CHARLESTON — Jurors for the federal trial of West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Allen Loughry may spend the weekend considering the testimony of Kimberly Ellis, a court employee who described feeling threatened by Loughry.
The jury of 10 women and two men focused on Ellis as she testified much of Friday afternoon.
In addition to Ellis’ testimony, jurors heard a clip of a meeting Ellis recorded when she was summoned to a room with Loughry, then-court administrator Gary Johnson, two court attorneys and the court’s senior financial officer.
One of the 22 federal counts Loughry faces is a witness tampering charge that appears to refer to Ellis.
Ellis is the director of administrative services for the court. Her relationship with the court began when she was an interior designer for the Silling Associates architecture firm, which worked on a Supreme Court remodeling project.
Her testimony indicated she first felt threatened Jan. 4, 2017, when her cell phone rang at 8 p.m. as she attended her son’s soccer game. It was Loughry. Ellis said he asked to keep the call off the record.
Ellis testified that Loughry told her, “It’s my understanding that you’re loyal to Steve Canterbury and you’re a spy. But you have nothing to worry about. We like you.”
Next, she testified, Loughry instructed her to go to work early the next morning to scrape Canterbury’s name off his office door.
Ellis said she suggested contacting another court employee whose duties better corresponded to such a task.
Ellis testified that Loughry said no. “He wanted me to scrape his name off the door.”
“Did you?” asked federal prosecutor Philip Wright.
“I did,” Ellis responded.
Ellis next felt like her job was in question on Oct. 19, 2017, shortly after a TV reporter requested information about justices’ office renovations.
Ellis was summoned to a meeting. Testifying that several other court employees, including Canterbury, had been fired over the prior months, Ellis turned the voice notes recorder on her phone as she entered the room and held it on her lap.
During the meeting, Loughry asked if she recalled a meeting where she had written on paper the cost for the office renovations for Justice Menis Ketchum and Justice Margaret Workman.
“I was very specific over and over, that level we spent on anything, I didn’t want mine to be more than Menis’ or Margaret’s,” Loughry can be heard saying on the recording. “Do you remember those conversations?”
“I don’t,” Ellis responded on the recording.
Wright followed up by asking, “Did you have a conversation with Justice Loughry about his office being equal or less than the cost of justice Ketchum’s or Workman’s?”
“No, I did not,” Ellis said.
The witness tampering charge against Loughry alleges he “attempted to coach a Supreme Court employee by planting false facts about purported prior conversations between the employee and defendant Loughry that concerned the renovation costs of defendant Loughry’s office — conversations that did not, in fact, occur — and did so with the intent to dishonestly influence and prevent future truthful testimony by the employee before the federal grand jury.”
To provide context, prosecutors played a clip of a WCHS-TV interview with Loughry from last fall when reporter Kennie Bass exposed the ornate renovation and its $367,915 cost.
“How much input did you have in the renovations and furnishings of your office?” asked Bass on the recording.
“Well, very little,” Loughry responded in the interview. “When I came into office, the renovations were a part of six and a half years of renovations, the first, third and fourth floors. More than 96 percent of those renovations were completed by the time it came to my office.”
Ellis testified she began working with Loughry on the office renovation in 2013.
She testified about a hand-drawn sketch by Loughry that included a West Virginia map inlaid into the wooden office floor, with Loughry’s home county of Tucker highlighted in granite.
“He had seen it, liked the idea of it and wanted it on the floor of his office,” she said.
More emails from Loughry described during testimony specified aspects of the office renovation, including how high his desk should be to accommodate his knees.
In one email, Ellis testified, “He sent me a link to a toilet paper holder he liked.”
Ellis described going to Carpet Gallery one evening for two to three hours with Loughry, his wife, his son and his secretary to identify options for upholstery for a couch that wound up costing $32,000.
Justice Brent Benjamin told jurors it’s sometimes better if justices don’t see eye-to-eye but that hard feelings on the court got particularly bad during an internal battle over the use of state vehicles.
“Justices aren’t always supposed to get along; we aren’t supposed to be friends,” Benjamin said from the witness stand Friday morning.
But, he testified, “by 2016 was certainly what I would consider one of the low points.”
Benjamin, who served alongside Loughry as a Supreme Court justice between 2013 and 2016, began his testimony Thursday afternoon by describing an eruption of memos over state vehicle policy.
Loughry is facing federal trial on 22 federal counts. Most of those are fraud charges having to do with his use of state vehicles and state gasoline purchasing cards for his personal travel.
“There was a lot of frustration between some of the justices because of the vehicle expense issue that had been investigated that summer,” said Benjamin, whose testimony continued Friday morning.
Benjamin said the court’s infighting came to a head at a judicial administrative conference in early September 2016. Benjamin said that was the “low low.”
By the time justices got to the conference, Benjamin testified, it became clear to him that he was already in the minority because of his concern over the vehicle use issue.
Benjamin said his position was aligned with Justice Robin Davis, who had expressed concern. He said the other justices — Loughry, Ketchum and Workman — were on the other side.
Ketchum has since pleaded guilty to a federal fraud charge for his own use of a state vehicle and gas card to go to golf outings in Virginia.
Benjamin said an official vote at the conference wound up 3-2. The majority decided not to establish a policy governing vehicle use, intending to put questions to rest about how state vehicles were being used and where they were being driven.
“It became apparent to me that it had been done in the office and brought to conference,” Benjamin testified.
“I was upset because I felt we needed to discuss it more.”
Benjamin said he did pull Loughry aside: “Allen, are you telling me it was always official travel, that you didn’t use them for personal purposes?”
Loughry confirmed that his use was always official, Benjamin testified.
“Where did you go?” Benjamin recalled asking.
He said Loughry wouldn’t tell him.
The Supreme Court’s top security officer also testified Friday morning about how Loughry would react when asked where he was taking a car.
“Sometimes he would shrug his shoulders and not say anything,” security director Art Angus said. “Another time he said ‘it’s none of their effin’ business.”
Tweet @BradMcelhinny. Email Brad.McElhinny@wvradio.com
