Jody Purkey Admonished

Jody Purkey, a Wood County, West Virginia Magistrate, was publicly admonished by the state Judicial Investigation Commission after a complaint alleged he engaged in "intemperate behavior," including profanity and throwing paperwork, toward a magistrate assistant during work hours. The incident occurred on April 7 while Purkey was handling arraignments, citations, and case intake in magistrate court; the assistant, a longtime employee of a different magistrate — and someone who had run against Purkey for his own magistrate seat in 2016 — took paperwork from a case before Purkey and returned it to his office without uploading it, telling him to "figure it out yourself." The assistant later acknowledged in a sworn statement that her own response had been unprofessional. The state's administrative director filed the complaint against Purkey over his behavior toward the assistant, and the Judicial Investigation Commission issued the public admonishment, finding his conduct "called into question the integrity of the judicial system as a whole."