This was me the morning of court.
Notice the camera pen in my shirt pocket!
I went to the 10th floor of the court house(room 1024) just like everyone else who was scheduled for court that day.
Room 1024 is not a courtroom, Their is no judge! It's only a room where everyone goes who has a ticket, most people do not want to contest their ticket they only want to ask for time to pay or see about going to driving school to keep the ticket off their record.
If you plan on contesting the ticket you tell the DA in room 1024 your gonna plea "not guilty", he will try to convince you to plead "guilty" either by intimidation or by persuasion. If he cant convince you to plead guilty to something(which was my case) you go to trial, on an entirely different floor of the court house.
My "recording pen" was turned on while I was on the 10th floor, talking with the DA.
When we could not come to an agreement the DA told me to go down to the 8th floor for trial.
At this point I turned off my cell phone, as stated outside the court room door.
I made sure my "camera pen" was OFF as well, just to be safe, but their were no signs anywhere in the court house that said "no recording devices allowed"
cell phones are allowed, and most phones have some type of recording capability, so i thought for sure it would be oh to bring in my pen as long as it was turned off while court was in session.
Shortly after going into the courtroom the judge walked in, court was now in session. My case was the only one. The DA went up and had a few words with her(the judge).
I requested a continuance so I could have time to hire a lawyer, the DA objected, stating "the officers are here now, and we're ready for trial now."
The judge ruled in my favor, granting the continuance, saying "its only fair."
Then she asked me to step up to the mic and "make an appearance for the record" which is simply stating my full name, DOB, and address. After being "on the record" she stated to me" Mr. Kelley, you do know its illegal to record anything in a courtroom?" I answered "Yes ma'am" next she said "Well, I'm going to ask you one time, are you recording anything right now?" I answered truthfully saying "No ma'am"
That was the end of it she assigned me a new date to return, I signed my notice and started to walk out of the court room ,when suddenly the officer that I flipped off stood up and exclaimed "Your honor, he is recording this! See that pen in his pocket?! It records audio and video! I've seen them before!"
At this point the judge was like, "oh, I thought you said you weren't recording anything!" I told her "I'm not. It's turned off."
She asked me to give the pen to the bailiff, and said "court is in recess, until we figure this out." Then she left the room. A lot of commotion was going on, but the shorthand is. They plugged the pen into a computer right there in the court room, and found only the video from earlier on the 10th floor.
After about 20 minutes of being in handcuffs, and being searched. The judge returned finding me to be in "contempt of court" for recording something while I was in Room 1024. She sentenced me to 3 months in jail. End of story.
My camera pen and my Iphone was confiscated as evidence...
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