Judge Holds Self in Contempt of Court

Judge Raymond Voet is nothing if not a man of his word. The Michigan justice has a strict "no cellphones" rule posted in his Ionia County courtroom, and has a history of confiscating phones from witnesses, lawyers, spectators, and police officers during trials. So when his own phone went off in the midst of a prosecutor's closing argument on Friday—requesting voice commands along the embarrassing lines of "I can't understand you. Say something like Mom"—there was nothing else to do: Voet held himself in contempt of court, and charged himself a $25 fine, the AP reports. "Judges are humans," he says. "They're not above the rules. I broke the rule and I have to live by it." (More judge stories.)