Speculation by lawyers surround disappearance of Judge from bench

Circuit Judge Joseph R. Carico had just finished playing a round of video games at his home in the moments before crashing his SUV into a tree last year, said a passenger in the vehicle, who has been jailed by the justice at least three times in recent years.

The game of choice that night, said passenger Jeremy Hubbard, was the popular first-person shoot-’em-up Halo 3 on the X-Box 360 gaming platform.

The two also played some sports games on the Nintendo Wii platform, which Hubbard, 28, said is the judge’s preferred gaming system.

It was Nov. 21, 2009, and Hubbard, who court records show has appeared in Carico’s court on shoplifting and drug charges, said he grew tired as midnight approached, and asked for a ride home after nearly two hours of gaming.

“I was texting my old lady and the next thing I knew I ran into a tree,” Hubbard told the Bristol Herald Courier this week.

Carico swerved to avoid a deer on Pole Bridge Road in Wise, Va., at 1:18 a.m. on Nov. 22, the police report states. An ambulance delivered Hubbard, with a battered and bruised back, to the hospital, and a tow truck removed the crumpled SUV.

The report lists Carico as leaving the accident unscathed.

Since then, Carico, 40, has mysteriously departed from his circuit court seat, as first reported last week by Virginia Lawyer’s Weekly.

His sudden vanishing act nearly three weeks ago has left his fellow judges of the 30th Judicial Circuit scrambling to cover his docket in Lee, Scott and Wise counties.

Neither Carico nor his Richmond-based attorney, Michael Rigsby, could be reached for comment.

The governing board in Virginia with the authority to suspend a judge is the state’s Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission, which is tasked by state code with investigating complaints of unethical conduct by judges and passing the findings on to the Virginia Supreme Court to determine whether permanent removal is warranted.

Speculation by area lawyers about the reasons for Carico’s departure from the bench points to the friendship with Hubbard, or even the wreck, as a possible violation of rules governing a judge’s impartiality.

“Surely, if it had something to do with this car accident somebody would have said something to me about it,” said Hubbard, who professes to be clueless about the justice’s departure.

A year before the crash, Carico filed a request to be removed from a drug case involving Hubbard because of a possible conflict of interest, but he never stated the source of the problem.

By then, the justice had signed multiple orders revoking Hubbard’s bond and jailing him on the drug conviction and on a larceny case. Carico also signed three separate orders sentencing Hubbard to community service.

The conflict of interest, Hubbard said, happens to be the first conversation the two men ever had outside the court room. Carico sought the recusal within days of the meeting, Hubbard said.

Carico happened to stop in the Bonanza restaurant where Hubbard was working on a day in early December 2008. It was a slow day, Hubbard said, and the two somehow struck up a conversation.

“We just started talking about video games and he started talking about the X-Box 360,” Hubbard said. “I started talking about school and how I wish I wasn’t such a [screw-up].”

Carico was elected in 1999 to the post of Wise County commonwealth’s attorney.

By 2003, he was appointed chief deputy attorney general by former Virginia Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore. In 2005, Carico was named to a Wise County General District judgeship, and in 2007 moved up to the circuit court.

Hubbard was charged with felony distribution of heroin in 2003, the same year that Carico stepped into the attorney general’s office. The charge was later amended to the lesser misdemeanor of distribution of a schedule III drug.

Court records show that after he left the attorney general’s office, Carico was involved in portions of the drug case as well as the felony shoplifting charge from which he recused himself after citing a conflict.

They had many video game matches following their conversation at the restaurant, Hubbard said. At one point, they even considered forming a competition team that was to include some of Hubbard’s neighbors.

They gradually lost touch in the months following the wreck, Hubbard said.

“I just haven’t really called him,” Hubbard said. “I don’t really want to get in his business.”

Their Halo 3 match late on Nov. 21, 2009, was set up after several telephone calls and text messages that night, Hubbard said. They met at Hubbard’s house for a brief round of Playstation 3 games. From there, Hubbard said, the two trekked to Carico’s home for more video games.

Since the wreck, Hubbard said, he has been busy deflecting rumors that some sort of wrongdoing led to the accident.

“People are saying there was drugs involved and there was this, and there was alcohol and none of this [expletive] is true,” Hubbard said. “Everybody wants to make up their own story and their own thing about what [expletive] happened.”

mowens@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0698