Post includes order and transcript.
Hinds County Circuit Judge Faye Peterson hit attorney Lawrence Blackmon with no less than 63 criminal contempt of court citations as she fined him $6,300.
Blackmon represented Charlie Thomas in a murder trial. The Canton attorney did well for his client as the jury found Thomas not guilty. However, Blackmon repeatedly sparred with the judge, much to his detriment.
Judge Peterson decreed in her order Friday:
This Court finds that Attorney Lawrence Blackmon, after being notified on July 30, 2025 prior to the opening of proceedings on the record to conform his conduct to comply with the Rules of Professional Conduct and to review Rules 32.1 and 32.2 of the Mississippi Rules of Criminal Procedure, and Attorney Lawrence Blackmon continued thereafter to directly defy the orders of the court and the rules of conduct and, therefore, is in direct criminal contempt. The Court finds Attorney Lawrence Blackmon liable for sixty-three (63) acts of direct criminal contempt which occurred after receiving the aforementioned notice during the course and scope of the trial of the State of Mississippi v. Charlie Thomas and hereby assesses a fine in the amount of $100.00 per instance of direct criminal contempt...
Blackmon must pay the fine by September 4. Just to make sure everyone knew what took place in her courtroom, Judge Peterson attached a transcript of the contempt of court hearing to her order.
The Court said lawyers should not try to intentionally "irritate or annoy the opposing attorney and shall address the Court, not the opposing attorney, on all matters...". All objections should be made to the Court, not opposing counsel.
Some choice quotes from the transcript are:
The court finds the said actions were intentional misrepresentations as the entire testimony that day was from the two witnesses that were in place, and the defendant. Investigator Bruce Triplett never appeared in this building and was never called as a witness. The court deems that was his first contempt. The court also finds and it's noted in the trial that even if the witness was late, he should have been present at 9:00 a.m. to make the announcement to the court as directed by the court administrator, and the court could have advised the jury that there would be a delay in the proceeding and allow the court the opportunity to address the matter. By having not done so, it interrupted the orderly proceedings of the court.Judge Peterson held Blackmon in criminal contempt of court and fined him $100 for each minute he was late. She also noted he left the courtroom while the prosecution was making its closing argument without permission from the Court. Assistant District Attorney Briana Keeler accused Blackmon of coaching his witness during testimony.
Blackmon showed what he thought of the contempt order outside the courthouse afterwards.
32 comments:
He should be reprimanded by the bar and suspended for a year
Nothing will come of it. Just wait and see.
Good luck with that! The Mississippi Bar is a complete waste. I just paid $380 in bar dues for the upcoming year for it to turn a blind eye.
I'm in the same boat as 2:19. Just paid "bar dues" that I can only assume go towards printing a quarterly magazine that gets thrown in the trash and a judicial directory that is usually outdated by the time it is mailed.
Powerless bar. Shame.
Mega ditto
Momma and Daddy will protect and enable
Chip off the ole block lol
Sometimes an attorney gets a trial, civil or criminal, that he knows he will probably win. It is then and there that the arrogant character will showboat and "show his ass" to gain as much attention and notoriety from his good fortune. Only paying a fine of a few thousand dollars is well worth it.
There needs to be a different organization (other than the Ms Bar) who handles attorneys like this. The Supreme Court handles cases against attorneys but someone/some entity has to bring it before the Supreme Court.
born and raised entitled-
2:53 BINGO!
I didn't know Faye Petersen from any other Hinds County judge. Frankly, I lumped Judge Petersen in with Tommie Green. BIG mistake.
I sat through the St. Paddy's Day murder trial in June 2024. I was very impressed with Judge Petersen. She is fair, impartial, and reasonable.
If Judge Petersen hammered Blackmon, he deserved it.
$6,300 is chump change.
Now y’all stop blaming the parents. This young man went to high school, college and law school, where he got that nasty and classless demeanor is unknown! I can ensure you it’s not the Blackmon’s!
He is a savior for the hood boys where they share and trade ideologies via hand signals and unrecognizable verbiage!
I've never heard attorneys bitching about having to pay Bar dues last month. Now it's bitch, bitch, bitch.
I don't know if it's one person, over and over, or multiple people, but please get over it.
