STEUBENVILLE — Derek Smith was 16 days away from being able to enter the Club 106 building at will when he defied a court order on Aug. 2 and unscrewed the plywood covering the doorway, went into the building and removed chairs he said he needed for another enterprise.

Smith, 58, was found guilty Monday in Jefferson County Common Pleas Court of violating a May 14 court order authorizing the city to close the building, located at 601-603 South St. — “for the duration of the Order of Abatement, by whatever means necessary to prevent entry to any part of the building by any person for any purpose.” Judge Joseph Bruzzese sentenced Smith to 10 days in jail for contempt of court — the same number of days he’d spent in jail awaiting his hearing.

“People need a place to go and all that, but it needs to be done legally,” Bruzzese said. “You’ve already served the 10 days (but) where do we go from here? There’s no order, so you’re allowed in there … but you’re still not allowed to run that business.”

Smith ran afoul of city and state regulators for allegedly selling liquor without a license to undercover operatives in 2023. He’s denied it and told Bruzzese the liquor law violation, which led to his club being shuttered for a year, had been dismissed.

“When I went to go to trial for those charges they dismissed them,” Smith told the judge. “So I haven’t been adjudicated for selling liquor.”

Smith was actually found guilty in Steubenville Municipal Court in November 2023 of keeping a place where beer or intoxicating liquors are sold, furnished, or given away in violation of law, but a second charge — illegally selling alcohol — was dismissed.

But Bruzzese referenced the evidence presented by the city during the May 14 hearing about “you going to Kroger’s and buying all that booze, right? And going down to (your club with it). We’re not stupid.”

Smith had been defiant when police warned him Aug. 2 that he was risking arrest if he entered the Club 106 building while the court order was still in effect.

Patrolman Regis Holzworth, present during one of several interactions with Smith that day, said he “first denied being in the building, and then said, ‘You know what? Yeah, I was in there, I had to get some stuff out. I’m gonna’ go back in again later because I need more stuff.”

“I told him a couple times, you’re not supposed to be in that building, not to do it, just go back and secure the doors,” Holzworth told Bruzzese before his body camera footage of the discussion was played for the court. “He said that the judge wasn’t going to tell him he couldn’t go into his own building. He said the judge, if I remember the words right, ‘couldn’t comprehend what he actually wrote’ and he couldn’t force him to not go into his own building.”

Later, Patrolman Mark Rogers said Smith told him “the order was not designed to keep me out of my building. The order was designed to stop the business, not me.” That interaction also was recorded on his body camera.

Smith, who represented himself, said he’d followed the court order “except for that one night, and I needed those chairs.” He told Bruzzese he didn’t remember anywhere in the May 14 order where it said he couldn’t go into his own building

“You, in this courtroom, you adjudicated me for a year, I was shut down. That year is over. I shouldn’t even be in court for nothing regarding that order. That year is over,” he told Bruzzese when it was his turn to address the court.

“It’s the city that keeps bringing up these petty complaints and gripes about me going in a building that I own … I needed some chairs, and I had to make a decision on the fly whether or not to go in the building that I owned to get the chairs that I needed or just placate some bruised egos. I don’t know what the problem is about me going in my own building. I admit that I went in and got the chairs … (because) I had to create another venue, because everything that I created, this city is trying to cut me off at every avenue. So I had to create something. I got a family to feed. My family’s going to win every time.”

Smith also told Bruzzese, “This is what I’m willing to do right now, today — I’m willing to just say I close ‘106, period, as it is, there’s nothing else to argue about and I’ll find some other use for the property.”

Bruzzese reminded Smith the one thing he cannot do legally at Club 106 or anywhere else is dispense alcohol without a license.

“You go do what you want, you are not at this moment ordered to do anything,” the judge said. “But operating that business without a liquor permit is still illegal — it was illegal then, it’s illegal now. I don’t want you to have any more trouble.”

Bruzzese had issued a preliminary injunction in November 2023 suspending operations at Club 106 until Aug. 19, 2024, saying the good owner Derek Smith has done in his community is overshadowed by the violence that has occurred in and around the club.

In that ruling, Bruzzese had pointed out footage from inside the club showed Smith “breaking up fights, not causing them,” and that he “consistently provided videos to law enforcement to facilitate the prosecution of crimes that occur in his establishment.” He’d also pointed to the good Smith had done in the community, donating to community causes and on at least one occasion helping a family that could not have afforded a funeral for a loved one without his help. without his donations.

“While most of that testimony is probably true, it does not amount to a license to sell liquor. That is the problem,” Bruzzese had said in granting the injunction. “The violence that occurs at Club 106 is attributable more to the defendant’s clientele than to the defendant himself, but it attracts attention and keeps (the club) on law enforcement radar.”

Then, in May, city officials had complained of heightened activity around the controversial club and said an individual from the Pittsburgh area who was stopped outside the building told police he was “just trying to get to the club” before fleeing on foot.

Police said the suspect left a loaded gun in his car.