A US judge has been removed from the bench for jailing 46 people after none would admit to having a mobile phone that began ringing during his court session.

Judge Robert Restaino "snapped" and "engaged in what can only be described as two hours of inexplicable madness" during the 2005 session, Raoul Felder, chairman of the New York state Commission on Judicial Conduct, wrote in the decision to remove the judge today.

Restaino, who became a judge in 2002, was hearing domestic violence cases in Niagara Falls, New York when a phone rang.