By Carl Keith Greene / Staff Writer @ The Times-Tribune

Corbin lawyer Kyle David Kersey, 56, was pronounced dead at Baptist Regional Medical Center at 8:05 a.m. Friday.
The lawyer had been disbarred on Thursday. Kersey died from a single gunshot injury, said Whitley Coroner Andy Croley. According to Kentucky State Police Public Affairs Officer Trooper First Class Don Trosper, the wound was in the torso.

Croley said, “The cause and manner of the death are still under investigation.”

An autopsy is scheduled for today (Saturday).

Just before 7 a.m., the Laurel County dispatch center notified the KSP of a single-vehicle traffic incident on KY 770 near the bridge that crosses the Laurel River. Its front end was pointed toward the Keavy area.

When police arrived, they found Kersey in the black pickup truck along the side of the road.

Croley and KSP lead Detective Donald Wilson, Dave Lassiter, and Mark Allen continue the investigation along with the Laurel County Sheriff, London Police and the Laurel Major Crimes Task Force.

Kersey was disbarred, the result of a recommendation to the Kentucky supreme court by the Kentucky Bar Association.

The bar association asked that he be permanently removed from the practice of law in Kentucky.

Five bar discipline charges were listed in the order.

The first states that Brandon Mills had retained Kersey after an automobile accident.

Kersey had settled with Mills’ insurer to the policy limit of $25,000, and Mills’ no-fault insurer for the unpaid Personal Injury Protection (PIP) balance of $4,034.80.

Mills signed the settlement statement in April 2004 showing that Mills was to get $18,750, the remainder after attorney’s fees. Mills received no money from Kersey.

In March 2006, Apren H. Poore hired Kersey to represent him after a traffic accident.

Kersey got $25,000 from the liability insurance policy and $10,000 PIP funds.

Kersey reportedly told Poore that there would be liens against outstanding medical bills.

Before the final lien settlements were made, Kersey gave Poore $5,250.

However, Kersey claimed he had advanced $3,050 to Poore and $4,500 to Poore’s mother.

Kersey’s escrow bank records were subpoenaed and the records showed that in October 2007, the account was overdrawn by $107.40.

Kersey’s records indicated that he had deposited the liability and PIP funds into the account in May 2006.

Shawna Ellis was involved in the same accident as Poore.

Kersey got $25,000 in liability and $10,000 in PIP payments for Ellis.

He also warned Ellis that there would be medical liens.

He gave Ellis $4,250 from the insurance proceeds and was said to have deposited the remainder of the proceeds in the escrow account — the same one that was overdrawn by $107.40.

Wanda Godby hired Kersey to represent her on federal criminal charges.

She pledged her pickup truck worth $10,000 as collateral for her legal fee of $5,000.

In February 2009, he told Godby that she should transfer the ownership of the truck to Kersey for insurance purposes because it was being housed on his property.

Godby transferred the truck to Kersey who soon afterward filed a motion to withdraw as her lawyer in the criminal matter.

Kersey sold the truck but did not notify Godby.

In a March 2009 hearing in federal court, Godby learned the truck had been sold.

He had sold the truck, valued at $10,000 for $2,200.

Kersey admitted that his agreement with Godby would have allowed her to pay his legal fees and get the truck back.

He withdrew and a federal public defender was appointed.

Finally, the bar association began getting overdraft notices from Cumberland Valley National Bank, Kersey’s bank, on Dec. 30, 2008 regarding his escrow account.

In January, April and June, the bar requested copies of documents indicating he had corrected the overdrafts and asked for a written explanation of why the overdrafts occurred.

He failed to respond to the notices.

The bar got more overdraft notifications. Some 19 checks on Kersey’s accounts were returned between December 2008 and October 2009, totaling $10,67.66, for insufficient funds.

The court ordered that Kersey pay $1,824.82 to pay for the costs of the disciplinary proceedings, make restitution to all clients and within 10 days cancel any advertising he used and notify all clients in writing that he could no longer represent them.

Kersey’s law office caught fire at about 11 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 25, 2009.

The office was then at 704 South Main in Corbin, about 400 feet from the Corbin firehouse.

By midnight, the first floor had fallen into the law office’s basement.

A family of four was staying in the two-bedroom apartment on the second story of the law office.

The family was able to exit the home without injury.

Following the fire, Kersey moved his office to 101 West Seventh Street, at the intersection with South Main Street.

He had been the Whitley County attorney in the 1990s, representing the fiscal court and prosecuting district court cases before returning to private practice.

Credit: Carl Keith Greene / Staff Writer @ The Times-Tribune

A Wisconsin prosecutor already under fire for sexting a domestic abuse victim also shared shared confidential information about a case with another woman and invited her on a date to an autopsy, according to a letter released by the governor.

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle said the allegations are troubling and constitute “unimaginable” conduct by Ken Kratz, a district attorney in Calumet County north of Milwaukee.

In the letter, the woman says Kratz shared confidential details about a case and invited her to a woman’s autopsy “provided I would be his girlfriend and would wear high heels and
a skirt.”

