Mind Your P’s & Q’s

So much of our lives are negotiated with strangers on the telephone these days. Customer and technical support calls are a near daily reality, and many of us have lost the ability to maintain that good old telephone courtesy in the face of an endless line of strangers and computers. I know I have talked to hundreds of such folk, with Dell, Verizon and Insight being at the top of the list.

I generally try to keep things on a polite level, but sometimes that is hard to do. A 35 year old Indianapolis resident is learning now that in some arenas, loosing your cool on the phone can cost you big time.

Emmanuel Steele picked up a driving while license suspended charge over here in Wayne County. He was ordered to appear for an initial hearing on June 15th. The Indianapolis father of 3 kids faxed in a request for a continuance on the 14th as he claimed his wife was recovering from surgery. The judge in Wayne Superior Court 3 denied the continuance the same day, and when a member of the court staff called to inform Mr. Steele that he still needed to appear the next morning, something happened during that call that ended up with Mr. Steele in the Wayne County jail.

Steele claims (in a letter in today’s Pal-Item) that the court staffer was rude. The court staffer told her boss (the judge) that Mr. Steele called her a name. The next morning, when Steele showed up (late) for the hearing, the judge handed him 30 days for contempt, and asked for an apology. When Steele instead tried to dispute the nature of the phone call, the sentence was upped to 120 days. Now Mr. Steele writes to the paper, lamenting the fate of his family and employment as he sits in jail until October.

Last week I heard some chatter about this down at the courthouse. It reminded some of the incident a few years back when the former judge of that court handed a college student a contempt sentence for falling asleep in his courtroom. That case got lots of media coverage, and the judge ultimately relented and let her out early. I don’t think Mr. Steele’s case is quit as surprising. The thing is, this court is made up of very nice people. They treat everyone with respect and courtesy. Most people leave the court amazed at how nice everyone was. But there is a limit, and apparently, Mr. Steele managed to find it, right off the bat.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 2nd, 2006 at 9:53 am and is filed under Criminal Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.