Nevada Supreme Court upholds contempt order against judicial candidate

It's time for Jonathan MacArthur, an outspoken attorney and judicial candidate, to pay up.

The Nevada Supreme Court this week denied MacArthur's bid to overturn a district judge's order holding him in contempt for refusing to defend a client at a criminal child abuse trial.

District Judge Susan Johnson had fined MacArthur $500 and ordered him to pay the Clark County district attorney's office $7,060 for the time prosecutors spent preparing for trial last September.

MacArthur, who is running for a seat in North Las Vegas Justice Court, managed to block the contempt order for nine months by asking the Supreme Court to intervene. His lawyers argued the order violated his due process rights and was "unduly burdensome."

But on Tuesday, a three-justice panel issued an order declining to get involved. "Whether a party is guilty of contempt is generally within the district court's particular knowledge, and thus, a district court's contempt order should not lightly be overturned," the panel wrote.

MacArthur said Thursday he was ready to comply with the contempt order. "I am innocent of the accusations made against me," he said in a statement. "And although I am disappointed that the high court chose not to hear my appeal, I will appear before Judge Johnson and face whatever consequences handed to me, as I have faith in our justice system and I will always follow the law."

Johnson had told MacArthur that she was reporting his conduct to the Nevada State Bar and recommending his removal from the panel of attorneys paid by the county to represent indigent defendants. Melody Lynn Benham, the defendant in the child abuse case, had qualified for a county-paid attorney.

MacArthur is facing State Bar scrutiny in another criminal case. The district attorney's office asked the bar in December 2010 to investigate whether he tried to bribe a witness to change testimony. Prosecutors considered taking the allegations to a grand jury but chose instead to let the bar sort things out first.

MacArthur has had a rocky relationship with the district attorney's office. He once wrote on his MySpace page that he had a hobby of "breaking my foot off in a prosecutor's ass."

Those comments cost him his job as a substitute judge in North Las Vegas Justice Court in 2007 after then-District Attorney David Roger lodged a complaint.

In the Benham case, MacArthur was supposed to defend the woman at a Sept. 19 trial on child abuse charges over allegations of mistreatment of her 9-month-old daughter. But the attorney told Johnson he was unprepared and sought to continue the trial. He argued that there were unresolved plea negotiations in the case and, as a result, he did not subpoena key medical witnesses.

Johnson didn't buy his arguments, however, and ordered the trial to proceed the next day. But when MacArthur showed up the next day, he again told the judge he would not participate in the trial and he understood action would be taken against him.

Johnson then held him in contempt from the bench and later formalized the sanction in an 11-page written order.