FRANKFORT, IN — A judge has ordered Clinton County Sheriff Richard Kelly, his wife, Ashley Kelly, and their shared business, Leonne, to repay $329,360.47 after an audit by the State Board of Accounts found the couple and their business had improperly issued checks from the jail commissary fund.
The ruling issued on Sept. 17 came as a partial summary judgment by Special Judge Thomas Lett of Tipton, after several years of legal disputes following the SBOA report released on Nov. 23, 2021.
The audit report examined financial information of the Clinton County sheriff’s office and the Clinton County Jail Commissary for the period between Jan. 1, 2019, and Sept. 30, 2021.
During those 33 months, the SBOA found that 85 checks were improperly issued from the jail’s commissary fund to Leonne totaling $190,916.61. In that same time frame, the SBOA found checks were also improperly issued to Ashley Kelly, totaling $32,967.92.
That was a combined total of $223,884.53, the report said, calculated as 50% of the jail commissary’s profits on merchandise sales.
The reason the issuances of the checks was improper, the SBOA said in the report, was due to no written agreement having been previously approved by the Clinton County Council or Board of Commissioners, as state law requires. In a previous opinion filed on Dec. 14, 2023, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled that approval from the county was needed before spending commissary funds.
Lett said in the that the Kellys and Leonne will be required to pay a total of $329,360.47, which includes the cost of the audit at $109,725.82.
Clinton County commissioners released a statement Monday that read:
“We feel a mix of sadness and vindication. We are saddened that the issue happened at all. The misuse of funds broke multitudes of layers of trust with other members of county leadership, and more importantly with the community.
“The vindication comes from a court’s rejection of the many falsehoods that were told about the board and many others in county leadership. We will continue to work to close the gaps in supervision and job descriptions, to assure that such misuse doesn’t happen again.”
Counts 2 through 5 of the Indiana attorney general’s lawsuit remain. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Oct. 6.
Ashley Kelly is running for Clinton County sheriff in 2026.
Jillian Ellison is a reporter for the Journal & Courier. She can be reached via email at jellison@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Clinton County sheriff, wife and company ordered to repay over $329K in jail commissary suit
Reporting by Jillian Ellison, Lafayette Journal & Courier / Lafayette Journal & Courier
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