Courthouse security has a very essential job. It’s their sworn duty to create the most unruly bottleneck possible to keep America’s courtrooms safe from cellphones. There’s ostensibly a “safety” dimension to it, but it’s hard to believe the cursory inspection at the front door accomplishes much in a week where we saw a judge ambushed outside his courthouse.
So it’s easy to get frustrated when the personnel running the courthouse security theater cause you some inconvenience. Generally the right move is to swallow that frustration, get through the line, and take out that aggression on opposing counsel. But this week, things apparently got a little more real in Philadelphia.
Barbara Grant, spokeswoman for the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Department, said that Haines, 72, got into a dispute with a sheriff’s deputy and that “Mr. Haines hit the deputy. It took a couple of officers to subdue him, and he was apprehended and detained.”
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Haines is Charles E. Haines, of Haines & Associates, and the former head of both the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Bar Associations. It’s unclear what caused the security check to escalate, but prosecutors declined to pursue any charges against Haines over the incident, suggesting they don’t see a real problem here.
But while Haines can feel relief that he’s not getting charged, he didn’t walk away from this unscathed:
Haines, whose shoulder was broken when he was taken to the floor and subdued, was not available for comment.
The video hasn’t been released to the public at this time, but I’m shocked yet amused that multiple security personnel had to break a shoulder to subdue a septuagenarian. Unless Haines is the most spry 72-year-old in America, it’s hard to imagine there’s an excuse for trained law enforcement to escalate from zero to Rodney King to deal with an elderly lawyer.
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On the other hand, Chuck Norris is 77 and just had two heart attacks and I wouldn’t want to mess with him so maybe they made the right call.
Prominent Philly lawyer taken into custody in courthouse scuffle [Philly.com]
Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.