The campaign finance trials of two associates of and fundraisers for Gov. Bev Perdue have been placed on hold until a state appeals court can rule on motions filed by both defendants.
Monday, Superior Court Judge Abe Jones granted a motion for stay in the cases of attorneys Trawick “Buzzy” Stubbs of New Bern and Julia Leigh Sitton of Morganton. As Carolina Journal Online reported earlier today, each faces charges of obstruction of justice. Stubbs also is charged with forcing the 2008 Perdue committee to file a false campaign report. Sitton also is charged with filing a false campaign report.
The trials will not go forward until the N.C. Court of Appeals rules on the motions.
In the first set of motions, attorneys for Stubbs and Sitton first asked to have the charges dismissed for “improper venue.” In a 1986 case, the Court of Appeals dismissed charges against a resident of Wilson County who was indicted in Wake County for giving more than the legal limit to the Rufus Edmisten for Governor Committee.
The appeals court ruled that state law indicates an individual who is charged for campaign finance violations and is not a candidate must be charged in his home county. Because Stubbs lives in Craven County, Sitton lives in Burke County, and both were indicted by a Wake County grand jury, the motion says the charges should be dismissed.
In the next set of motions, attorneys for Stubbs and Sitton ask for a dismissal because, they say, “the indictment does not adequately allege a crime as required by North Carolina law.”
Both motions say the defendants were indicted because they allegedly concealed information about campaign expenditures from the public that caused Perdue’s committee to file false statements in violation of campaign law.
The motions argue that this violates no law. The “indictment presents the novel theory that a person [Stubbs or Sitton] with no obligation to file any report with [the State Board of Elections], and who in fact files no report with the SBOE, can be guilty of obstructing justice by not reporting certain information to the SBOE. Nothing in North Carolina law authorizes such an unprecedented theory of prosecution.”
The stay Jones issued concluded that “these are significant legal issues of first impression that should be finally resolved by an appellate court before the trial court proceeds in these cases” and that “the same legal issued exist in the cases of both defendants.”
The defendants filed additional motions for dismissal that Jones did not comment on today.
Stubbs’ trial was scheduled to open June 11. No date had been set for Sitton’s trial.
Rick Henderson is managing editor of Carolina Journal.