Posted: Wednesday, 06 January 2010 11:07AM
Let's Not Have One For The Road
Steve Corbett Reporting
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Luzerne County Senior Judge Chester B. Muroski drank.
Muroski drove.
Muroski crashed his 2007 Mercedes Benz into a drainage ditch, clipping a couple of mail boxes in the process.
Muroski left the scene of the accident.
Now Muroski feels hostility from the public outcry over what many people believe was extremely poor judgment.
The fact is that he drank.
He drove.
He crashed.
He left the scene of the accident.
And now he’s puzzled about adverse reaction to his decision-making?
In a county already under siege by crooked judges, some people expect Muroski to be the jurist who will help lead us from darkness into light. The Times Leader even chose him as man of the year for his transparency and leadership in 2009.
But transparency means clarity.
And Muroski has not been clear about what happened Monday night about 8:30 after a busy day at the courthouse where swearing-in ceremonies and receptions took place. Although he has explained to the press how the accident happened, including detailing his itinerary after he left the courthouse. He said he swore in the mayor of Courtdale and stopped at a Kingston bar/restaurant.
“I had one drink,” Muroski told me when we spoke yesterday afternoon.
But Citizens Voice reporter Dave Janoski reported that Muroski told him that he had “one or two drinks.”
How transparent is the discrepancy between what the former district attorney and president judge told me and what he told Janoski? The judge’s statements are about as clear as a White Russian.
That disparity alone is enough to add suspicion about everything else Muroski said to explain his actions on the fateful night he said he hit a patch of black ice and lost control. People have reason to wonder if the 70-year-old judge lost control even before he slid behind the wheel of his luxury car and slid off the road.
With the ongoing federal public corruption investigation that has already snared three of Muroski’s former colleagues continuing to hammer courthouse credibility, Muroski can ill afford the controversy that now surrounds him.
Do people really want a man who suffered a compound fracture of his credibility to continue to serve on an already broken bench? Valid arguments can be made that his judgment is faulty and even his physical condition is too frail to endure the serious demands of the job.
Maybe Muroski should just retire.
Had the judge stayed at the scene that night, he might have helped to dispel the mounting questions about the influence alcohol might have had on him. He claims he left because he was cold and that he waited 10 or 15 minutes for police to arrive after a witness called 911.
When no police arrived, he said he asked the witness to take him home. Muroski said he called state police from his house. Police told him to file a report in the morning, he said.
Did he have a drink or two while he decided whether to have a friend drive him to the hospital? Was he on any medication that night that might have contributed to his condition? Did anyone draw blood when he arrived at the hospital? And why didn’t he just go to the closest hospital instead of traveling to one that was a dangerous, icy trip away if the roads were hiding patches of black ice like the one he said got him?
All these questions are relevant to Muroski’s future.
Even though a thorough investigation should follow, I don’t expect that to happen. Still, the questions that hurt Muroski’s credibility will follow him for the rest of his life. All the man-of-the-year awards in the coal region won’t erase the concerns people have that politics rather than reason rules in Luzerne County.
If Muroski had stayed at the scene, we might know more details about the judge’s delicate condition.
Maybe not, though,
Had police arrived and talked with Muroski, instead of a Good Samaritan giving the judge a ride home, maybe the cops would have tucked him in for the night.
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Corbett
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