When H. Beatty Chadwick, a lawyer in suburban Philadelphia, was divorced in 1995, the judge ordered him to pay $2.5 million to his ex-wife. He refused to pay--and has been in jail ever since. A federal judge ruled in January that he could finally be released after seven years, but that order was overruled by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which said that, as long as he has the money, "there is no federal constitutional bar to Mr. Chadwick's indefinite confinement for civil contempt." So he's back in the pokey, where his fingers have become permanently clenched around his ATM card.
December 28, 2002 6:53 AM