Judge Joe Brown Speaks Out About Arrest in Tennessee

For once, Judge Joe Brown is on the wrong side of the law. The former TV judge was charged Monday with five counts of contempt of court and sentenced to five days in jail in Tennessee.

The 66-year-old judge, who starred in the reality TV show "Judge Joe Brown" for 15 years, reportedly became "pretty raucous" and "challenged the authority" of Magistrate Harold Horne while in court, CNN reports.

According to Dan Michael, chief magistrate judge of the Shelby County Juvenile Court, Brown "darn near caused a riot in the courtroom, he had people so inflamed," reports the Washington Post.

The former TV judge was there to represent a woman who had been brought in on a warrant in a child support case. However, Michael said that Brown became upset and started yelling and challenging Horne's authority.

Brown spent little time in the Memphis jail before he was later released the same day. However, he told ABC News, that his arrest Monday never should have happened and that it has "reenergized" him in his current run for Shelby County D.A. General.

"I always used to be a hot shot about protecting people's rights," he said. "I was not happy to have my liberty detained even for 30 seconds. That's precious. It's not about the conditions of incarceration, it's about the loss of liberty."

Brown said the incident started when a woman asked him to take a look at her child support case and he felt obliged, due to a pledge he'd made to "protect womanhood and promote manhood."

"Then I almost felt nauseated looking at it," he said, adding that he believed the case was only going forward so that the opposing lawyer could make a profit. "When I insisted that the woman's charges be dismissed. He started talking about, I'm not an attorney so-and-so. ... I said, 'You know it's wrong. ... You're better than this.'"

Brown also revealed that the five hours that he spent in jail were not that bad.

"I shook hands and took pictures with all of the staff down there, the deputy jailers and shook hands with inmates," he said. "They had me in jail detention assignment down on the first floor. They were getting ready to take me upstairs [to a cell] and I said, 'Oh no you're not! Because you put your sheriff in complicity for what I might do to sue you and it's getting doubled if I go up there."

The former TV judge also laughed off speculation that his arrest was a publicity stunt.

"If it was a stunt, I am a master at doing it. I just happened to by chance run into a woman in need. That's one hell of a thing to be able to pull off," he said. "Considering my ratings and the fact that I've been coming into the homes of just about everybody with a TV set in Shelby County for about 15 years, what was there to promote? Everybody knows who I am."