MONTGOMERY COUNTY — A Montgomery County judge who is accused of improperly releasing a prison inmate is set to retire by the end of the year.
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Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Richard Skelton will retire on Dec. 31, 2024, according to a letter the judge sent to Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine.
Documents News Center 7 obtained from the Ohio Supreme Court Wednesday include a letter Gov. DeWine sent in response to Judge Skelton accepting his retirement.
Skelton said in his letter to DeWine that his retirement was “both health health-related and age-related.”
News Center 7 previously reported that Skelton was the focus of an ethics complaint that accused him of improperly releasing a prison inmate after repeatedly talking about the case privately with the inmate’s mother for more than a year.
The complaint says the judge knows the inmate’s mother because she worked at his doctor’s office.
Aaron Cox pleaded guilty in 2020. He admitted to charges including aggravated robbery, felonious assault, and escape after he knocked a Montgomery County deputy to the ground, jumped in the driver’s seat of his cruiser, and ran over his arm while taking off from the scene.
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The next month, a judge sent Cox to prison at his sentencing. What happened in the years that followed is the subject of the ethics complaint.
The document says in December 2021 Cox’s mother talked to Skelton about her son’s case while he was at a doctor’s appointment.
In April 2022, two months after the judge that originally sentenced Cox retired, the complaint says Skelton submitted an order to transfer Cox’s case to his courtroom without telling the presiding judge he had been talking to Cox’s mom about the case privately.
The next month, May 2022, Cox’s lawyer filed court documents asking for Skelton to let him out of prison.
Two days later, the complaint says Skelton texted Cox’s mom he had set a hearing for the matter and said, in part “... will call u later and let u know my plan. remember, do not tell him he is getting released!”
In June 2022, in a hearing at the courthouse, Skelton granted the request from Cox’s lawyer to let him out of prison.
The next month, the complaint says Montgomery County Judges Timothy O’Connell and Mary Wiseman got wind of what Skelton had been doing and confronted him about it —encouraging him to self-report to the Ohio Board of Professional Conduct.
The document says Skelton refused, so O’Connell and Wiseman filed a grievance against him.
News Center 7 reached out to the Ohio Board of Professional Conduct on the status of Skelton’s disciplinary proceedings.
“Judge Skelton’s resignation from judicial office does not impact the status of the disciplinary proceeding pending before the Board of Professional Conduct. Presently, his case is scheduled for hearing before a three-commissioner panel of the Board on March 6, 2025,” Richard Dove director of the Board of Professional Conduct said.
State Rep. Phil Plummer, as chair of the Montgomery County Republican Party, runs a Judicial Screening Committee within the party. The committee will screen applications for an interview process before Plummer sends Gov. DeWine three names for appointment. Plummer told News Center 7 this week he will “start the screening process here shortly.”
After receiving the list of names and a recommendation from Plummer, DeWine will then appoint someone from that group to fill Skelton’s seat on the bench.
We will continue to follow this story.
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