The Kanawha County prosecutor's office will investigate the allegations that a former magistrate embezzled money from the West Virginia Magistrate Association.
Magistrate Julie Yeager resigned Thursday, a day after State Supreme Court Administrator Gary Johnson filed a complaint accusing her of stealing at least $14,000 from the West Virginia Magistrate Association, for which she served as treasurer.
The Supreme Court referred the criminal investigation to the prosecuting attorney's office, assistant prosecutor Don Morris said Friday. Morris noted that Yeager is presumed innocent until proven guilty. He said he does not perceive any conflict of interest with his office investigating a long-time magistrate.
Yeager has not been criminally charged. A report from Judicial Disciplinary Counsel Teresa Tarr says that, in her opinion, Yeager committed felony embezzlement and felony falsifying assets. Yeager has not returned calls seeking comment.
Had she not resigned, the state Supreme Court would have suspended her without pay, the court wrote in an order Thursday.
The magistrate association was tipped off to the alleged embezzlement after realizing that its bank account was overdrawn, the report says. Yeager reportedly admitted to an association official that she took the money because "the past two years had been rough on her," and she needed it, the report says.
Yeager had been a Kanawha magistrate since 2004 and had not been the subject of judicial discipline before now, according to a report from the Judicial Disciplinary Counsel.
Yeager had been in charge of the Kanawha County Domestic Violence Court, which was disbanded earlier this year by order of the Supreme Court after it received complaints about the program. The court had been put in place more than five years ago as a way to monitor domestic violence cases more closely.
She was last re-elected in 2016, when she beat out magistrate assistant Melanie Rucker, with 17,727 votes to Rucker's 15,444.
Appointing a replacement magistrate is the responsibility of the local chief judge, which is Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey, a spokeswoman for the state Supreme Court said Friday. Bailey could not be reached Friday.
Reach Lori Kersey @lori.kersey@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1240 or follow @LoriKerseyWV on Twitter.