Section 8 Imprisonment

• Library: Remedies 2006

An order for imprisonment is remedial and intended to coerce the contemnor to comply with the previous order for the benefit of the complainant. It can be remedied by the performance of an act. State ex rel. Imboden v. Romines, 760 S.W.2d 130 (Mo. App. E.D. 1988). The contemnor can end the sentence and be discharged by doing what the contemnor had previously refused to do. “[H]e carries the keys of his prison in his own pocket.” Gompers v. Buck’s Stove & Range Co., 221 U.S. 418 (1911) (quoting In re Nevitt, 117 F. 448, 461 (8^th Cir. 1902)); Curtis v. Tozer, 374 S.W.2d 557 (Mo. App. E.D. 1964); Carder v. Carder, 61 S.W.2d 388 (Mo. App. W.D. 1933).

Probation and civil contempt are held by Missouri courts to be conceptually incompatible, and any order for imprisonment and probation conditioned on the contemnor’s compliance with a previous order is improper. Gross v. Gross, 557 S.W.2d 448 (Mo. App. W.D. 1977); In re Marriage of Vanet, 544 S.W.2d 236 (Mo...