Judge Joe Brown was NOT a happy camper when he posed for the mugshot above yesterday (March 24, 2014).
Brown, star of the reality television show “Judge Joe Brown” was arrested and charged with five counts of contempt of court in Memphis, Tennessee.
Shelby County Juvenile Court officials said the 66-year-old Brown was sentenced to five days in jail after causing an outburst Monday in a child support hearing.
Brown is running in the Democratic primary for Shelby County district attorney general and claims his arrest was all politically motivated.
Magistrate Judge Harold “Hal” Horne charged the former TV judge with contempt of court, said Dan Michael, chief magistrate judge of the Shelby County Juvenile Court.
“He darn near caused a riot in the courtroom, he had people so inflamed,” Michael said of the former TV judge.
CNN reports that the tv judge, 66, was sentenced to five days in jail after he became “pretty raucous” and “challenged the authority” of Magistrate Harold Horne.
Brown, a former Shelby County criminal judge, was in court to represent a client in a child-support case. He apparently became upset when he was told the case was not on the afternoon docket.
Horne reportedly gave Brown several chances to calm down before finding him in contempt and eventually charged him five times “before they were able to get him out of the courtroom, Michael said.
The court staff and judges “were all kind of floored” by Brown’s behavior, Michael said.
Brown was booked into the Shelby County jail in Memphis Monday afternoon, sheriff’s spokesman Chip Washington said.
Brown presided over a syndicated reality TV show based on court case arbitration for 15 years until it was canceled last year.
He announced his candidacy for the Shelby County district attorney post last month.
CNN reached out to Brown’s representatives but has not yet received a response.
Brown’s reality courtroom show, ‘Judge Joe Brown’ was cancelled March 2013 due to salary negotiation conflicts between Brown and CBS (which produced Judge Joe Brown). The announcement of the cancellation of the long running show hit the blogs last year, when Brown was spotted out drunk with a much younger date (click HERE if you missed that).
Brown became the first African-American prosecutor in the city of Memphis and later opened his own law practice before becoming a judge on the State Criminal Court of Shelby County, Tennessee.
According to his Wiki page, “Brown was thrust into the national spotlight while presiding over James Earl Ray’s last appeal of Ray’s conviction for the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Brown was removed from the reopened investigation of King’s murder due to alleged bias?former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia wrote that Brown told her and the Congressional Black Caucus, unequivocally, that the so-called murder rifle was not the weapon that killed Martin Luther King, Jr. It was during this time that Judge Brown caught the attention of the producers of Judge Judy”… and a star was born.
Brown is running in the Democratic primary for the position of Shelby County district attorney general.
As I always say, ‘real life’ is way more entertaining than reality television shows.