[03/13/02]Warren County Judge Gerald Hosemann has been ordered to appear in court Monday to show why he should not be held in contempt of court and have his bail revoked for statements to the media despite a gag order.

The order to appear was issued Tuesday by Hinds County Judge Bobby DeLaughter, who set Hosemann’s bond on Dec. 29 after his arrest for felony aggravated assault.

Hosemann had been arrested Dec. 28 in the beating of his former court reporter, Juanita “Nita” Johnston, who was found injured on his Hinds County property Dec. 6.

He was released the next day on a $25,000 bond that contained various contingencies, including that he not contact or go within 500 feet of Johnston and that he attend an anger-management program.

Johnston, 48, spent more than a month in Vicksburg and Jackson hospitals for treatment of injuries to her lower back and abdomen.

In a sworn statement prepared by a Hinds County Sheriff’s Department investigator, she identified Hosemann, 50, as her attacker.

On Feb. 19, DeLaughter issued an order telling all parties to the case they should refrain from public comment “in an effort to save the taxpayers of Hinds County the additional financial burden of this case having to be tried in another venue of this state,” he wrote.

The next day, he recused himself from an arrest warrant review requested by Hosemann. DeLaughter, however, remains responsible for enforcing Hosemann’s bond.

In the order issued Tuesday, DeLaughter said Hosemann has twice violated the gag order by making statements to the media once in the courtroom following DeLaughter’s recusal on Feb. 20, and Monday and Tuesday, following statements last week from Johnston recanting her claim that Hosemann was her attacker.

“Those statements were published in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger and Vicksburg Evening Post, newspapers of general circulation in this district, as well as broadcast by the local ABC, CBS and NBC television affiliates,” DeLaughter said.

The judge also issued an order Feb. 27 reminding Hosemann that he “was subject to all provisions” of a state rule limiting pretrial publicity. In that notice, DeLaughter added that Hosemann’s compliance with the gag order “be an additional condition for his continued release on bail.”

Hosemann maintains it is his constitutional right to speak out.

“I have that absolute right,” he said Tuesday. “Not as a judge or a lawyer but as a wrongfully accused defendant, to deny me a forum which they did to present my innocence and then, to tell me to be quiet that is wrong.”

Hosemann, the Warren County and Youth Court judge, has also been vocally critical of Hinds County authorities’ handling of his case.

“They’ve got egg all over their face the sheriff, the DA,” Hosemann said Monday after Johnston’s letter to his attorney in which she recanted her statements was made public. “I was prematurely arrested. This could not happen in Warren County. I’m shocked by what I know now.”

Those “derogatory statements,” DeLaughter said, “had a reasonably real and substantial tendency to impede justice, or obstruct, defeat, hinder or corrupt its administration.”

Despite Johnston’s recent statements, Hinds County District Attorney Faye Peterson can proceed with the case against Hosemann because the charges were filed by the state, not Johnston.