Legal News

Attorney?s Rant Includes Asking Judge If He?s a Pedophile; Ends Up in Jail

By Dan Slater

On occasion, we get confused: Are we writing the Law Blog, or the Attorneys Behaving Badly Blog? Today’s news churn brings us, via a Loyal LB Reader, a little story of alleged attorney misconduct from Missouri’s Greene County Circuit Court in Springfield.

Rather than monetary sanctions, Carlos D. Romious’s court conduct has earned him some jail time — four months worth. The AP reports that last week Judge Mountjoy sentenced Romious — whose rather spare Web site can be found here – because of his “rude and angry” demeanor toward the judge during a jury trial in which Romious was representing Alton L. Vaughn for allegedly defrauded eight people by, among other things, misrepresenting that he could practice law.

It’s unclear from court records what ultimately led Mountjoy to incarcerate Romious, but the judgment of contempt (which can be found here) that Judge Mountjoy filed on July 24 outlines the following outbursts by Romious:

• Romious “loudly and rudely” asked Judge Mountjoy “if the ‘proceeding was a joke’ and stated to the Court ‘you’re going to sit your a** up there.’ “
• Romious accused Judge Mountjoy of “corrupting and stinking up the case” and “corrupting this system.”
• When Judge Mountjoy ordered the attorney to appear in court at 8 a.m. on June 18, Romious said “don’t hold your breath.” When Romious did show up on June 18, he at one point asked the judge, “Are you a pedophile?”
• The judgment also references an instance where Romious wadded up papers and smashed them with his shoe after taking the documents from his opposing counsel.

The fraud trial was scheduled to start on June 19, but Romious did not show up to court. The AP reports that Court records indicate Romious was scheduled to appear as a defendant in a Kansas federal court that day on a charge of assaulting a court security officer. That charge reportedly stemmed from a May incident in which Romious allegedly assaulted a court security officer after he refused to pass through a metal detector in a courthouse in Kansas City.

Correction: An earlier version of this post suggested that Greene County Circuit Court was in Kansas City, Missouri. In fact, it’s in Springfield.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 31, 2008 (boomark / email).