In In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133 (1955), the United States Supreme Court found a due process violation when a judge sat as a "judge-grand jury" and later presided at a contempt hearing in which witnesses were found in contempt for their conduct before him. The Supreme Court noted that: "Every procedure which would offer a possible temptation to the average man as a judge . . . not to hold the balance nice, clear, and true between the State and the accused denies the latter due process of law." . . . Such a stringent rule may sometimes bar trial by judges who have no actual bias and who would do their very best to weigh the scales of justice equally between contending parties. But to perform its high function in the best way "justice must satisfy the appearance of justice." (Id. at 136.) In Murchison, the judge "had conducted secret 'one-man grand jury' proceedings." Id. Therefore, the Court stated that: "As a practical matter it is difficult if not impossible for a judge to free himself from the influence of what took place in his 'grand-jury' secret session. His recollection of that is likely to weigh far more heavily with him than any testimony given in the open hearings." (Id. at 138.) "Thus the judge whom due process requires to be impartial in weighing the evidence presented before him, called on his own personal knowledge and impression of what had occurred in the grand jury room and his judgment was based in part on this impression, the accuracy of which could not be tested by adequate cross-examination." Id. Even more significantly, the judge in that grand jury proceeding was acting as the investigator and the charging authority. Under those circumstances, the Supreme Court noted that: "It would be very strange if our system of law permitted a judge to act as a grand jury and then try the very persons accused as a result of his investigations. Perhaps no State has ever forced a defendant to accept grand jurors as proper trial jurors to pass on charges growing out of their hearings. A single 'judge-grand jury' is even more a part of the accusatory process than an ordinary lay grand juror. Having been a part of that process a judge cannot be, in the very nature of things, wholly disinterested in the conviction or acquittal of those accused." (Id. at 137.)