Contempt of Court

The Oregonian's fabulous court's writer, Aimee Green,delivers again with her report on the Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge who slammed a local defendant on multiple counts of contempt of court and homicidal high-risk driving.  This is Aimee Green's story:

"Up until the moment the judge sentenced him, 25-year-old William Kinney III insisted he was above the law. That's why he was carrying cocaine and driving in 2007 even though his license had been revoked as a teenager after crashing into another car. The impact killed a man and severely injured the man's wife.  That's why Kinney skipped out on court date after court date, forcing authorities to issue a warrant for his arrest in 2008 and 2009.   And that's why he was driving again in May 2010, when police finally found and arrested him. He was held in jail until his trial last week in Multnomah County Circuit Court.

Judge Leslie Roberts showed Kinney that he wasn't above the law when she sentenced him Friday to 5 1/2 years in prison.   The judge also took the highly unusual measure of finding Kinney in contempt of court 12 times, for loudly and repeatedly interrupting and talking over her and the attorneys. The judge sentenced Kinney to an additional four months in prison and ordered him to pay a $3,000 fine.

Kinney dug a deep hole for himself, one that wouldn't have been so deep if he had accepted a pretrial plea offer from the prosecutor: plead guilty in exchange for about a year in prison.   Jurors deliberated for about 20 minutes before finding Kinney guilty of two counts of driving with a revoked license and possessing a substantial quantity of cocaine.

When Kinney got a chance to speak at his sentencing hearing, he reiterated the point he had made many times before. He is a sovereign individual, an 'indigenous' man, a 'remnant of the divine people. I'm an endangered species to this continent,'  he said.  He said that he answers only to God and not to the laws of Oregon

Prosecutor Ryan Lufkin used Kinney's words to urge the judge to send him to prison for 5 1/2 years, as long as possible under Oregon sentencing guidelines, to protect the public from him. Lufkin noted that Kinney's disrespect for the law had resulted in death before.   In 2002, when Kinney was a 17-year-old student at Cleveland High School, he was driving a carload of his friends back from lunch when he crashed into a car just blocks from school. Kinney was speeding and driving without a valid license.

Ann Goetz, 74, was seriously injured and her husband, Fred Goetz, 83, died. Kinney pleaded guilty to the juvenile equivalent of hit-and-run driving, third-degree assault and criminally negligent homicide, and was sentenced to six years of incarceration. His license was revoked for life, although Oregon law allows him to ask to get it back after 10 years.   'He repeatedly keeps driving,' Lufkin said. 'We are going to see Mr. Kinney again. He is not going to obey the law.'

Earlier this year, a judge ordered a psychological review of Kinney, and he was allowed to proceed to trial.

Kinney's attorney, James Britt, asked the judge not to give Kinney the maximum as punishment for Kinney's unpopular beliefs and lack of 'sophistication. Mr. Kinney suffers from an inability ... to understand a complicated system,' Britt said, adding that 2 1/2 years would be a fitting sentence.  

The judge didn't take long to decide that Kinney should spend more than double that in prison. By continuing to drive, Roberts said, 'you're playing Russian roulette with everyone's lives.'

Kinney will be eligible for 20 percent off his prison sentence. That is, if he follows the prison's rules."

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If you needed an example of mental illness in the petri dish of ego, this is it.  You could probably add the bacteria of immaturity and race to have a complete picture of what's going on here.   The comedian Chris Rock has instructive video dealing with "how not to get your ass kicked by the police," which would have been helpful to Mr. Kinney, had he viewed it before he opened his mouth in court.

I do not understand disrespect in court--from anyone.