A 63-year-old Michigan judge who has sat on the bench for nearly three decades rear-ended a public bus in March while allegedly carrying a blood alcohol content more than double the state's legal limit, then stumbled out of his wrecked car and immediately told officers he was a judge, according to bodycam footage newly obtained by the Detroit News.
John Chmura, a judge in Michigan's 37th District Court in Warren since 1996, was arrested and charged with driving under the influence with a BAC of 0.17% or higher following the March 25 crash in Sterling Heights, a suburb north of Detroit. Two passengers on the SMART bus were treated for minor injuries at the scene, officials said.
The footage paints a picture that should trouble anyone who expects judges to uphold the law they are paid to enforce. Chmura failed two field sobriety tests. He slurred his words when asked to count backwards from 87 to 78, blew past 78, and then reversed course and started counting upward. Asked to recite the alphabet from C to N, he began, stopped, and asked the officer to repeat the instructions.
When officers asked Chmura how much he had consumed, his answer was brief.
"I don't know. Evidently too much."
He told officers he had just come from an event. He also described himself as "not OK."
Police said Chmura initially refused a breathalyzer test but later consented. The breathalyzer registered a blood alcohol content of 0.162%, police said, already more than double Michigan's legal driving limit of.08%. A subsequent blood test showed his BAC was more than 0.19%, C and G News reported.
That level of impairment is not a close call. Michigan law sets a heightened charge threshold at 0.17%, and Chmura was charged under that "super drunk" statute. He is scheduled to appear in court again in August.
Chmura was elected unopposed to a new six-year term in 2024. Voters in Warren had no competing candidate to weigh, and now they have a sitting judge facing a serious criminal charge in the same system he presides over.
That conflict is already shaping how the case is handled. Because Chmura routinely oversees cases brought by the Macomb County Prosecutor's Office, a St. Clair County prosecutor has been assigned to the case, ClickOnDetroit reported. The arrangement is standard when a local official is the defendant, but it underscores how deeply a judge's misconduct can tangle the machinery of local justice.
His defense attorney, David Kramer, declined to comment on specifics of the case but offered a general statement.
"[Chmura] is a very respected jurist with a fine reputation, and we'll deal with this case as it comes."
Reputation is one thing. Bodycam footage is another.
Chmura's case arrives at a moment when public confidence in the judiciary is already under strain. Across the country, judges have faced serious misconduct allegations that raise the same core question: who holds the people in robes accountable?
A federal judge in Atlanta has faced calls to resign over a courthouse sex scandal and a documented pattern of misconduct. That case involved a federal judge who allegedly carried on a two-year sexual relationship with a law enforcement commander inside the courthouse itself, then lied about it when confronted with a misconduct complaint.
The Department of Justice eventually moved to remove that same judge from an election case, citing bias concerns and a record of questionable conduct. The DOJ's effort to bench the judge reflected a rare federal acknowledgment that judicial behavior off the bench can compromise proceedings on it.
Different facts, same problem. Judges occupy positions of extraordinary public trust. They sentence drunk drivers. They revoke licenses. They lecture defendants about personal responsibility. When one of them plows into a public bus at more than twice the legal limit and can't recite the alphabet for the officer's camera, the gap between the bench and the barstool becomes impossible to ignore.
And the Chmura case is hardly the only recent example of a judge whose personal conduct made a mockery of the authority vested in the robe. In another widely covered episode, a judge apologized to a would-be assassin in open court, conduct so far outside the bounds of judicial norms that it triggered a national backlash.
Chmura's August court date will determine how seriously Michigan's legal system treats one of its own. The charge he faces, DUI with a BAC of 0.17% or higher, carries stiffer penalties than a standard drunk driving offense under Michigan law, including the possibility of up to 180 days in jail, higher fines, and a longer license suspension.
Whether Chmura continues to hear cases in Warren while his own criminal matter works through a neighboring county's courts is an open question. No suspension or removal has been reported. He ran unopposed less than a year ago, meaning voters will not have a regular opportunity to weigh in for years.
The bodycam footage, now public, leaves little room for ambiguity about the scene officers encountered on March 25. A judge who could not count to 78 or get from C to N stumbled out of a car he had just driven into a bus full of passengers, and his first instinct was to announce his title.
Two people on that bus needed medical attention. They were ordinary riders on public transit, not parties to a case, not lawyers, not officials. They were just people trying to get somewhere, and a man entrusted with enforcing the law put them at risk because he chose to drive after drinking far past any reasonable limit.
Chmura's attorney says his client is a "very respected jurist." That may be true in the narrow professional sense. But respect is not a shield against consequences, and a long career on the bench does not entitle anyone to a softer standard when they break the law they swore to uphold.
The footage is public. The BAC numbers are on the record. The charge is filed. What remains to be seen is whether the system treats Judge Chmura the way Judge Chmura would treat anyone else who showed up on his docket with the same facts.
A judge who can't recite the alphabet after crashing into a bus full of people has no business deciding how the law applies to anyone else.
