Jacob Smith
Professor Liason Editor
It took well over a year, multiple Zoom hearings, complicated Federal Courts issues, and hard work by a handful of dedicated civil rights lawyers, but Professor Thomas Frampton finally prevailed in his tangle with the City of Baton Rouge. On August 24, the city’s Metropolitan Council approved a settlement award promising to dismiss contempt charges against Professor Frampton and paying $86,000 in legal fees—a sum that could have been completely avoided had the city been willing to apologize.
Pictured: Professor Thomas Frampton
This episode began when Professor Frampton was blindsided with contempt charges last May. Professor Frampton had successfully represented Clarence Green in a civil rights lawsuit against the Baton Rouge Police Department based on an unconstitutional strip-search of Green and his brother and a warrantless entry into his mother’s home. The case settled for $35,000. After the settlement, Professor Frampton released body camera footage on behalf of the Green family in an effort to hold the police officers accountable for their conduct. The next day, Professor Frampton was surprised to learn that the Parish Attorney for the Parish of East Baton Rouge had filed a petition seeking to hold him in contempt for releasing the video. If the contempt charges succeeded, Professor Frampton could be jailed for up to six months.
The contempt charges were based on the premise that Professor Frampton had released records of a juvenile criminal proceeding without authorization. But it was easy to smell a rat, in part because a newspaper had paid the clerk’s office a small fee to obtain the same video. Professor Frampton immediately began reaching out to contacts and put together an impressive legal team. Professor Frampton’s lawyers quickly sent the Parish Attorney a demand letter. When that did not succeed, they filed a § 1983 lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana, alleging that the contempt proceeding was brought in retaliation for protected First Amendment speech.
Professor Frampton spent the Fall 2021 semester waiting for the federal district court to decide his motion for a preliminary injunction and the Baton Rouge defendants’ motion to dismiss. The court finally announced its decision this January. It denied the motion to dismiss and granted a preliminary injunction in a careful ninety-two-page decision. But despite wading through the intricacies of Younger abstention and the preliminary injunction test, the opinion had a clear bottom line: The record was “replete with evidence” supporting the conclusion that the contempt charges had been brought because of the Parish’s “bad faith motive to retaliate.” The court concluded that Professor Frampton had engaged in no criminal activity, and that the Parish had “no hope or reasonable expectation of obtaining a valid conviction.”
Given that one-sided outcome, one would think that Baton Rouge would have been eager to put an end to the litigation. But it dragged on. The city filed an answer. Then Professor Frampton filed a motion for summary judgment, and the city countered with its own summary judgment motion. But eventually, the city “realized the writing was on the wall,” and the parties brokered an agreement through a series of meetings before a magistrate judge. Baton Rouge agreed to dismiss the contempt charges and pay $86,000 in attorney’s fees.
While the protracted nature of the litigation might raise an eyebrow, the city’s negotiating stance was even more questionable. Professor Frampton offered to settle the case for nothing more than dismissal of the charges and an apology to him and the Green family. But the city refused, instead preferring “to set $86,000 of taxpayer money on fire,” in Professor Frampton’s words. Professor Frampton almost showed up to the council meeting that approved the settlement to denounce it, but his lawyers wouldn’t let him.
Now, at last, the contempt charges have been dismissed, and Professor Frampton is rid of what was a very unwelcome distraction. Professor Frampton is glad he will not have to ask Dean Golubuff’s permission to teach on Zoom from a jail cell. But he also expressed frustration about charges that should never have been filed, and bad actors that will probably never have to answer for their misconduct. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that Baton Rouge voters will pay attention to settlements like this one and hold their representatives accountable, although Professor Frampton and the Green family are still suing one of the officers involved in the original incident.
But Professor Frampton also reiterated that the litigation was a “really educational experience.” How many lawyers (let alone law professors) can think back on personal experience as a civil rights plaintiff and criminal defendant? The episode certainly makes for a great story that will “definitely feature in future classes.” But as Professor Frampton continues representing pro bono clients, he is hopeful that fresh success stories will quickly overshadow this one.
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js3hp@virginia.edu