Citing Gov. Bev Perdue’s widespread unpopularity, attorneys for Julia Leigh Sitton and Trawick “Buzzy” Stubbs — who played significant roles in Perdue’s 2008 campaign for governor — have filed motions asking for special treatment during the jury selection process in their upcoming trials.

The attorneys claim that public comments posted to online news stories reflect a “massive amount of ill will” toward Perdue. The attorneys believe that there are members of the public who would want to be part of a jury trial in order to advance “an ‘agenda’ based on their political persuasion and beliefs.” They worry that jurors with such a bias could “decide the case on that basis, rather than deciding the case based on the facts presented in the courtroom.”

The attorneys also argue that screening individuals separately allows them to detect possible bias while preventing potential jurors who are not objective from preparing answers that might hide their bias.

In November, Sitton and Stubbs were charged with obstruction of justice and causing the Perdue campaign committee to file false reports. Both pleaded not guilty.

The screening of the jury pool is known, in legal circles, as voir dire. The attorneys want the trial judge to let them question potential jurors individually without other potential jurors being present. Each attorney wants the judge to issue an order “requiring that jurors be selected one at a time, that all potential jurors in the jury pool be excluded from the courtroom during jury selection, and that all potential jurors be brought to the courtroom for examination, one juror at a time.”

The requests came in motions filed in March. While individual questioning of jurors is used most often in murder cases potentially involving the death penalty, the trial judge has the authority to allow individual questioning in other cases.

(Download PDFs of the voir dire motions for Sitton and Stubbs.)

A trial date has not been set, but both cases are on Monday’s calendar for Wake County Superior Court. David Long, the attorney representing Stubbs, told Carolina Journal he expects little to happen in the case Monday, but he believes a hearing to consider motions and set a trial date could occur late next week.

The State Board of Elections fined the Perdue campaign $30,000 in August 2010 after a lengthy investigation found the campaign committee failed to report more than 40 flights during her 2004 campaign for lieutenant governor and 2008 campaign for governor.

Following the SBOE investigation Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby with the assistance of State Bureau of Investigation, launched a criminal investigation of the flights and related campaign activity.

Long is representing Stubbs, Joseph Zeszotarski is representing Sitton. Both work for the Poyner Spruill law firm.

The Internet

Both motions indicate that the attorneys have tried to assess public opinion about their clients.

“As the court is undoubtedly aware, the investigation into this matter and the resulting charges have been the subject of massive amounts of press coverage,” both motions state. “Comments posted by the general public to Internet news stories about the investigation and the charges reflect a massive amount of ill will towards Governor Perdue, the manner in which her campaign was conducted, and anyone remotely associated with her or the campaign.”

As an example of that sentiment, one of the first polls taken of North Carolinians after Perdue announced she would not seek a second term showed her approval rating at 35 percent. The March poll, taken by the Raleigh-based Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, also found a 53 percent disapproval rate, signaling that the governor did not “receive a ‘retirement bounce’ when voters knew [she was] on the way out.”

More recently, the prestigious Washington publication Roll Call ran an online story by political consultant Stuart Rothenberg citing Perdue’s unpopularity, in part, as a reason Democrats “goofed” when they chose Charlotte to host September’s Democratic National Convention.

The motions also state that “one need only examine the Internet message boards and comments to Internet news stories about the facts surrounding this case to see that some persons are of the mind that anyone remotely associated with Governor Perdue must be guilty of something.”

The charges

Stubbs is accused of funneling $28,000 through his law firm to pay for aircraft to fly Perdue to campaign events during 2007 and 2008. The free flights were not reported on campaign finance reports, a violation of campaign finance laws.

A New Bern attorney and registered Republican, Stubbs is a longtime donor who has given primarily to GOP candidates. Stubbs was the law partner of Perdue’s late former husband, who died in 1997. His eight-member law firm continues to bear the name Stubbs & Perdue.

The Perdue campaign eventually reported the flights and reimbursed Stubbs months after they took place. An investigation by the State Board of Elections identified several other individuals who were involved in giving the Perdue campaign free flights, but only one other person has been charged for a crime related to campaign flights.

Robert Lee Caldwell of Morganton was indicted in February 2011, but he has not been scheduled to appear in court. Caldwell’s indictment states that he solicited and accepted a check from James Fleming, a Morganton barber, in the amount of $3,048.50 to pay for a chartered aircraft for Perdue. Caldwell then reimbursed Fleming for the check with money that came from an unidentified third party — a violation of campaign law.

Sitton, a Morganton attorney, also known as Juleigh Sitton, worked for the 2008 campaign and later ran the governor’s Western North Carolina office. 


Former Perdue campaign finance director Peter Reichard, of Greensboro, was charged in November with funneling $32,000 from Morganton businessman Charles M. Fulenwider through a business Reichard owns to pay a portion of Sitton’s salary with the Perdue campaign. Fulenwider already had given the maximum $8,000 allowed during the primary and general election cycles.

Sitton’s charges revolve around her participation in the scheme to hide Fulenwider’s illegal campaign contributions. Fulenwider has not been charged.

Reichard worked out a plea agreement with Willoughby in December. Reichard entered an Alford plea, an arrangement allowing a defendant to maintain his innocence while acknowledging that the prosecutor has sufficient evidence to win a jury trial. Reichard agreed to pay a $25,000 fine and serve two years’ probation.

Other motions

Attorneys for Sitton and Stubbs also have filed motions to dismiss the charges because “the indictment does not adequately allege a crime as required by North Carolina law,” and that, “any interpretation of the acts alleged in the indictment as felonious obstruction of justice would violate the notice requirements in the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution.”

In other motions, they have asked the judge to dismiss the cases against both for improper venue. Both argue the cases should not be heard in Wake County. Sitton lives in Burke County and Stubbs lives in Craven County.

Both attorneys also filed similar motions to dismiss the cases because they believe the district attorney “had no authority under law to conduct an investigation, or to employ the State Bureau of Investigation to conduct an investigation, leading to the Indictments in these cases.” These motions claim that state law authorizes the SBI to investigate potential election law violations, but it can do so only at the direction of the State Board of Elections or the governor.

Don Carrington is executive editor of Carolina Journal.