A Fall From Grace and Glory: The Crime and Punishment of Judge Michael T. Joyce
Posted: Saturday, July 30, 2011
by Jack H. Schick
The new millennium has not been kind to Michael T. Joyce. Since the turn of the century, Joyce has lost is career, his home and many of his possessions. The former Pennsylvania Superior Court Justice is now serving a 46 months sentence in a federal prison. He was convicted of mail fraud, insurance fraud and money laundering. On top of the string of humiliations he has already suffered, the Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board has now issued disciplinary action barring Joyce from ever again holding judicial office. Under state law, this decision may cost him the $81,803 yearly pension the State Employees Retirement System awarded him when he retired from office after his indictment.
In 1973, Joyce attended Penn State then the Franklin Pierce Law Center. He secured a position of presidential law clerk in the Ford White House. He was in private legal practice in Pennsylvania from 1977 through 1985. Joyce became a judge in the Erie, PA Court of Common Pleas in July of 1985 and secured a second term in November of 1995. His career reached its climax in 1997, when he became a Pennsylvania Superior Court Justice.
Judge Joyce’s life began its downward spiral when he was involved in a low speed rear end collision in 2001. He was hit from behind on a road in rural Erie County. No law enforcement investigators were called to the scene. The accident was handled by the insurance companies by mutual agreement. Joyce soon realized he had suffered serious injuries. He began to suffer back and neck pain that was so severe that he could no longer golf, scuba dive or continue with his routine exercise program. He was so debilitated that he was unable to run for the state Supreme Court in 2001 or 2003, when he claims he had received the Republican nomination.
Judge Joyce filed a claim for his disability and the lost increase in wages he would have received as a Supreme Court Justice. In 2004, State Farm Insurance Company, who represented the driver who hit him, paid Joyce $50,000. Erie Insurance Group, who covered Joyce, paid out $390,000 to settle the claim. Erie Group was skeptical, though, and kept an eye on the Judge.
Judge Joyce appeared in the newspaper several times in 2003, as his life continued to crumble. In May, his picture accompanied a story that reported he had driven the wrong way on a one-way street after leaving a tavern and caused a wreck that injured the other motorist. In August that year it was reported that he was sewing a local radio station for defamation. A “personality” at the station claimed he had parked in a handicap parking spot at Presque Isle while he went inline roller skating in the park.
Another news story in 2003 covered a ruling the judge issued. He and two other Superior Court justices over turned an Erie County Court decision in a lease dispute case between an Erie shopping center and a tenant. Joyce and the other judges had the opinion they wrote published as president-a blueprint for future legal reviews. The state Supreme Court, however, declared the decision “conspicuously bad law.” They said that overruling the lower court was in “plain violation of the applicable standard of review.”
The Superior Court’s decision was based on testimony by Gregory Rubino of Baldwin Brothers Inc. who had filed the suit against the tenant. Research found that Rubino was a former business partner of Joyce and professed to be a close personal friend of the judge. Public records showed that Baldwin Brothers had given thousands of dollars to Joyce’s political campaigns. It was found in an unrelated court transcript that Joyce once said Rubino and another business partner were “largely responsible” for helping raise the money he needed to get the Superior Court job.
In the mean while, Erie Group insurance investigators discovered that Joyce had used his settlement money to buy real estate, a Harley Davidson motor cycle, a hot tub, a home theatre system, several scuba diving vacations to the Caribbean and for other activities he claimed to be too disabled to do. In 2002 he acquired a private pilot’s license and logged at least 50 flights. None of the money was used for medical expenses or rehabilitation. The results of the investigation were turned over to federal authorities.
In the autumn of 2008 Judge Joyce was convicted of mail fraud (since he had mailed his the information for his claim), and money laundering in a trial held in Pittsburgh. Joyce filed an appeal claiming that Senior U.S. District Court Judge Maurice B. Cohill Jr. had abused his discretion by not granting him a new trial. He claimed the judge had erred by allowing controversial evidence to be admitted. He protested allowing the testimony of his ex-girlfriend who obviously had it in for him.
A three judge panel for the 3rdCircuit Court of Appeals disagreed. They said, “The jury could infer from Joyce’s numerous exaggerations and misstatements a specific intent to defraud Erie Insurance. Given the weight of evidence, there is no support for the view that the jury convicted and innocent man.” The conviction on two counts of mail fraud and six counts of money laundering were upheld and Joyce was sentence to serve 46 months in a federal prison in Morgantown, West Virginia. Property and possessions Joyce acquired with the fraudulently gotten money has been confiscated, but he had not hit his bottom yet.
Since Joyce, now 62, had resigned as Superior Court Justice prior to his conviction, the PA State Employees Retirement System ruled in 2009 that he was still eligible for his taxpayer funded pension. The Court of Judicial Discipline’s decision this month (July 2011), institutes the passage in the state constitution which requires pension forfeiture for any judge “removed or barred from holding judicial office for conviction of a felony.” The ruling forces the PAERS to reconsider its previous decision. Ex-Judge Michael T. Joyce will probably now also lose his annual $6,817 a month retirement benefit.
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