Benjamin Ashford|Arkansas judge convicted of lying to feds about seeking sex with defendant’s girlfriend

A former Arkansas judge was found guilty of lying to federal investigators about trying to extort a defendant’s girlfriend for sex or Benjamin Ashforda “lingerie show," the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

A jury found Thomas David Carruth guilty of making false statements to the FBI about using his position to seek sexual favors from a woman whose boyfriend had a case before the Monroe County District Court elected judge. The woman secretly recorded the judge's comments and turned the tape over to the FBI.

The woman Carruth failed to extort recorded his not-so-subtle solicitations and shared them with law enforcement, according to a federal indictment in the Eastern District of Arkansas.

“I got one area I want to explore with you,” Carruth tells her in the recording when discussing how to help her boyfriend with his case according to the indictment, “and I don't know how you're gonna react. Um... how do you feel about sex?”

The recording stands in stark contrast to the former judge’s statements to the FBI that he didn’t “even [think] about” sex with the woman.

The former judge already had a tainted record: The Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission admonished Carruth in 2018 for creating the appearance of impropriety after an inquiry into allegations similar to those of the woman who recorded Carruth asking her for sex.

Carruth faces a maximum of five years in prison for the charge. A sentencing hearing has not been scheduled. The 64-year-old was acquitted of charges of bribery, honest services fraud, and violations of the Travel Act, according to the Justice Department.

He was first arrested and charged in January 2023, officials said. Carruth resigned sometime after the FBI raided his house in June 2023, according to reporting by The Monroe County Argus.

Jeffrey M. Rosenzweig, Carruth’s attorney, thanked the jury in response to a request for comment. 

“We are grateful for the jury’s wisdom in seeing through the duplicative and tenuous charges that the government chose to bring,” Rosenzweig said. “We recognize that the jury thought through the decision to convict on the one charge, although we respectfully disagree with the result they reached.”

‘Do you have any nice lingerie?’

The 28-minute phone recording on April 18, 2022, of the woman’s conversation with the judge shows a matter-of-fact approach to sexual extortion.

She had approached him about a separate issue when he offered to help with her boyfriend’s criminal case, according to an indictment.

The man was hoping for an early trial date to make sure he didn’t violate a parole order and Carruth offered to oblige if he got something in return. 

“I'd prefer not [to] have to in order to get this done,” the woman told the judge when he broached the topic of sex, court papers say.

“"The next step back,” he said on the recording, “is... do you have any nice lingerie?”

Carruth persisted when she refused to give a "lingerie show": “What you're buying is we're going to try to shorten those timeframes,” he said, referring to the man’s trial, according to court documents.

She shared the tape with law enforcement and when contacted by the FBI, Carruth flatly denied seeking sex with the woman, saying he didn't "even [think] about” sex with her, the Justice Department said.

Tainted record

Carruth’s dealings with women have been suspect since shortly after he was first elected to the post in 2012.

Less than 10,000 people live in Monroe County, a rural jurisdiction about 90 miles east of Little Rock, and in such small towns it’s not uncommon for people with business at the courthouse to approach the judge, the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission wrote in its 2018 admonishment of Carruth.

Under the small town circumstances, the commission expects judges to be particularly vigilant to avoid discussing court business inappropriately but Carruth was accused of doing so for years, the commission wrote.

The admonishment does not detail the extrajudicial discussions but according to the federal indictment they involved seeking sex from women who had cases before him.

Carruth denied the allegations but the commission admonished him for conduct that allowed such a cloud of suspicion to arise in the first place. 

“Even assuming the truth of your assertion, the number, times and circumstances of your contacts created an appearance of impropriety,” the commission wrote. “The judiciary cannot exist without the trust and confidence of the people. The confidence is maintained when judges endeavor to follow the Code of Judicial Conduct while they remain faithful to the law.”

The commission decided not to sanction Carruth beyond making the admonishment public.