Clinton County Sheriff Rich Kelly and his wife were charged Friday in connection to an official misconduct investigation, online court records show. The charges are filed in Clinton Circuit Court. Richard and Ashley Kelly are both charged with three counts each of official misconduct and one count each of conflict of interest, all level 6 felonies.
David Thomas, senior prosecuting attorney for Indiana, has been appointed to prosecute both cases. The Kelly’s were investigated last year for allegedly receiving payments from the county jail’s commissary fund through an LLC they formed two months before taking office. Last month, the State Board of Accounts asked the Kelly’s to re-pay more than $300,000.
A typed statement was issued by Sheriff Kelly and his wife late Friday. It read:
“Given the timeline of events, this is nothing more than a political farse. The items being contested are still in civil litigation in Tippecanoe County Court and are the same contained in the SBOA findings from last year and our subsequent response. My wife and I look forward to continuing our efforts to increase public safety with the hiring of new deputies and jail staff, made possible by the nearly $1,500,000 federal inmate project that we brought into the community in 2020. We plan on announcing our medical savings to the county of over $388,000 for 2021 in the next week. We also look forward to expanding our jail programs to a Jail Chemical Addiction Program (JCAP) that will incorporate more services to the recovery of inmates. We will continue our successful programs, saving taxpayers money, reducing recidivism and providing state of the art technology, equipment and training to all members of our agency.”