Former Republican Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, the governor’s nephew, remains in the Pulaski County jail this morning for a sixth day having been held in contempt last week for failing to pay more than a half-million in child support.

Efforts continue by a lawyer Hutchinson has retained, despite being allegedly destitute, to mount emergency actions before both the Arkansas Supreme Court and the federal bankruptcy court to release Hutchinson. He could be returning to a jail cell soon in any case. He has a Feb. 3 sentencing on federal bribery and tax fraud charges. It is hard to believe a federal judge will not give prison time to a person who repeatedly abused his elective office as Hutchinson has done. He also faces future sentencing on a separate federal bribery charge in Missouri.

Advertisement

A more accurate context of Hutchinson’s situation than to say he is behind in child support payments is this:  Despite his attorney Clint Lancaster’s argument that Hutchinson is destitute, the record shows he’s spent tens of thousands of dollars on a cash payment and a swimming pool for his current wife in recent times. He refuses to make an evidentiary showing, including tax returns, to prove his claims that he’d once provided sufficient support and that he is now too impoverished to do so.

Rather than follow custom — and come up with some token payment to purge his contempt — Hutchinson has instead mounted the legal argument that his filing of a bankruptcy petition AFTER the contempt citation (though child support debts are NOT dischargeable in bankruptcy) means he can no longer be jailed for failure to pay anything to his ex-wife Stephanie for support of their three children.

Advertisement

The argument could upend the use of contempt to encourage deadbeat parents (typically dads) to come up with money. (As they often do.) In most such cases by now, a party who’d done the spending Hutchinson has done in recent years and who raised hundreds of thousands from friends and family for his unsuccessful federal legal defense would have made SOME offer of a compromise payment to purge his contempt. Hutchinson has not. He has only volunteered putative future earnings as a meal delivery service driver and to deed over a used car.

The Arkansas Supreme Court was asked Friday by Lancaster for an emergency order to release Hutchinson. But the court said it wanted responses first to the petition, by Wednesday.

Advertisement

With Hutchinson still languishing in jail Friday afternoon, Lancaster also filed an ex parte motion in bankruptcy court asking the federal court for an order to release Hutchinson. No response from the federal court appears on the court record so far.

The federal petition filed Friday evening says the judge who signed the contempt order (Judge Alice Gray), “refuses to sign the order releasing the debtor.” As of Sunday, she’s no longer a sitting judge, but a retiree.

Advertisement

Lancaster alleged in the petition:

.. counsel for the Debtor was told by that judge’s chambers that if he could find another state circuit judge to sign the order, then that judge could sign the order releasing the defendant if that judge found the Debtor’s motion to be meritorious. When counsel for the debtor found a state circuit judge who was willing to take up the motion and order releasing the Debtor, the original state circuit judge refused to allow the motion to be taken up and again refused to sign the order releasing the Debtor.

No names of judges were given in the motion. It would be interesting to know what judge volunteered to release Hutchison and if he or she was willing to do so without hearing from the attorney for Hutchinson’s wife.

Advertisement

UPDATE: Lancaster opened a third line of attack Tuesday in circuit court, with a petition filed with Gray’s successor, Judge Cara Connors, to stay the order in light of the bankruptcy petition. Civil contempt is only meant to force compliance, Lancaster contends Hutchinson can’t. Gray probably would have been on even more solid ground with a criminal contempt finding and a term of jail for Hutchinson’s past actions.

But Lancaster couldn’t be clearer about his freedom for deadbeat dads argument in the federal filing:

Advertisement

… the Debtor should not be incarcerated for his debts after filing for bankruptcy protection. He is held exclusively in a debtor’s prison in violation of his constitutional rights.

Hutchinson has demonstrated for years that the rule of law, ethical standards and court orders hold little meaning to him. When he was flying high on income from bribery and other sketchy practices, he resisted meeting obligations of his 2011 divorce agreement in part because he was unhappy his wife had moved with her children to Northwest Arkansas.

His life is a record of contemptible behavior, whether the courts buy his legal argument or not.