The family of a man killed by a truck driver while cycling on a rural road outside of Salem two years ago says they’ve been robbed of justice. The driver, 48-year-old construction company owner Robert Weeks, faced a charge of criminally negligent homicide for his role in the death of Adam Joy in June 2023. Weeks was driving his Ford F350 truck on Wallace Road NW between Salem and McMinnville when he struck Joy from behind. Joy, who was riding behind his teenage son, died on the side of the road.
The felony charge carried a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000; but Weeks worked out a plea agreement with Judge Monte Campbell and Polk County District Attorney Aaron Felton to dismiss that charge and plead “no contest” to a lesser charge of attempted assault. The agreement also includes a deferred sentence, so if Weeks stays out of legal trouble for the next two years and writes a letter to the family, the assault charge will be dismissed. Weeks, who in addition to hitting Joy, had several speeding citations on his record (including a $2,000 fine for speeding in 2021), walked out of the courtroom without admitting guilt and with no restrictions placed on his driver’s license.
According to Joy family friend and former journalist Mara Stine, who was at the hearing, Weeks was unwilling to entertain any agreement that limited his driving because he said it would interfere with his job as a contractor.
“That’s not fair! I want justice!” Adam’s mother Masako Joy cried out through sobs as she absorbed what was happening in the Polk County Courthouse in Dallas Oregon on Monday morning.
The dozen Joy family members and friends who made the trip to Dallas knew there was a chance the felony charge would be dropped, but they held out hope for a trial and some sense of closure. They got neither.
When given an opportunity to address the family in the courtroom, Stine told BikePortland, “Weeks did not say anything to them. Instead, he cleared his throat and remained silent. Adam’s mother was a ball of fury and heartache.” Stine shared.
In an email to BikePortland Monday, Joy’s ex-wife Narumi Joy wrote,
“I have no words to describe what we all felt. Where is the justice? I no longer believe in the police or the justice system. [Weeks] was basically set free with virtually no punishment. Even his record of killing someone will go away if he behaves for two years. There’s no suspension or even limitation on his driving privileges. What kind of world is this?”
Oregon State Police officers who responded to the scene of the crash made initial statements that minimized Weeks’ role (saying he slowed down prior to the collision) and said Joy had fallen over in front of the truck prior to the collision. However, that initial police statement did not match what a witness shared with BikePortland two weeks later. That witness saw the collision from the opposite lane and said Weeks was “going pretty fast” and “the truck never moved over.” She came forward after seeing the police version of events and said, “I feel like they’re protecting the driver.”
Joy’s attorney Larry Sokol and members of Joy’s family have expressed serious concerns about the quality of the investigation that followed. They are shocked that Joy’s son, who was just a few yards a way from the collision, was never interviewed. And, despite repeated request from Sokol and his legal team, the Oregon State Police never gave them a chance to examine Weeks’ truck before releasing it back to him.
Three months after the collision the Polk County District Attorney said there was insufficient evidence to charge Weeks, but then reversed course in early 2024 and agreed to move forward with the charges and a trial. Hopes of a trial and some degree of justice is why so many members of Joy’s family drove to Dallas to be in the courtroom Monday.
At the hearing, DA Felton told the family he understood they were disappointed with the outcome. “But I also don’t think going to trial was appropriate,” he added. Since the standard for a criminally negligent homicide conviction is ‘beyond a reasonable doubt,’ the DA feared an acquittal if the case went to trial. Felton said that even if Weeks would have been found guilty, his lack of a criminal record means he would not have been sentenced to jail time.
The defense attorney found a driver who was behind Weeks at the time of the collision and provided a statement saying Weeks was not speeding. DA Felton said this testimony counter-balanced the witness who saw the crash from the opposite lane who testified he was speeding. Weeks testified before the grand jury that he thought he’d safely passed the cyclist, who must have fallen off his bike and under his Ford F-350 pickup truck as he drove by.
Based on comments he made Monday, Felton believes the plea deal provides at least some measure of accountability. It also provided a chance for the Joy family to address him in court and tell him how this devastated their lives and their family. Weeks sat facing the judge with his arms folded across his chest while Joy’s 17-year-old son and ex-wife shared emotional statements about what Joy meant to them and expressed grave disappointment about what they feel is a lack of justice. (DA Felton’s legal aide declined to discuss the case yesterday when asked about it in a phone call, and DA Felton has not yet replied to an email with questions seeking more information.)
The conclusion of this case has left Adam Joy’s family enraged and reeling.
In an email to BikePortland, his sister Gina Wilson wrote, “While I understand that it is not the DA’s job to find justice for a single family, it is his job to find justice for a community. He has failed miserably. He is a coward.”
“To me, it seems that they did not take Adam’s death seriously because he was an Asian man bicycling (God forbid) in a conservative, bicyclist-hating community, who caused a major inconvenience to everyone on a beautiful Saturday morning,” Narumi Joy shared on Monday after the hearing. “I’m still trying to think what else I can do or should be doing, but I believe having Adam’s story out there is the most important thing.”
“Killing Adam might be erased from Weeks’ record in two years as if Adam never existed, but he did exist. Adam left such huge footprints in everyone he met in 55 years of his life. He was a superhero to his students,” she continued. “I miss Adam so much. Please do not let them erase Adam from existence.”
— Mara Stine contributed reporting to this story. Learn more about Adam Joy at this online memorial created by his family.
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I guess we can put a dollar value on income from a contracting business, but not on a human life and a devastated family … so preserving the former carries more weight in this court than recognizing the latter. Ain’t that America!
hopefully the scofflaw and criminal Weeks makes another mistake within two years and he is removed from society.
It was always going to be difficult to get a conviction when law enforcement initially said Mr. Weeks did nothing wrong.
The family should definitely sue Weeks, the DA is *probably* right that there was a non-trivial chance that a jury would find that the case didn’t meet the threshold for “beyond a reasonable doubt”, but for civil cases the threshold of evidence is lower so if I were them I would try to ruin him financially at least.
Incredibly frustrating how easy it is to kill someone with a car with little to no consequence though.
This is a cultural failing. The handling of the case was ruined fundamentally from the very first steps, with the cops on the scene. There should obviously be standards for handling a scenario such as this, which would bypass their discretion and make their intentional fumbling of it impossible or unworkable, but good luck holding them to account in any way — we need to break the political power of police. Then the cultural biases of those involved in the prosecution of these types of cases wouldn’t be able to ruin them.
I’m outraged. In addition to the suffering caused to Adam Joy and those who loved him, allowing a reckless driver to get away incentivizes other drivers to behave carelessly around cyclists.
Is there anything we can do as non Polk County residents to protest this and put pressure on these local officials?
Incredibly frustrating. Can the family file a civil lawsuit in this circumstance?
It is kind of infuriating that a similar death prompted the passing of Oregon’s safe passing law and vulnerable user law. The safe passing law says that the driver must pass with enough distance that if the person riding the bicycle falls over towards the passing vehicle they will not make contact. It does not matter if Joy fell over or was hit while he was upright in either case the driver was closer than allowed by law when he made the pass. The Vulnerable Road User law quite intentionally has a lower bar for conviction than criminally negligent homicide and includes a one year suspension of driving privileges unless the person completes significant community service. There should not have been a possibility of any outcome that didn’t involve him taking some time off from driving or spending a couple hundred hours doing community service and it is once again frustrating to see these laws ignored by police and courts.