Mississippi Attorney Jailed for Refusing to Cite Pledge of Allegiance

10/08/10

Chancery Judge Talmadge Littlejohn ordered his courtroom to stand to show respect as the pledge of allegiance was recited. All but one rose. The single hold out was Tupelo, MS attorney Danny Lampley, who rose during the recitation, but failed to cite the pledge. Lampley was ordered by Judge Littlejohn to recite the pledge and when he refused to do so, he was ordered to jail and held on criminal contempt of court. He was taken to and processed in the Lee County, MS jail for more than four hours. The case that was interrupted was a divorce hearing.


Lampley has refused to vocalize the pledge in the past; this time, however, Judge Littlejohn opted to take action. Four hours later, both men were back in chancery court for the afternoon session. The Order, signed by Judge Littlejohn, reads in part:

IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED ADJUDGED AND DECREED that Danny Lampley, Attorney at Law, is in criminal contempt of court for his failure to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance as ordered by the undersigned Chancellor and is hereby ordered to be incarcerated in the Lee County Jail.

The Order, in its entirety, can be read here.
Judge Littlejohn has found himself in legal hot water in the past. In 1974, a young black man, Butler Young, Jr., while in custody of Marshall County, MS law enforcement agents, was killed by a gunshot wound. The district attorney, who happened to be Talmadge Littlejohn, at first refused to present the case to the Marshall County grand jury and when public outcry became too much, he finally did only to have the four officers involved no-billed by the grand jury.

Before long, the Marshall County United League, an association of black citizens in Byhalia, Mississippi and surrounding areas in the county, began distributing a leaflet accusing the district attorney and every law enforcement agency involved in the case of failure to conduct a thorough investigation because Young was black and the officers were white. As the Grand Jury considered the evidence once more, this time on whether the officers failed to investigate properly, Littlejohn began an investigation into the League, its finances and whether or not the leaflet was distributed in ''bad faith''. The League responded by filing a complaint that these efforts were in direct violation of its First Amendment Rights. Two days before the hearing was set to conclude, the judge in the case, State Circuit Judge Brown, issued an order that ''the transcript of the grand jury proceedings be sealed and not made available to the public or news media''.

Judge Littlejohn failed to learn anything from the past and unfortunately, that past has come back to haunt not only him, but the residents of this incredible state who must live with those decisions others made.