History[]
Judge Sinfield is a character from the 2000 AD strip Judge Dredd. He used to run Traffic Division, and was then reassigned to reorganise Justice Department's administration. In 2131 AD he orchestrated the election of Dan Francisco as Chief Judge, replacing Judge Hershey, because he was opposed to the latter's reforms which made it legal for mutants to live in the city. Judge Francisco, a well-meaning but naïve man, was unaware of Sinfield's dirty tricks and thought that he was (a) his friend and (b) a pretty swell guy who sincerely believed, as he did, that mutants should be treated fairly and decently in a place that wasn't Mega-City One. In reality, Sinfield was a devious bigot.
When Francisco was elected Chief Judge, Sinfield became Deputy Chief Judge. He ran Justice Department while Francisco recovered from an attempt on his life which had been made by mutants but organised by hardline anti-mutant activists to rig the election. One of Sinfield's first acts was to send Dredd out of the city to police new mutant 'townships' — which were in fact half-built shanty towns — in the Cursed Earth. He also assigned Judge Beeny to act as Dredd's number two there. Judge Rico was sent to assist Dredd when he angered Sinfield by refusing to award Cadet March, Sinfield's clone, full Judge status, as he had concerns about March's attitude.
March was later awarded full Judge status by another assessor and placed on clerical duties in the Grand Hall of Justice, a long way away from all the dangers of the streets. This was probably engineered by Sinfield.
In 2132 AD, with Dredd and his allies safely out of the way, and Francisco still gravely ill, Sinfield consolidated his grip on power. He used his authority to enter the Justice Department evidence archives and, when the archivist's back was turned, steal some SLD 88, a drug created by PJ Maybe that rendered anyone who took it extremely suggestible. He then gave the SLD 88 to Francisco, saying that it was a painkiller, and persuaded him to stand down and appoint Sinfield as his successor. What Sinfield didn't know was that the mayor of Mega-City One, Byron Ambrose, was in fact a disguised PJ Maybe. When 'Ambrose' visited Francisco in hospital he was struck by how eager he was to sing Sinfield's praises and assert that he would be an excellent Chief Judge.
Sinfield used the Chief Judge's powers to expel from the city any mutant who had committed any sort of crime, even if it was just dropping litter. He also made mutant porn illegal, describing it as "filth" and a "sickness." The resources of the squad hunting 'vi-zines' (magazines featuring the violent deaths of unwilling victims) were diverted to chase mutant porn instead. This meant that more people were kidnapped by criminals to feature in vi-zines, including mutants who were abducted from the townships in the Cursed Earth. Crime bosses assumed, correctly, that Sinfield wouldn't care enough about the lives of mutants to stop them.
To pay for his anti-mutant legislation, Sinfield asked the mayor to raise tax revenues by 12%. This angered Maybe as it would destroy his chances of being re-elected by an adoring public. He therefore poisoned Sinfield with Harrisburg fungus, a virulent organism from the Cursed Earth — appropriate, given that that was where he was exiling the mutants. Sinfield was transformed into a festering, vaguely anthropoid mass of sores and buboes. According to Dr Waters, the city's top exotic disease specialist, he had only a 0.1% chance of survival.
The 'friends' whom Sinfield had appointed to the Council of Five were soon bickering among themselves about which of them should become Chief Judge when he died. They were almost as annoyed as PJ Maybe when Sinfield miraculously recovered, owing to a nasty case of swamp mould he had caught as a cadet, which helped his body to recognise and fight the Harrisburg fungus. Disappointed but undaunted, the ever-resourceful PJ Maybe went on to infect Sinfield with methicillin-resistant pustulating radpox. Although Sinfield's 'friends' were asking him not to prolong his suffering, Dr Waters authorised the use of an experimental antibiotic that saved Sinfield's life. Having finally cottoned on to the fact that somebody was trying to kill him, Sinfield asked that Dredd be brought back from the Cursed Earth to investigate, knowing that although he despised him he was also an honest man who would do his duty.
