Legal Question in Civil Rights Law in California

Re: Contempt of Court

Unfortunately, these simple questions have a complex answer. In a nutshell, it depends. Contempt may be civil or criminal. If a person is charged under the contempt provision of Penal Code Section 166, this is a criminal charge and the defendant is entitled to a jury trial. In civil contempt, a proceeding initiated by an order to show cause issued by a court (rather than a complaint filed by the DA), ordinarily there is no right to a jury trial. The potential jail time for civil contempt is five days on each count. Criminal contempt may result in a sentence of six months on each count. There may be times when a person charged with civil contempt arguably would be entitled to a jury trial, but that would be the unusual case where so many counts are charged that the person would face substantial jail time.

Sometimes the term "civil contempt" is used to describe a situation where a person refuses to obey a court order and is jailed until he complies. In distinction to this is "criminal contempt" used to describe a disobedient act or omission already completed for which punishment is being imposed. The purpose of civil contempt then is to induce action while criminal contempt is to punish and deter a completed disobedient act. This use of the labels has nothing to do with your question but can lead to confusion if you delve into the literature on this subject.