After listening to the government portray his client as a greedy, dishonest, conniving man, defense attorney Philip Friedman stood before jurors and told them that they shouldn't even be there.

"Ladies and gentlemen, do you want to know what this case is about?" he asked. "It's a witch hunt. Pure and simple. It's a witch hunt."

Led, he continued, by "a vicious, jilted woman," Shelane Buehler, who he later called "the architect from hell."

A well-known Erie architect, Ms. Buehler went to federal prosecutors with information on Michael T. Joyce years after the two insurance claims on which the case against him is based were settled in 2002, Mr. Friedman said.

Mr. Joyce, who retired after he was indicted, is charged with two counts of mail fraud and six counts of money laundering. Ms. Buehler is expected to be a witness against him.

The government contends that Mr. Joyce was desperate for money when he filed false insurance claims for a fender bender in August 2001.

Mr. Joyce was rear-ended at a speed of less than 5 mph on Aug. 10, 2001, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Christian Trabold. No police or paramedics were called, and Mr. Joyce did not tell the other driver he was injured, the prosecutor told the jury of six men and six women in his opening statement yesterday.

A few weeks after the accident, Mr. Joyce told the woman's insurance carrier, State Farm, that he would not file a bodily injury claim, Mr. Trabold said.

But in the summer of 2002, Mr. Joyce changed his mind, filing two claims, one for $50,000 with State Farm, and then a $390,000 claim with his own company.

Shortly before the filings, he and Ms. Buehler broke up, and just days before, Mr. Joyce wrote her a letter saying that he owed her approximately $40,000 related to property that they owned together, Mr. Trabold said.

Because money was so tight after the breakup, he said, Judge Joyce lived in a room adjacent to his Superior Court chambers for months.

Mr. Trabold said the insurance claims were false and that the judge made up a "scheme created in greed, out of his desire and need for more money."

In his claim with his company, Erie Insurance Group, Mr. Joyce said the accident had left him in great pain and unable to golf, scuba dive or perform his job well.

Mr. Trabold told the jury he will present evidence showing that Mr. Joyce continued to golf in Florida and Jamaica, and applied for and received his scuba instructor's license.

At about the same time, Mr. Joyce applied for his pilot's license with the Federal Aviation Administration and flew approximately 50 times, the prosecutor said. When he received a physical from an FAA doctor, Mr. Joyce did not reveal any medical problems other than previous gall bladder surgery. He was cleared to fly.

Mr. Friedman said his client started to feel neck pain almost immediately after the accident. Mr. Joyce called his doctor and had X-rays taken, he said, because the crash aggravated a neck injury suffered in a 1991 car accident.

After that, Mr. Joyce had to have disks fused in his neck. Throughout August and September 2001, Mr. Joyce went to physical therapy several times and had additional X-rays taken. He continued with 15 more sessions of physical therapy in November, Mr. Friedman said.

The biggest mistake his client made, Mr. Friedman asserted, was not hiring an attorney, and then filling out a narrative for his insurance claim himself.

In the 18-page narrative, Mr. Joyce said several different times that he was unable to play golf and scuba dive because of his injuries.

The truth, Mr. Friedman told the jury, was that Mr. Joyce could not play whole rounds of golf because of pain, and that he could no longer scuba dive off of boats, but instead had to dive from land.

The case before Senior U.S. District Judge Maurice B. Cohill will continue today.