A former Bay Area criminal defense lawyer whose combative courtroom style has rankled several state and federal judges began serving a 20-day jail sentence Friday after being held in contempt by an Alameda County judge.
Judge Jeffrey Horner had cited Maureen Kallins on a series of contempt charges during a 1999 rape trial and fined her $4,300. Horner found that she had repeatedly disrupted the trial, accused the judge of bias and openly defied his orders. Her client was ultimately convicted.
After he sanctioned Kallins, the judge said she stuck her tongue out at the prosecutor and loudly belched in the courtroom.
Kallins, 54, appealed her sentence, but both a federal trial judge and a federal appeals court upheld her contempt citations.
This woman is notorious among Northern California's criminal defense bar. Now she's apparently moved to Washington and is no longer licensed to practice in California. The San Francisco Chronicle has the story here.
Some -- including 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Senior Judge Warren Ferguson, who dissented from an opinion affirming Kallins' client's conviction -- think the reason Kallins' aggressive tactics backfire is because she is a woman, The Recorder reported here in June 2002. Judge Ferguson's dissenting opinion can be found here.