The Maggio Effect (Editorial)

Michael Maggio

Reading the findings of fact included in the state Judicial Discipline & Disability Commission’s sanctions against suspended Faulkner County Circuit Judge Mike Maggio were more than we could take.

Eventually, we just started to skim over them, confident that those comments he posted on a website were adequate to explain why the JDDC and Maggio himself had agreed that he simply doesn’t belong on the bench anymore.

Or ever.

And we’re not even talking about some things that are still in dispute, like whether campaign contributions from a nursing home owner influenced Maggio’s decision to reduce a jury’s order of damages against one of the donor’s nursing homes.

We were, however, nonplussed by Maggio’s official statement, in which he still seems to excuse the behavior that first forced him out of the race for the state Court of Appeals, then got him suspended from the bench and ultimately will keep him from ever serving as a judge again.

“I accepted responsibility and apologized for the statements under an assumed pseudonym in a private sports blog that were attributed to me,” Maggio said. “Those people that know me, have interacted with me or have observed me in private or public know those statements do not, have not, nor ever will represent my beliefs, core principles, philosophy or my heart.”

Character, it’s been said, is how we behave when no one is looking. And none of us is perfect, not even judges. All of us have impulses we have to control, thoughts that we realize we need to keep to ourselves. But why would anyone believe that the way Maggio behaved when he thought his identity would never be known was not representative of his core principles? There’s even a psychological term for this phenomenon: the online disinhibition effect.

Here’s some free advice: If you can’t put your name on it, just skip it.