OXFORD, Miss., Oct. 7 (UPI) -- A Mississippi lawyer said he was briefly jailed by a judge for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in court.
Danny Lampley, 49, of Oxford, said he was silent while the pledge was recited Wednesday in Chancellor Talmadge Littlejohn's Lee County court; the judge gave him a second chance to recite the pledge, which he refused, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo, reported Thursday.
Lampley said he was jailed at about 10 a.m. and released on Littlejohn's order at about 2:30 p.m. to continue the day's business.
The lawyer said he and Littlejohn have a "different point of view" on things, including the Pledge of Allegiance.
"I don't have to say it because I'm an American," Lampley said.
David Hudson Jr., a scholar at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, agreed Littlejohn violated Lampley's free speech rights.
Littlejohn's assistant said the judge has no comment on the matter.
