did another strip- it was a sort of a Far Side follow-up because it used characters from the FS but was a much, much darker and sureal vision. It was not ‘funny’ funny at all. A door literally opened from a Far Side landscape (as I recall) and a little girl (African American as I recall) followed the stairs down and wound up in a different world. The comic strips thereafter were set in that world. She may have been taking another FS character to her ‘home’.
It ran for a very short time in my local daily paper then Larson quit entirely until Boondocks. I don’t know the name of that segue into retirement from DS and can’t find a reference to it. (Not even in the Wikipedia!!) It ran under a name other than ‘The Far Side’ though and I really liked it. Is any of this familiar to you as a Larson fan or did I just dream that this happened?
Buddha Is Laughing:
that Far Side cartoon is one of the all time best, nice analogy
LindyLou, lottakatz:
I keep myself happily amused some nights making my dog yawn(simple things for simple people)
Lotta,
It’s really pretty funny. In both the “ha ha” and the “straight jacket” senses of the word. It’s the same thing every time. The funniest part is the “hacking” he so enjoys, he seems to think I take it seriously or it has some effect other than making him look like a whack job.
Are you familiar with The Far Side? This is what I hear in Wayne’s posts, “blah blah blah Ginger blah blah Ginger blah blah Bad Ginger blah blah blah”. It makes me giggle.
I like the etymology of first names because parents seem to know instinctively how their kids will turn out. For example, the name “Wayne” derives from the Old English word “waegn” and refers to a wagon maker. Now far be it from me to criticize the monumental intellect of our own “Wayne” here, but I have to guess he is a maker of sh*t wagons judging by his potty mouth and even smellier opinions and conclusions.
Wayne 1, August 11, 2009 at 9:02 pm
My sexy wife is making rolled tacos for dinner…. Yum! For desert I think I will feast on her gorgeous, silky, tanned body. I so love being married to a gorgeous, mouthwatering latina. Not only that she is a killer cook. Ciao……….
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So was Lorena Bobbitt, then she decided to serve slice and a hotdog.