Dredd duly started to make enquiries, impeded only briefly by a pair of mutants who hijacked a hoverbus and crashed it into Sinfield's hospital in an independent attempt to try and assassinate him. This caused the deaths of everybody on the hoverbus, but failed to kill Sinfield. An outraged PJ Maybe ("Nobody butts in on my kills!") ordered his sex robot, Inga, to impersonate Judge Hershey, sneak into the hospital and murder Sinfield before anybody else tried and got lucky. However, Sinfield survived because Dredd realised what was going on and shot a hi-ex bullet into Inga. PJ Maybe was arrested, his true identity was revealed and he was sentenced to death.
Unfortunately for Sinfield, Maybe tried to bargain for his life by telling Dredd that he suspected that Sinfield had drugged Francisco with SLD 88. A little digging revealed this to be true — partly because Sinfield had been stupid enough to hide the SLD 88 in a safe in his own quarters. Francisco was reinstated as Chief Judge and Sinfield, despite begging him for mercy, was sentenced to twenty years on Titan for his perfidy. (Maybe, meanwhile, had his own sentence commuted to life imprisonment in return for his help, although Dredd himself voted against this.) Once restored to office, Francisco removed Sinfield's followers from the Council of Five.
In 2136 AD, Aimee Nixon led a revolt on Titan which Sinfield voted against. However, he became a member of Nixon's side by default when Justice Department tried to blow up the Titan prison even though 386 ex-Judges there had decided not to join the revolt. Nixon stole a ship which she, Sinfield and the surviving ex-Judges used to land on Enceladus, one of Saturn's other moons.
The Sovs became interested in Enceladus in 2137 AD when they detected a mysterious energy source beneath its surface. They landed there and killed the ex-Judges, despite Sinfield's pleas for humanitarian assistance. Sinfield himself was abducted and taken back to Sov territory on Earth, because "a former Chief Judge is a valuable strategic asset." He was put in a secret underground prison complex where the Sovs plugged wires directly into his brain, through the socket where his left eye used to be, in an attempt to extract Mega-City One's military secrets, including the codes for its nuclear weapons. The methods they used to try to retrieve the data were effectively torture.
Sinfield remained there until 2138 AD and the story 'Get Sin', when the prison was penetrated by a crack team of Judges including Dredd, Psi-Judge Anderson and Judge Giant (who rode into Sov territory on elks and in disguise). Anderson used her psychic powers to penetrate the Sov computer network via Sinfield's brain and massively destabilise their infrastructure, as revenge for their murder of 500 ex-Judges on Enceladus. Dredd then announced that they would take Sinfield with them when they left: "Sinfield failed the badge and the office. He was sentenced to time in a Justice Department cube as a result. We're taking him back to a Justice Department cube." He was last seen draped over the back of Judge Giant's elk.
Powers and abilities[]
Abilities
Sneakiness; impressive immune system.
Strength level
(Formerly) Peak human male; (recently) debilitated torture victim.
Weaknesses
Sinfield always ends up relying on the judicial system he has bent, manipulated and treated with contempt to rescue him from certain death.
Paraphernalia[]
Equipment
Accessory pouch containing three heatseeker shells; helmet containing internal visor display (including infra-red) and respirator; uniform made from plasti-steel reinforced material.
Transportation
Lawmaster bike; elk.
Weapons
Lawgiver handgun which can fire six types of shell: heatseeker, rubber ricochet, incendiary, armour-piercing, high explosive and standard execution. Also daystick and bootknife.
Notes[]
In addition to his other crimes, Sinfield is a hypocrite. He forced mutants to be sterilised if they wanted to continue living in Mega-City One. He also almost certainly took dishonest advantage of the Justice Department cloning programme (although nothing was ever proved) so that his genes would be duplicated and he would end up with a 'son', despite the fact that Judges, who uphold the law, are not legally permitted to have children. No other Judge thinks of their clone as their child and keeps them by their side in a cushy admin job, out of harm's way.
Trivia[]
If you can judge a person by the quality of their friends, and the devotion they inspire in those to whom they have been generous, Sinfield must have been a pathetic excuse for a human being. The 'friends' he'd appointed to the Council of Five were glad when it looked like he would die and one of them would get his job. In fact, Judge Cardew went so far as to hint to Sinfield's doctor that it might be a good idea to euthanise him (see quotes).
Links[]
- Appearances of Judge Sinfield
- Character Gallery: Judge Sinfield
- Images that feature Judge Sinfield
- Fan-Art Gallery: Judge Sinfield
- Judge Sinfield quotations
Discover and Discuss[]
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