Former lawmaker found not guilty of embezzlement

YANCEYVILLE, N.C. — For the first time since his trial began, Hugh Webster was calm. He was quiet.

He reached over and shook the hands of his attorneys, Kieran Shanahan and John Branch, after the judge read the not guilty verdicts for the count of embezzlement and exploitation of his aunt Thursday in Caswell County Superior Court.

The four-day trial finished a family matter, Shanahan said.

“Obviously the jury got it right,” he said. “I regret we had to go through it.”

After the trial, Webster said that he’s going to be very careful about helping people in the future and will have to find a way to pay his attorney’s fees. He and Doris Nance are family “no more,” he said.

“You never recover from this,” Webster said.

Webster stopped to talk with reporters while Shanahan waited for him toward the back of the courtroom.

“Come on, Hugh, let’s go, buddy,” Shanahan said to him. “Talking to the press only gets you in trouble.”

The jury heard more witness testimony, closing arguments and reached their verdict Thursday.

Shanahan reminded the jury of their responsibility during his closing argument. He stood at a podium in front of the 14 jurors with a tripod that held a easel pad to his left.

“You’re going to decide an important case,” he said. “I’m sitting next to a man that’s mad.”

Webster’s story remained the same throughout the trial, Shanahan said. Webster testified that the money was a gift. He told the jury they could trust Webster’s testimony.

“Please remember that my client had no obligation other than to be here,” Shanahan said. “Stripped down, this case is he said, she said.”

The nature of the case makes it tough to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, he added.

Balls of crumpled white paper lay on the blue carpet at the end of District Attorney Joel Brewer’s closing argument. He walked the jury through Webster’s defenses, tearing them from a piece of paper and tossing them on the floor near the witness stand.

Brewer said the defense wanted to distract the jury with Webster’s fear of Medicaid fraud. He compared the situation to a hunting dog that is distracted by a rabbit while hunting quail.

“That’s what the defense wants you to do in this case,” Brewer said. “Chase a rabbit.”

Former state senator and Republican gubernatorial candidate Fern Shubert also testified Thursday about a spreadsheet of Nance’s bank records she organized.

The expert witness matched the spreadsheet with the Department of Social Services records that the Shanahan Law Group received. She said that the Nance’s unusual financial moves coincided with her ex-husband’s applications for Medicaid. Nance withdrew large amounts of money from two of the bank accounts the divorced couple shared about each time her ex, Robert Nance, applied for benefits. She moved the money to other joint bank accounts that DSS didn’t know about, she said.

Robert needed savings and cash less than a certain amount to qualify for Medicaid benefits, she said.

Shubert served in the General Assembly with Webster. The two Republicans stuck up for each other in the Democrat-held state senate. Webster endorsed Shubert when she ran for the Republican nomination for governor.

She wrote a column about Webster’s case in November 2007 for The County Edge, a weekly newspaper in Union County North Carolina. The charges “smell of political persecution,” she wrote.

But she said her history with Webster had no impact on her testimony.

“I am here not because of any relationship with the defendant,” Shubert said. “But I’m here in self defense because of a pattern I’ve seen that says I might be next.”

Webster described the trial as a dog-and-pony show, the charges as political payback and the $12,115.49 check a gift. Simply, the trial was Webster’s word versus Nance’s. And in the end, the jury could not find Webster guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.