On August 13, 2018, the West Virginia House of Delegates voted to impeach every justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals at the same time. It is the only time in modern American history that an entire state supreme court has been impeached in a single act. The charges grew out of a scandal that started with a $32,000 office couch and metastasized into federal felony convictions, resignations, retirements, and a hastily reconstituted bench. The court still sits primarily at the West Virginia State Capitol in Charleston. It still hears appeals from the state's circuit courts. Its members are now elected on a nonpartisan basis to 12-year terms - a system imposed by the legislature after Republicans took control in 2015. But the court that sat in 2018 is gone. None of its members serve there now.
The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia was established in 1863, the same year West Virginia became a state. For most of its history it was the only appellate court in the state. The West Virginia constitution permits an intermediate court of appeals, but the legislature declined to create one from 1974 until 2021. That meant the Supreme Court provided the only appellate review of every decision of the state's circuit courts of general jurisdiction. In December 2010, the court adopted a major revision of the rules of appellate procedure, committing itself to hear every properly perfected appeal of right. On July 1, 2022, the new Intermediate Court of Appeals began operations, taking administrative, family, and civil appeals; criminal cases still go only to the Supreme Court. Justices serve 12-year terms in staggered statewide elections - partisan until 2015, nonpartisan since (though the legislature voted in 2025 to restore the partisan format).
In late 2017, WCHS-TV in Charleston began reporting on extraordinary expenditures at the Supreme Court. The single item that came to define the scandal was a $32,000 office couch installed in Chief Justice Allen Loughry's chambers. Other expenditures included $130,000 of state-funded renovations to one justice's office, a $2,400 inlaid floor at the building, and a long pattern of personal use of state vehicles and state property. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia opened a federal investigation. The state's legislative auditor began a separate audit. By the summer of 2018, the case against Loughry was substantial enough that federal prosecutors filed wire fraud, witness tampering, and false statements charges against him. The other justices were drawn in by the broader pattern of court spending and administrative decisions, though none faced criminal charges of the scope Loughry did.
On July 11, 2018, Justice Menis Ketchum announced his resignation, effective July 27. On July 31, he pleaded guilty in federal court to a single count of wire fraud relating to personal use of a state vehicle. On August 13, the House of Delegates impeached the four remaining justices: Robin Davis, Margaret Workman, Beth Walker, and Allen Loughry. Davis retired effective the same day rather than face the impeachment trial. Workman sued the legislature in a reconstituted court and won on technical grounds, escaping trial. Walker's trial began on October 2 and ended the same day: the Senate voted 32-1 to acquit her, then voted by voice to formally censure her. Loughry resigned on November 12, 2018, after a federal jury convicted him on eleven of twenty-two counts the previous month. He was later sentenced to two years in federal prison. None of the four impeached justices were ultimately removed by the Senate, but only Walker remained on the court.
Governor Jim Justice spent the second half of 2018 rebuilding the bench. On August 25, he appointed Tim Armstead, the former Speaker of the House of Delegates, to fill Ketchum's seat, and Evan Jenkins, then a sitting U.S. Congressman who resigned the seat to take the appointment, to fill Davis's seat. Both won special elections in November. On December 12, Justice appointed John A. Hutchison, a Raleigh County circuit judge and a longtime personal friend, to fill Loughry's seat. The reconstituted court began functioning in early 2019. Subsequent retirements, deaths, and elections have continued to reshape the bench. In 2024, Justice Hutchison's seat went to State Senator Charles Trump, who ran unopposed; Justice C. Haley Bunn won her own seat unopposed as well. The court's chief justiceship rotates annually by tradition. The new building still sits on the Capitol grounds. The expensive couch was reportedly removed. The institution rebuilt itself, but the memory of 2018 is now permanent.
The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia sits in the State Capitol complex in Charleston at 38.34 degrees north, 81.61 degrees west, along the north bank of the Kanawha River at the east edge of downtown. Best viewed at 3,000 to 5,000 feet AGL: look for the gold-domed Cass Gilbert state capitol building along the river bank with associated state government buildings clustered around it. Yeager Airport (KCRW) is on the ridge just north - a flat-topped runway visible from miles away. The Kanawha River and the capitol dome are dominant orientation landmarks.