Judge Joyce and the Ford Explorer

While there is emphatically the presumption of innocence, Judge Michael Joyce’s indictment by a federal grand jury recently on insurance fraud and related charges casts suspicion, not only on his lengthy bench service, but on that of every local judge and judges everywhere.

One wonders why the local news media have never identified and interviewed the driver of the
Ford Explorer which rear-ended Judge Joyce’s vehicle, and which caused so little damage that it wasn’t even reported to the local police. Surely that driver, whoever he or she is, could provide some compelling insight into the judge’s behavior and conduct in the wake of the accident, or perhaps even contradict his version of events.

Is it possible, for example that Judge Joyce not only fabricated the extent of his injuries, if he did, but also deliberately caused the other driver to collide with his vehicle in order to set up his allegedly fraudulent insurance claims. That’s a growing trend in auto insurance fraud in some venues. If the judge were capable of fabricating the fraudulent aftermath of the “accident,” why not the accident itself?

Even if in the end Judge Joyce is vindicated and the indictment found to be, as he has asserted,”without merit,” the known circumstances imply a level of culpability that cannot be vouchsafed. Nor can this episode be viewed as simply an isolated incident. There are too many opportunities for temptation and corruption within the ambit of judges. Now that we know even those at the top can be compromised, gone forever, within the local context at least, is the presumed or implied infallibility of jurists.

How can judge Joyce or his attorney explain away the stark contradiction between two key documents in evidence which he himself reportedly prepared: one, the letter to the insurance company claiming debilitating injuries and, two, his contemporaneous application for a pilot’s license asserting requisite physical fitness?

In this light, one can only wonder whether Judge Joyce – or any other judge - has putatively committed other illicit acts throughout his or her tenure which have heretofore gone unseen. And, since it could happen to him, so high on the state juridical hierarchy, why not to any other jurist on the federal, state, or county bench? It was not, after all, the court system which ferreted out this alleged egregious misconduct from among its own, but outside investigative agencies.

This further suggests that the court system cannot police or discipline its own. It may be argued that judicial malpractices like those implicit here are not rare; just rarely uncovered, because of the courts’ entrenched lack of transparency, their unchecked power and influence, and the timidity of the local news media.

It also raises the troubling question of the integrity of the insurance industry generally, and Erie Insurance Co. and State Farm in particular. They were obviously intimidated by the official court logo over Judge Joyce’s letter claiming damages, failing to undertake even the most rudimentary or superficial investigation into his claims. Why? Because of his past and prospective jurisdiction over their commercial transactions and other activities. Who must pay for this, and perhaps other prodigious failures unseen or unacknowledged by Erie Insurance, but insurance consumers generally lacking the judicial power of a sitting judge, many of whom can ill afford to?