Hi, Deanne. Thanks for stopping by. We are bitching about paying Bar dues because the Bar is worthless when it comes to doing anything about attorneys who are blatantly violating the law and the Rules of Professional Conduct. So, please Deanne, tell us exactly what benefit attorneys get in return for paying their Bar dues since the Bar is not carrying out its duties as mandated by law? Paying your salary and that of General Counsel's is not one of them.
If a lawyer can't act right in court, he has no hope of successfully comporting his behavior with the laws of society.
I suspect young Lawrence is not long for the free world.
...Moves to Ridgeland...runs for mair of Jaxon in four years.
I, too, am about to pay bar dues, and I feel the same as the ones posting above. In addition to what they said, what perplexes me is that it appears the Bar doesn't take note that Mr. Blackmon's behavior, and others like his, ARE the face of Mississippi's legal profession! The public doesn't see the hard work and counsel of the legitimate, honest, ethical practitioners who are following the rules, practicing good decorum inside and outside of the courtroom, and who aren't showing their asses on Instagram and TikTok. The public generally sees only one type of lawyers: the grandstanders, like Carlos Moore, Chokwe Lumumba, Lawrence Blackmon, etc.
Look, I get that a percentage of the public is generally jaded against the law profession, because that's the nature of the practice: people are either for one side or the other, so not everyone is going to like "the other lawyer." However, by the Bar not taking actions against these grandstanders, the dislike only gets stronger, and this critical profession gets weaker.
4:04, I'm not Deanne. I've been a licensed attorney for 25 years.
You act like you've never had to pay a bill before in your entire life, probably because you haven't. It's a part of life as a grown-up. Get used to it.
-3:44
Yes, the bar should investigate all of these large defense firms billing their clients for hours they did not spend doing the work and using AI to do it instead.
You can’t be serious! I have practiced well over thirty years, and yes, I always pay my bills. I presume you don’t because you have already reduced yourself to insults instead of making intelligent arguments by making false assumptions and accusations.
I have an absolute right to bitch about the amount of the dues I have paid to the Bar over the years, which by the way is more than you, because they aren’t carrying out their legal mandate. As another commenter pointed out, these are the attorneys that are giving the profession an even bigger black eye than it already has.
Be that as it may, you’re the one who is not acting like a grown up. No one is forcing you to read the comments here, and if you don’t like them, there’s a very simple solution.
The Bar only takes on the down and out losers while ignoring the real violators who are not even barred in the state, but are on billboards TV, and radio advertising for Mississippi clients.
A guy named Pigmeat Markham had a hit single in the late ‘60's with a song called “Here Comes the Judge”. Eventually he says “Order in the Court!”, to which someone replies “Order in the Court? I’ll have two cans of beer please”. - Just trying to bring a little humor to this scholarly discussion.
Just like the State Auditor and the AG, the Bar only goes after the low hanging fruit.
Professional?
Just greed… whole damn lot of you
The gall of a Hinds County Circuit Judge holding someone in contempt for being late is beyond the pale. Kidd might show up near the announced time. Peterson can be near on time or an hour late. Gibbs shows up once out of every 10 times Court is scheduled, but you can rest assured she's an hour late. Wooten will be 30 minutes to an hour late every single time.
just because peterson handed down contempt citations dont mean they gonna stick.
the court of appeals and/or the ms supreme court will have the last word.........
in the trial of the chicago 7 back in the 60s ,that federal judge named hoffman, ( no relation to abbie) ,handed bill kuntzler a dozen contempt citations and the appeals courts reversed em all...........
dont wet your pants just yet children
it aint over till its over.
7:59 has a great point. Once I was there with maybe 150 potential jurors who were locked out of the rooms and forced to stand in the hall or sit on the floor for hours while the judge did who-knows-what with the pending case pleadings. Now THERE'S a case for contempt.
Tomie Green recessed a trial for lunch. Everyone comes back after an hour. She finally waltzes in, gone three hours while everyone waited. She went shopping.
A real DA would just go to trial on every case this guy has.
No deals!!
KF, I'm guessing that if both sides decided for payback and went shopping and made Tomie wait two hours then things would have had a far different result.
So his stepmother Barbara Blackmon allowed this to happen!? She said she ran the state of Mississippi.
Post a Comment