It appears that the U.S. Department of Justice will be appealing that baseless contempt of court citation imposed by federal district Judge Laura Provinzino (Biden appointee).
I covered the incident here, which involves a habeas corpus case captioned. Rigoberto Soto-Jiminez v. Bondi, et. al (File No. 26-cv-957). The facts are pretty straightforward: Mr. Soto is an illegal alien, picked up by ICE. His private lawyer filed a habeas petition for his release. Contrary to the law, Judge Provinzino granted his release.
Mr. Soto was eventually released, but unfortunately, without his personal property (ID, etc.). After some miscommunication on the government end, Mr. Soto’s property was returned, via overnight mail.
That’s where the matter should have ended. But Judge Provinzino took personal offense to the slow response to her several orders in the case and conducted a two-hour-long contempt hearing/struggle session/humiliation ritual via Zoom video. Your correspondent watched the whole thing, live.
At the end of this sorry spectacle, Judge Provinzino held the junior-most person involved (a young military lawyer on loan to the U.S. Attorney) individually in contempt of court, fining him $500 a day.
This contempt finding, curiously, does not appear to have been memorialized in any written order by the judge.
This young man now has a permanent stain on his professional record, all for the sin of being volunteered to help out a short-staffed office in a crisis.
Compounding her original error in professional judgement, Judge Provinzino issued a new Order in the case last Friday (February 20). She begins the nine-page rant with the news that she is not imposing the $500/day fine after all.
But the rest is a rehash of her complaints from the video hearing. Keep in mind that the plaintiff, Soto, has received (eventually) everything that his lawyer has ever requested in the case.
From my recollection of the video hearing, neither holding that specific lawyer in contempt nor imposing a cash fine were not the idea of Soto’s attorney. Judge Provinzino appears to have cooked up those ideas all on her own.
Yet, it is the judge’s contempt Order which is being appealed to the 8th circuit. I would expect that language she uses in her new, written order will be fodder for the appeal.
Not being a lawyer myself, I don’t know how the law works. But i have heard that we have an adversarial system in law. So, when one party (the government) appeals a court decision granting the other party (the plaintiff) something the plaintiff never asked for, who defends the judge’s decision? The judge herself? Will the judge be at oral argument on the appeal of hef order? How does this week?
Let justice be done.
