Abstract
Few areas of law are so completely entrusted to judge’s discretion, and therefore engender the risk of judicial abuse, as the contempt power. Despite this risk, New Mexico has significantly expanded the criminal contempt power over the last three years. Yet the results of this expansion—which typically play out in trial courts with little publicity and rare appellate review—have not been studied in any detail. This Comment examines how New Mexico trial courts used criminal contempt from January 1, 2023, to October 20, 2024, in light of the broad discretion granted to these courts. In this timeframe, a select few judges used the contempt power disproportionately often and imposed sanctions that varied significantly in severity. This Comment proposes a method of regulating the criminal contempt power of New Mexico trial courts through setting maximum criminal contempt sanctions that vary depending on the level of the court and the method of adjudication.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Cam Rosenberg,
Unchecked Contempt: The Necessity of Maximum Sanctions for Criminal Contempt in New Mexico,
55
N.M. L. Rev.
513
(2025).
Available at:
https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmlr/vol55/iss2/8
