Ex-Sheriff To Be Sentenced In May

NASHVILLE, TN — Former Rutherford County Sheriff Robert Arnold will be sentenced in May, under an order issued this week by a federal judge.

Arnold had been scheduled for a September sentencing hearing after his guilty pleas on wire fraud, honest services fraud and extortion, three of the 14 federal charges he faced for selling e-cigarettes to inmates at the Rutherford County Jail through JailCigs, a business he owned with his uncle John Vanderveer and former chief deputy Joe Arnold.

(For more local news that affects you, find and subscribe to your local Middle Tennessee Patch.)

Arnold's attorneys urged the judge — U.S. District Court Judge Marvin Aspen, an Illinois federal judge who took over the case with Judge Kevin Sharp's resignation forthcoming — to move the ex-sheriff's sentencing to an earlier date. Because he is a former law enforcement officer, Arnold has been in the functional equivalent of solitary confinement since he was booked in to the Grayson County, Ky. Detention Center in September when his pre-trial release was revoked related to a domestic incident at his Murfreesboro home over Labor Day weekend. Arnold has since been moved to a facility in West Tennessee.

Arnold will now be sentenced May 4. Vanderveer and Arnold will still be sentenced in September.

Image via Grayson County, Ky. Sheriff's Department