Timothy Fox

Timothy Fox, a circuit judge in Arkansas's Pulaski County, has been formally admonished by the Arkansas Supreme Court for turning an official court order into a personal attack on the justices who ruled against him — and separately came under fire for using his judicial position to refer a political rival to prosecutors on serious allegations that never resulted in a single charge.

In December 2023, the Arkansas Supreme Court found that Fox had failed to comply with its instructions to issue specific factual findings in a long-running nursing home class-action case. Instead, over half of his January 23, 2023 order was devoted to denigrating the justices who had ruled against him earlier in the same litigation. The Supreme Court found this violated the Code of Judicial Conduct's rules on promoting confidence in the judiciary and maintaining impartiality and decorum, formally admonished Fox, and reassigned the case to a different judge after his repeated refusal to comply with its instructions.

In late 2024, Fox personally investigated a deposition given by attorney Luther Sutter — then a candidate for a judgeship in Jonesboro — in an unrelated case where Sutter was both attorney and party. Fox referred Sutter to prosecutors, alleging he may have committed voter fraud and perjury over a discrepancy between his voter registration and a residency change Sutter said was temporary, for retirement and tax purposes. No prosecutor ever filed a charge against Sutter over it.

Sutter has since sued Fox in federal court, alleging the judge abandoned his role as a neutral arbiter to pursue a personal vendetta against him — the suit claims Fox mailed his prosecutorial referral, along with accusations that Sutter is misogynistic and unethical, to attorneys opposing Sutter in unrelated cases across Fox's district, and seeks more than $3 million in damages. Those specific claims are Sutter's own allegations in an active, unresolved lawsuit, not an adjudicated finding. But Fox's decision to personally investigate a rival attorney's deposition and refer him to prosecutors, unprompted, is documented independent of that suit. Fox has denied wrongdoing and points to roughly 110 prior cases over 23 years in which he ruled favorably for Sutter's clients as evidence he held no grudge; the lawsuit remains pending as of this writing.