Campbell County General Sessions Court Judge Amanda Sammons (CAMPBELL COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE)



By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel

When deputies showed up at his Kentucky school with orders to take him and his sister, the boy sent a frantic text message to his mother and ran.

He escaped, temporarily. His sister did not. Within two days, both were sent to Jellico, Tenn., to live with a father whom a Kentucky court had barred from being around them. It took three weeks — and two judges later — before they were returned home to their mother.

The family's ordeal is already the subject of an ethics probe by the Tennessee Board of Judicial Conduct into Campbell County General Sessions Judge Amanda Sammons. Now, the case has become the subject of a federal civil-rights lawsuit.

Ashley Keisling of Whitley County, Ky., is suing Sammons in U.S. District Court for ordering the removal of her two children without legal authority, jurisdiction or even a request to do so. The removal is among more than a half-dozen similar incidents documented by the News Sentinel in a months-long probe of Sammons.

Sammons was indicted in August on four counts of official misconduct over her handling of two unrelated cases. The ethics probe, which involves myriad complaints, including that of Keisling, remains open. Board rules allow the probe to be carried out in secret. That case won't become public unless the board votes to take formal disciplinary action. Sammons faces trial in the criminal case Nov. 1.

Attorney Wade Davies, who represents Sammons in the criminal case, said he was not handling the lawsuit and had no comment on her behalf.

Attorney Kathy Parrott, who represents Keisling in the federal lawsuit, also names Campbell County as a defendant. She has been pushing county leaders to stop paying Sammons while Sammons remains under indictment, but the county commission has refused. She seeks in the lawsuit an order forcing commission to do so. The lawsuit also seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

Keisling and her children moved to Whitley County, Ky., from Campbell County after she separated from her husband and the children's father, Johnny Ray Elliott. A divorce was filed in Campbell County General Sessions Court in 2008. Sammons was not yet on the bench. Keisling was awarded custody.

In 2011, Keisling obtained from a Kentucky judge an order barring Elliott from contact with his children. The basis for that order is not included in the federal lawsuit, but the complaint alleges at least one of the children had been abused in his home before.

Keisling sent a copy of the order to General Sessions Court in Campbell County, so the visitation agreement could be changed to reflect the Kentucky judge's ruling, the lawsuit stated. For four years, no hearing was held. Sammons was elected to the bench in 2014.

In September 2015, Sammons penned a note, saying the state Department of Children's Services had alleged the children were being harmed in their mother's care, and set a hearing, the lawsuit stated. The note referred to the couple's three children. They have only two. The lawsuit alleges Keisling was never notified of the hearing. The notice lists her name but no address.

According to the lawsuit and documents later filed in Campbell County Circuit Court, DCS officials had filed no such petition. The DCS was not a party to the hearing Sammons held — without Keisling present or aware — in which the judge ordered the children taken from their mother and given to Elliott, the lawsuit stated.

"Sammons stated later from the bench that she acted solely on her impression from an unrelated case where she thought these children were mentioned," the lawsuit stated. "To date, the unrelated case has never been disclosed."

The next day, Kentucky deputies showed up at the children's school with Sammons' order. The text message from her son was the only notice Keisling received, the lawsuit stated. Deputies took the girl and, a day later, she turned over her son, who had run away from the officers, according to the lawsuit.

When Parrott sought an immediate hearing before Sammons, the judge refused, Parrott wrote.

"She shrugged off pleas for an immediate hearing and requests for immediate concerns for the children's welfare," the lawsuit stated.

Parrott appealed to 8th Judicial Circuit Judge John McAfee. Court records show McAfee ruled Sammons had no legal authority to take the children from their mother or to override the ban on visitation with their father.

Three weeks after they were taken, the children were allowed to return home with their mother.

During that three weeks, the children were not enrolled in school, the lawsuit stated, and fell behind in their studies in Kentucky. The lawsuit alleges the father's house was filthy, and the children wound up with bites and sores from bedbugs.

"As a direct and proximate result of the unlawful conduct of (Sammons), one of the minor children sustained severe emotional injuries from being unlawfully forced to return to an unsafe environment in which one had previously been abused," the lawsuit stated.

Also named as defendants are Campbell County Circuit Court Clerk Bobby Vann and the sheriffs in Campbell and Whitley counties, primarily for carrying out Sammons' orders.