Phone freaks

An American judge has been removed from the bench after jailing an entire courtroom full of people when no-one would admit to owning a mobile phone that was ringing. A commission on judicial conduct said Judge Robert Restaino had acted “without any semblance of a lawful basis” and behaved like a “petty tyrant”.  In its ruling on Tuesday, the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct recommended the removal of Judge Restaino for what its chairman called “two hours of inexplicable madness” on the morning of 11 March 2005.  It said the 48-year-old judge had been presiding over a series of domestic violence cases when he heard a mobile phone ring and “snapped”.  “Every single person is going to jail in this courtroom unless I get that instrument now,” he told the courtroom’s audience, according to the commission. Security officers then attempted to find the phone but failed.  After a brief recess, Judge Restaino returned to the bench and again asked who had been responsible for the ringing phone.  When no-one came forward, the judge ordered that the entire courtroom audience of 46 people be taken into custody and set bail at $1,500.

The audience and defendants were then taken to  jail, where they were searched and packed into crowded cells. Fourteen people who could not post bail were later shackled and transported to another prison.   They were later released when the story started hitting the local media.

I know mobile phones ringing at the wrong time in the wrong place give me the shits, but perhaps Judge Reistaino over-reacted just a smidgin.

In more local news of phone abuse, we had a guy in court in Canberra today charged with various phone stalking offences.  Dejan Nikolovski, 22, faced multiple stalking and harassment charges in the ACT Magistrates Court today: nine counts of using a carriage service to offend, six of indecency, two of stalking and one of possessing a prohibited substance (that last one may well explain the others).

ACT police said earlier that the victims received a barrage of phone calls, including sexually explicit video calls.

“Some victims allegedly received up to 40-50 calls in a one to two hour period in the middle of the night,” a police spokesman said.

Wonder if Dejan Nikolovski is somehow related to Shane Warne?

Update (29/11/2007):  More phone adventures …. this time a man in Korea who is said to have been killed by an exploding mobile phone.  Further update (30/11/2007):  Turns out that was bullshit.  The guy was murdered and the exploding phone was the killer’s bullshit excuse to cover it up.