Ohio County Magistrate Joe Roxby

WHEELING — Ohio County Magistrate Joe Roxby said he knew it was time to not seek re-election this year and leave the magistrate’s office at the end of 2024.

He wants to leave like the frontier heroes he writes about.

“I’m grateful to leave on my own terms,” Roxby said. “I get to walk out rather than being shown the door. I am walking out with my health and I will still be able to do some things.”

Roxby spent 25 years as a Wheeling police officer before first being elected and serving 16 years as magistrate. He referred to the magistrate’s office as “the first responder to the first responders,” in that when officers need a magistrate to issue a warrant before an arrest “they really need a magistrate.”

Since taking over the bench, Roxby said he has dealt with “everything from bad manners to a serial murderer.”

He explained the magistrate’s role as “sorting out the criminals from the criminally stupid.”

“It certainly has been an interesting life,” he said. “Between the two careers, I think I’ve lived the lives of two men.”

Being a magistrate was different from being in law enforcement, he continued. In court, rather than playing defense or offense, “you’re reffing the game,” Roxby explained.

“Obviously, my leanings are probably police friendly, prosecution friendly,” he said. “But having been in their position, I hate sloppy work, too — so it cuts both ways.

“I’ve had to butt heads with both the prosecution and the defense, but they often told me I was probably just doing my job.”

Roxby, 71, first ran for magistrate as a Republican in 2004 when the magistrate races were partisan contests, and he lost that year. He ran again as a Republican in 2008 and won one of the county’s four magistrate seats.

Seeking re-election in 2012, he came out the top vote-getter in the magistrate race as a Republican.

Beginning in 2016, candidates for magistrate were no longer listed as Democrat or Republican on the ballot. Roxby continued to receive the most votes for magistrate in 2016 and 2020.

He termed his time as magistrate “an interesting ride.”

In 2014, Roxby arraigned Charles Severance, who was later convicted of serial murders happening in Virginia. He had been found and arrested at the Ohio County Public Library.

“His defense attorney asked him what brought him to Wheeling,” Roxby said. “His response: ‘I was really intrigued by the frontier history of this place.'”

“The attorney told him, ‘You should have talked to the magistrate who arraigned you.'”

Roxby is noted as a local historian and writer who has detailed Wheeling’s frontier history.

“There were some times I got to help some people,” he said. “Magistrate court is different. They always tell you you shouldn’t give legal advice (from the bench), but to some of these people you are just giving basic information to help them walk through things.

“I was able to help some people who might not otherwise have had help.”

Roxby explained he sometimes offered defendants advice “about how to walk through the process and solve their problems.”

“On the other hand, people show up there wanting to get their lives unscrewed, and they think the magistrate can do this in 15 minutes. It’s not happening,” Roxby said. “They’ve made lots of bad choices to get to this point, and they expect you when you walk in there to just wave a magic wand and resolve things. It doesn’t work like that.”

He explained the similarity between being a police officer and being a magistrate is “you often have to deal with people when they are at their most trying times of their lives.”

“Police officers aren’t getting called to family reunions and birthday parties unless they go really south,” Roxby said.

What he hated most as magistrate was presiding over landlord evictions.

“Who wants to throw people out of their homes?” Roxby asked.

He estimates each of Ohio County’s magistrates handles about 1,000 cases a year, including many extradition requests from nearby Ohio and Pennsylvania and requests to remove children from their homes.

Roxby noted he really did enjoy the magistrate’s job for the first 12 years, but after that it started to become more of a grind.

“We’re a 24/7 operation,” he said. “Someone always has the phone even when we’re not in the office, and that comes with its own stresses and strains. How many other elected officials do you know (are required to) work holidays, weekends and nights routinely? None.

“After this many years with that kind of life, I’m done with it. No more 24/7 jobs,” he said.

Roxby plans “to do nothing for the six months” after he leaves office, but he acknowledges that likely isn’t going to happen.

He wants to further focus on his historical work and writing, which includes completing a crime novel set in Wheeling. He also has a desire to write a screenplay.

“I may not have made a lot of money, but I have had an interesting life,” Roxby said.