Appeals court throws out NC insurance magnate's convictions

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday threw out the 2020 conspiracy and bribery convictions of a major political donor in North Carolina and his associate, declaring that the trial judge erred in his jury instructions.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, vacated the convictions and ordered new trials for Greg E. Lindberg and John D. Gray, a Lindberg consultant. The two were among four people accused of trying to give $1.5 million to Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey's election campaign in exchange for the removal of an insurance official who would be in charge of regulating Lindberg's company.

A jury convicted Lindberg and Gray of bribery and conspiracy to commit “honest services fraud” — when a person through a bribe seeks to deprive citizens of their right to honest services by a government official. They both received prison sentences. But the appeals court ruled that the trial judge gave jurors misleading instructions before they began deliberations.

U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn made a mistake when he said that removing a senior department official was an “official act," a key element in reaching a conviction on honest services fraud. Cogburn also erred when he prevented the defense from presenting evidence to show the deputy's reassignment was not official, the appeals court said.

“We find that the district court impermissibly took an element of the crime out of the hands of the jury and violated the defendant’s Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights," Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote in the prevailing opinion. “We cannot conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury verdict would have been the same absent the error.”

The bribery conviction also should be tossed, Gregory wrote, because Cogburn's...