In contempt of court for a stick of gum
By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here
To be honest, I don’t particularly like chewing gum, but there is a reason for my dislike. As a young reporter in Los Angeles I was assigned to cover courts. I didn’t exactly understand courtroom decorum. In one court session, the judge stopped the proceedings, had the bailiff bring me before the bench and preceded to give me a judicial tongue lashing for disrupting court proceedings.
My crime? Chewing gum in the courtroom.
He threatened to give me a $50 fine. I would have probably had to spend jail time because as a reporter I was only earning $55 a week.
Instead he let me off with a stern lecture, but it spoiled my taste for chewing gum.
That was in the 1950s. There was also a dress code in court. It required any male doing business with the court to wear a coat and tie. Of course that was mostly standard dress for a reporter in that era. But for emergencies we reporters kept a string of cast off ties and wrinkled coats in the courtroom just in case one of us showed up improperly dressed.
My oh my, how things have changed. I am certain there is still the same courtroom decorum as when I haunted the sacred halls of justice in the great late state of California, but I had not been in court for years until recently.
My wife is a court interpreter. We had spent the weekend with our daughter in Eugene, Ore. and had to rush back to Roseburg Monday morning for her court appointment. I trailed along with the promise she’d buy me breakfast after court.
She stopped for a bathroom visit and sent me on ahead. I was confronted with an unbelievable barrier — a sheriff’s deputy standing behind a glass enclosed cage. I have a heart pacemaker and therefore can’t go through the metal detector apparatus that was between me and the courtroom.
The deputy had me step into a well where he required me to empty my pockets. Among the contents was a small pen knife. You’d have thought I was trying to slip chewing gum into the courtroom. The officer confiscated my knife, threatened to arrest me for attempting to smuggle a dangerous weapon into the courtroom until my wife breezed by and said the magic words: "He is with me."
Free at last. Free at last. I was given permission to enter the sacred domain, but not with my dangerous pen knife.
The courtroom itself looked the same. The bench sat on a raised platform and the judge entered from a private entry. The only people I saw in coats and ties were male attorneys. Others in the courtroom were dressed causally, including a reporter I saw roaming the halls.
The courtroom banter was the same, official sounding legalese between the judge, clerks and attorneys. The prisoner my wife was there to interpret for was dressed in prison stripes reminiscent of the Georgia chain gang and manacled hand and foot.
The proceedings were no different from my era of court coverage, except I saw two people, including a female attorney chewing gum.
What in the world is courtroom decorum coming to in 2007?
A man can’t even keep a pen knife in his pocket, the time honored badge of coming of age, yet chewing gum is allowed in court.
Well, perhaps it is time I gave up this trauma and chomped on a stick of gum. It is said the muscular action of chewing gum helps to ease tension and to relax one’s nerves and muscles. But did you know the armed forces supplied soldiers with chewing gum in World War I, World War II, in Korea, and in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War and our current conflicts. Chewing gum is still included in field and combat rations.
Apparently, chewing gum is a national defense weapon — except when some cub reporter chewed it in court eons ago.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)