Judge loses his job over mobile-phone rage. Nothing says judicial like collective punishment.
A US judge has been removed from the bench for jailing an entire courtroom audience after none of them admitted being responsible for a ringing phone.
A commission on judicial conduct said Judge Restaino had acted "without any semblance of a lawful basis" and behaved like a "petty tyrant".
The judge had been presiding over a domestic violence cases when he heard a mobile phone ring. It upset him so much that he threatened that every single person in the court was going to jail unless the offending mobile phone was handed in to him. When no-one came forward, the judge ordered that the 46 people in the audience be taken into custody.
(Thanks, Glyn!)
