A Little Rock attorney has taken his grievance against a sitting Pulaski County circuit judge to federal court, accusing the judge of waging a personal vendetta that included referring him to prosecutors for voter fraud, denying him a chance to defend himself, and mailing damaging allegations straight to his courtroom opponents. Attorney Luther Sutter filed the lawsuit against Pulaski County Circuit Judge Timothy Fox, alleging abuse of office, due process violations, defamation and retaliation.
According to KATV, Sutter says Fox has abused his office to engage in a personal vendetta against him. The dispute traces back to Fox’s referral of Sutter to prosecutors over potential voter fraud, stemming from an investigation into a 2024 deposition in which Sutter allegedly testified that his permanent address was in Alabama while he had voted in an Arkansas election that same year. As of the station’s Jan. 20 update, no charges had been filed against Sutter.
The case was first detailed Tuesday by The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, whose report by John Lynch traced how the lawyers’ feud with the circuit judge escalated into a federal court filing.
No Notice Before the Referral, Attorney Says
Central to Sutter’s complaint is his claim that Fox denied him due process. Per the KATV account, Sutter says he was given no notice or opportunity to challenge the allegations against him in court before Fox issued a December order and made the referral to prosecutors. That lack of advance warning, Sutter contends, left him unable to respond before the matter was already in the hands of law enforcement.
The lawsuit also accuses Fox of defamation and retaliation connected to a public records request. The same report notes that Fox responded to Sutter’s FOIA request by accusing him of misogynistic behavior, then mailed his response, along with related documents, to all of Sutter’s legal opponents — a move Sutter characterizes as an attempt to damage his standing in ongoing cases.
A Judicial Race in the Background
The feud is unfolding as Sutter campaigns for a judgeship of his own. The station reports that Sutter and Caleb Baumgardner, a fellow attorney from his law firm, are running for judge in the Second and Sixth Judicial Circuits, respectively — a detail that adds political stakes to a dispute already centered on allegations of institutional retaliation.
Clashes between Pulaski County lawyers and sitting judges are not new to the circuit. In 2012, North Little Rock attorney Bennie O’Neil sued judges Alice Gray, Wendell Griffen and Leon Johnson, alleging interference with his business, conspiracy and abuse of process, according to the Arkansas Times. That dispute centered on a $362,000 wrongful-death settlement for the mother of a child killed by a taxicab, with O’Neil set to receive a third of it as a legal fee while alleging that the involvement of additional lawyers generated more than $50,000 in potentially payable fees against the settlement.
Judges have also turned to federal court against higher authorities within Arkansas’s own judicial system. Griffen, the same circuit judge named in the 2012 case, later filed a federal lawsuit against the Arkansas Supreme Court, according to Talk Business & Politics, alleging that Chief Justice Dan Kemp and the court’s other seven members conspired to violate his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights and the state’s religious freedom act. Griffen asked the federal court to overturn the high court’s permanent reassignment barring him from death-penalty-related cases.
In Sutter’s case, the underlying voter fraud referral remains unresolved in the public record, and the evidence available does not establish whether Fox has responded to the allegations in court or whether charges have since been filed against Sutter. For now, the dispute sits in federal court, with a Little Rock attorney and a sitting circuit judge as opposing parties in a fight over power, process and politics within the same courthouse.
