The Press: Just One More, Judge!

“It was a crude, vulgar and unbecoming display of a nasty temper.” Thus wrote Florida’s Supreme Court in 1953, scolding Circuit Judge Stanley Milledge for the way he had bawled out an attorney in his courtroom. In Miami last week, testy, white-haired Judge Milledge, 61, flew into another tantrum and onto Florida front pages in probably the least judicial photograph of a judge yet to reach print.

Touchy after jailing a lawyer for one hour for contempt of court, the judge ran afoul of a TV film cameraman in the corridor from his chambers to the courtroom, shoved the camera aside and bullied the cameraman into surrendering his film. Next, he sent word from the courtroom that he would brook no picture taking in the corridor. When he emerged, photographers from the Miami Herald and station WTVJ began shooting. The judge ordered bailiffs to lock them in his chambers, then telephoned their bosses.

The TV station agreed not to use the film. But Herald City Editor John McMullan told the judge that the paper would make its own decision about using pictures, rushed a reporter and another photographer to the courthouse to cover his captive photographer. By the time they got there, Milledge had cooled off enough to release the captives. He was just coming out of his chambers when newly arrived Herald Photographer Steve Wever, 41, caught the judge twice in blinks of his strobe light.

“I’ve had enough trouble with you photographers,” roared Milledge. “I want that film. Bailiff, get this man! Take his film!”

Photographer Wever, who stands 5 ft. 4 in. and weighs 115 Ibs., was all but smothered in the arms of the law. Bailiff Charles Michel rushed him head on. while the judge himself grabbed him around the neck from behind. Before they sent his camera and strobe unit crashing to the floor, Miami Daily News Photographer Charles Trainor leaped out of a phone booth in time to get the shot (see cut] that best pictured the law taking things into its own hands.