Former Circuit Clerk Shelly Ashley-Palmertree expected to walk out of the Warren County Courthouse Monday with five years’ probation and an order of restitution, but instead was sentenced to five years in prison, ordered to pay back $12,000 and to report to the Warren County Sheriff’s Office Oct. 15 to begin serving her sentence in a facility to be determined by the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Special Judge Henry Lackey rejected a plea agreement between Palmertree and the Attorney General’s Office.
“You’ve trampled over the goodness shown to you by the people of this county,” Lackey said before announcing the sentence. “You have spit in the face of every person who voted for you.”
Lackey told the court that he is not bound by the deal and didn’t agree with it.
“I’ve never sentenced a public official who embezzled from a public treasury to a term that didn’t include incarceration,” Lackey told Palmertree.
Conceivably Palmertree could be out of prison in 18 months.
After the long-embattled clerk was removed from office in May because she had listed her address in Madison County, State Auditor Stacey Pickering announced that his office was demanding every penny she had withdrawn from her office’s civil and criminal fee account while she was not residing in the jurisdiction from which she was elected.
The total added by Pickering’s office was $229,880.01 — truly down to the penny. The demand brings the total sought from Ashley-Palmertree in civil court to more than $1 million.
We appreciate Pickering’s office for looking out for our county’s taxpayers and can only hope that the money is returned.
However, Pickering told reporters following a closed session with the county board Monday the clerk “had bonds, personal property, retirement and other assets” that might be taken by the state and repaid to the county.
Palmertree’s actions certainly were shameful, but lets get this nasty chapter behind us. The taxpayers of Warren County are ready. Shelly Ashley-Palmertree, give the county its money back.