Judge Hosack: Be polite or get booted

By TOM HASSLINGER

Staff writer

COEUR d’ALENE — First District Judge Charles Hosack warned observers of the election challenge suit to behave like adults lest they be removed from the courtroom on Tuesday.

Later that afternoon he removed one observer who interrupted counsel’s questioning of a witness on precinct poll books by talking about those precincts too loudly with her neighbor.

“That’s exactly what the court was talking about. Exactly,” Hosack said after Joy Seward was removed for talking too loudly to her neighbor about precinct numbers.

Earlier that day, counsel for both Jim Brannon, Mike Kennedy and Coeur d’Alene huddled with Hosack during a break to talk about courtroom behavior. After they returned, Hosack addressed the whole courtroom.

“I understand this litigation has aroused the passions of at least certain members of this community and those who seem to be interested are the ones who are probably here,” he said. “You’re entitled to be here.”

But, he added, they can remain only as long as they behave.

Concerns about people rolling their eyes, saying things under their breath, shaking or nodding their heads when witnesses were on stage wouldn’t be tolerated, the judge said. They had noticed that behavior and wanted to put a stop to it, especially since the attorneys’ backs are toward the crowd.

“Childlike behavior,” Hosack said, won’t be tolerated. “In this trial you can’t do that. You’re entitled to be here, but if you can’t keep a straight face and sit on your hands you’re going to be sitting in the hallway.

“I understand people feel strongly about it,” he continued. “But that’s just neither here nor there. If you can’t act as adults you are not going to participate as an observer, so keep that in mind.”

Passions kicked off the first day of the trial. Brannon’s attorney Starr Kelso opened his arguments in a loud voice that filled the courtroom, and used that same booming voice to ask witnesses questions.

“I don’t understand why he has to yell,” said Peter Erbland, Kennedy’s attorney, when he opened his arguments.

Hosack agreed on the first day after Kennedy’s team objected several times to the tone of questioning as argumentative but allowed the questions. At the end of the first day, he asked to meet with counsel in private.

The next day, Tuesday, the tone was different, and voices weren’t raised, although it’s uncertain what the judge talked about behind closed doors with the entire attorney team. Tuesday even saw some jokes.

When Kelso was using a hypothetical name as an absentee voter, Erbland interjected that such a name could match a professional football player on the Green Bay Packers, to which Kelso retorted that yes, maybe the player did vote in the city election too.

That brought laughter to the room, as did an exchange where Hosack was trying to define a ballot as a piece of paper, not an electronic instrument.

“I don’t know if that helps you, but it helps me,” Hosack told Kelso of the definition.

“It helps me if it helps you,” Kelso responded.