Posted on 11/20/2004 10:02:03 AM PST by 4.1O dana super trac pak
A ringing cell phone landed a 17-year-old Patchogue girl facing drug charges in a jail cell this week after an angry district court judge sentenced her to 21 days for contempt.
Mariela Acevedo of 21 Hammond St. incurred the wrath of District Court Judge Salvatore Alamia on Tuesday. As she awaited her hearing, an electronic device went off in Alamia's Central Islip courtroom and he warned everyone to shut off all cell phones and pagers or face contempt charges.
"If you don't know how to shut it off, go outside and introduce it to the heel of your shoe, he said according to a transcript.
When Acevedo's phone subsequently sounded, Alamia called the teenager forward and asked, "Did you think I was playing with you?"
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
Or, it was perhaps a coercive threat that she'd better plead out the next day or suffer the max. I do hope that the broader record gets reviewed, to see if there is a pattern of such events from this judge - major slaps for minor peccadilos prior to conclusion of arguments.
Why didn't the judge call the girl on the phone-fiddling then? "Stop fiddling with that phone, turn it off, and give it to me." That would have been a more reasonable move if the goal was to keep order, rather than to just be punitive.
Acevedo wasn't jailed for her ringing cell phone at all. The headline is wrong - she was jailed for criminal possession of a controlled substance.
Yeah, the comment "do you think I was playing with you," which might otherwise make sense, has a kind of bizarre twist in that context.
Note that the 45 days wasn't passed until the next day, when she pleaded out. A coercive move? Who knows.
Another possibility would be to "tinfoil" the courtroom - make it into a Faraday cage.
I much agree with you.
Rebellion belongs at DU.
HARDLY an abuse of power.
Our culture has become outrageously abusive of authority; rebellious in general
and deaf to following instructions.
Such that . . . now, just to get someone's attention
one has to use a 4 X 4 where as a switch might have worked in decades past.
Cheers for the judge.
"In a courtroom, you do what the judge says - or face the consequences."
THAT IS SUPER, SUPER, SUPER
BASIC
REALITY TESTING!!! Sheesh.
Hopefully--and only hopefully--the judge got her attention.
My adopted sister was plenty skillful at rationalizing and justifying her actions from at least age 12. She spent the rest of her suicidally shortened life at 40 in and out of prison and on and off drugs.
It is INSANITY--and/or TERMINAL STUPIDITY to keep digging in front of a judge when one's hole is already plenty deep.
Perhaps it woould have been much MORE instructive for the judge to have turned her over his knee and swatted her behind several good whacks with a good elm switch. Or perhaps just slapping her face a good solid slap to wake her up.
A night in jail could have been the most loving wake-up call the arrogant brat will ever receive in life. At the rate she's going, she'll likely be classified sociopathic and become exceedingly familiar with jails and prisons for good cause.
I find your rants at the judge very ill placed.
Winking on the part of judges at terminally stupid rebellion is estroying our society. Glad the judge took some action. Sorry it was concurrent.
The judge wasn't seated to judge "society."
One could also say he wasn't tasked with reparenting those 30 years going on 4 etiher.
But it's nice to see a judge send a long over due message instead of agreeing with anything goes relativism.
That was not clear until the following day, when she pleaded out, possibly under coercive circumstances.
A conservative view is that you take the minimal action required to achieve the result. In that case it would have been to order it stopped with the fiddling.
Well your figures are wildly off. Read the article and get some facts.
But it's nice to see a judge send a long over due message instead of agreeing with anything goes relativism.
Overdue to what? Your are charging the burden of the entire society on the girl's shoulders. That works for Jesus Christ but not for Jane Q. Sinner. It's apparent that the girl was nervous, rather than defiant, and temporarily confiscating the phone being fiddled with prior to any disruption would have been the proper move.
Oh boy, you started this one again!
K, she was jailed for the phone before the drug trial.
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