FRANKFORT, Ind. (April 6, 2025) – The three-year-old criminal case involving Sheriff Richard Kelly and his wife, Ashley, is set to begin on Tuesday with selecting six jurors and three alternates.
But first the State and the Kellys will face off in a hearing Monday morning to hear the State’s motion to limit the introduction of evidence in the case according to online court entries.
This is in response to the Kellys having notified the State of their intention to use an affirmative defense – mistake of fact – to the four charges. An affirmative defense places the burden of proof on the defense.
The Kellys each face one count each of the following (all are Felony 6):
1. as public servants knowingly or intentionally had a pecuniary interest in or derived a profit from a contract connected with their governmental entity served by the public servant;
2. engaged in a violation of the criminal Conflict of Interest statute;
3. engaged in a violation of the Criminal Conversion statute (IC 35-43-4-3 (a) by Richard L. Kelly receiving commissary funds through his ownership in Leonne LLC; and
4. signed under penalties of perjury statements related to their relationship with each other, in violation of the criminal offense of Perjury.
Although the court documents are not available, Clinton County Today was in the courtroom for the final pretrial hearing on March 12th when attorneys Theodore Minch and Mario Massillamany representing Sheriff Kelly and Ashley, respectively, were going back and forth with Special Judge Lori Schein.
The defense attorneys were asking for evidence to be allowed that the Kellys relied on attorney Little to perform the required work.
Attorney Massillamany to Judge Schein: “We filed a notice of affirmative defense – mistake of facts. And I think that would go into the arguments of affirmative defense – mistake of fact.”
Judge Schein: “Meaning what?”
Attorney Massillamany: “They relied on Mr. Little to fill-out the conflict waiver on their behalf.”
Later in the hearing, Judge Schein said to attorney Minch: “I’ve seen the emails. It looked like there was a conflict of interest form sent by Mr. Little on behalf of your clients before he took office.”
At the Monday hearing, the Kellys could argue that other county officials have not uploaded conflict of interest forms to the State Board of Accounts website.
Here are examples of missing conflict forms:
County Council President Alan Dunn was awarded a cash rent farming contract to farm the county farm in 2021. Dunn paid the county $325 per acre each for four years. He was able to collect any amounts above the $325 minus expenses. The 136-acres is located behind Parkview Home and the conflict form was presented at a commissioners meeting on February 1, 2021 – yet was never uploaded to the SBOA.
Not until June 26, 2024, was the conflict form uploaded to the SBOA disclosing his monetary interest from the contract.
Commissioners President Jordan Brewer presented not one, but two conflict forms acknowledging his father, Kent Brewer, is sole owner of KB Ditching and as a member of the Clinton County Drainage Board his father had been contracted previously prior to becoming a commissioner and could be selected to do work in the future through a competitive bid process.
The first was during a Commissioners meeting on February 17, 2021, where he stated, “Tom felt it best if we at least had a conflict of interest statement that we filed with the state.” County Attorney Tom Little was not at the meeting.
The second was during a Drainage Board meeting on March 1, 2021, where county attorney Tom Little was present. Attorney Little stated, “Just to be safe we will have it done twice. Once within the Board of Commissioners and again with the Drainage Board.”
Neither of those two forms were uploaded to the SBOA. A “full disclosure statement, contract disclosure requirement” for Commissioner Brewer was uploaded to the SBOA website on October 11, 2024.
With both the Dunn and Brewer conflict forms, it is unknown at this time who is responsible for uploading the document to the SBOA.
