Be patriotic. Or else. Redux.

Yesterday attorney Danny Lampley found himself in the poky, charged with criminal contempt of court. Why? Because he did not recite the Pledge of Allegiance when standing up with everyone else in the courtroom:

Wednesday, Chancellor Talmadge Littlejohn sent the 49-year-old Oxford attorney [to jail] for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in court.

Littlejohn urged Lampley to reconsider repeating the Pledge, as every other person in the judge's courtroom did as the day's proceedings began.

"This morning, that was the last thing on my mind," Lampley said late in the day after a child-support hearing.

At 10 a.m., Lampley was in jail garb. By 2:30 p.m., Littlejohn ordered his release and return to the Lee County Justice Center to continue their business.

From the judge's order (.pdf--emphasis mine):

BE IT REMEMBERED, this date, the Court having ordered all present in the courtroom to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegience, and having found that Danny Lampley, Attorney at Law, failed and refused to do so, finds said Danny Lampley to be in criminal contempt of court.

[...]

IT IT FURTHER, ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED, that Danny Lampley shall purge himself of said criminal contempt by complying with the order of this Court by standing and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in open court.

So all he has to do to expunge his criminal charges is to "stand and recite" in "open court", eh?

Smell the freedom!


(Related: Be patriotic. Or else., To Pledge or, you know, not.)