Before he retired in 2023, John Nieman spent more than 30 years as a criminal defense attorney in Guilford County, including four years as the county’s chief public defender. In all that time, he had never seen an attorney jailed for criminal contempt—until now.
On August 24, Guilford District Court Judge Ashley Watlington-Simms sentenced Assistant Public Defender Juan Felipe Zuluaga, 54, to five days in jail for repeatedly disrupting court proceedings. The judge alleged in a court document that she warned him four to five times to stop talking.
“I’ve never heard of a judge going directly to a jail sanction for an attorney for contempt,” Nieman said. “That was just very surprising.”…