Judge Joe Brown has found himself on the wrong side of the law.
The once-popular TV judge is currently cooling his heels in the Shelby County Corrections Center in Tennessee on a contempt of court charge following a bizarre courtroom outburst last year.
Brown (see booking photo at left), who began his five-day sentence on Thursday, is in a cell by himself in an area that’s protected from other inmates, authorities said.
The sentence stems from a March 2014 incident during which he allegedly yelled at Juvenile Court Magistrate Harold “Hal” Horne.
According to reports, the former criminal court judge showed up at the courthouse and began working the crowd for votes in his campaign for Shelby County District Attorney. He then sat in a courtroom for approximately 20 minutes during a child support hearing that Horne was presiding over.
Then he allegedly approached the bench and began haranguing Horne about delays.
At the time, Juvenile Court Chief Magistrate Dan Michael said that Brown “all but had the courtroom in a riot” and launched into “a diatribe against Mr. Horne and the authority of the court.”