At a news conference in Madison, Doyle said he was appalled by Kratz’s behavior and would move to have him removed from office. He said he first needs to get a “verified complaint” from a taxpayer in Calumet County. The abuse victim does not live in that county.

Kratz has acknowledged sending 30 text messages in three days last year to a woman while he was prosecuting her ex-boyfriend in an abuse case.

The woman, Stephanie Van Groll, has told investigators that Kratz asked whether she minded if he reduced the charge against her ex-boyfriend from a felony to a misdemeanor. She responded during the conversation last October that strangulation was a felony, according to records obtained by The Associated Press on Monday.

Minutes after she left his office, Kratz started sending her a series of text messages in which he tried to start an affair.

Kratz has apologized and went on medical leave Monday, but has refused to resign.

Wisconsin governors have the power to remove county officials like Kratz for cause. The Legislative Reference Bureau says it is not aware of any other cases where that has happened.

His attorney says he plans to contest his removal.

– Associated Press
–Chicago Breaking News

Beckett held on allegations of drunken driving
By HENRY BREAN and MIKE BLASKY
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Nye County District Attorney Bob Beckett was arrested late Tuesday night on suspicion of drunken driving after authorities in Pahrump received a report from a concerned citizen: Heidi Fleiss.

The former Hollywood madam said she called the Nye County sheriff’s office about a suspicious vehicle parked on the secluded dirt road near her house in Pahrump.

The car turned out to be a county vehicle with Beckett passed out in the driver’s seat, Nye County Sheriff Tony DeMeo said.

Beckett was arrested after he failed both a field sobriety test and a preliminary breath test, DeMeo said.

A second breath test administered at the sheriff’s office showed Beckett with a blood-alcohol level of 0.12 percent, “well above” the legal limit of 0.08 percent, the sheriff said.

Under state law, people can be charged with drunken driving even if they are found sitting in the driver’s seat of a parked car because they are “still in control of the vehicle,” DeMeo said.

“This was an elected official driving a county vehicle who should have known better than that,” he said. “It doesn’t serve the citizens of Nye County well and it doesn’t serve his office well for this to occur.”

Beckett, 51, was held in a cell by himself for about 12 hours before being released on his own recognizance Wednesday morning.

Messages left on his cell phone and at his office were not returned.

This wasn’t the four-term district attorney’s first drunken driving arrest.

In 2008, he was charged with drunken driving in California after crashing two vehicles, one of them a county-owned SUV, on the same desert highway six hours apart.

Beckett eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and agreed to undergo counseling on the dangers of alcohol and driving.

His probation in California prohibits him from violating any law or driving a motor vehicle with any measurable blood-alcohol level.

It was not immediately clear what would happen to Beckett in the event he was found to have violated his probation.

He also was arrested May 5 by sheriff’s deputies in Pahrump and booked on embezzlement and other charges in connection with a bank account his office managed for more than a decade. A special prosecutor has been assigned to review that case, as well as allegations Beckett later brought against members of DeMeo’s staff.

The sheriff said the drunken driving case against Beckett also will be turned over to the special prosecutor.

“It couldn’t be (handled by) anyone from his office. He’s still the DA,” DeMeo explained.

Beckett lost his seat in the June 8 Republican primary, when he finished last out of five candidates. He will leave office at the end of the year.

In the wake of Tuesday’s arrest, Beckett’s driver’s license has been suspended and the county has stripped him of permission to drive its vehicles, DeMeo said.

The sheriff declined to identify the caller whose tip led to the arrest. All he would say is that “whoever made the call did the right thing.”

Fleiss has lived in Pahrump, 60 miles west of Las Vegas, since late 2005. She owns a laundromat called Dirty Laundry on the town’s main drag and shares her home with about 25 exotic birds.

She said she intentionally bought her home on a lonely dirt road because she wanted some privacy for her and her menagerie.

“There are three houses on my street,” she said. “That road is like a security system.”

Fleiss said she called the sheriff’s office only because the car was agitating her birds and she was worried the person inside might be a stalker.

“I told them it could be a car broken down, it could be teenagers having sex, it could be nothing, but a car shouldn’t be parked there,” she said.

When the deputy arrived, Fleiss got out her night-vision binoculars and tried to watch, but the flashing police lights made it hard to see what was going on. She said she didn’t find out it was Beckett until Wednesday morning.

“I feel bad for the guy, but drunk driving is like shooting a gun in a crowd of people,” she said.

Fleiss speaks from experience. In 2008, she was booked for driving under the influence of drugs and other charges after a traffic stop in Pahrump. She pleaded guilty last year and remains on probation.

At the time of her plea, Beckett said of Fleiss, “Time will tell if she’s serious about turning her life around.”

Fleiss said she has no hard feelings about being prosecuted by Beckett’s office, and she’s sorry it was her call that landed him in jail.

“You know me. I’m not like a school principal or a probation officer looking to get someone in trouble. I avoid those sorts of things,” she said.

“If I’d known it was him, I never would have called the police. I would have told him to lay down in the guest house and sleep it off.”

Read more: Las Vegas Review-Journal