State vs. Jack Webb (03CR00573), Catoosa (Georgia) Superior Court
Jun 24, 2005OUTCOME: Jury: Not Guilty (Cts 1,2,3, and 5); Guilty (Ct.4)
Jack Webb was charged with (1) Murder, (2) Felony Murder, (3) Aggravated Assault, (4) Concealing a Death, and (5) Possession of Firearm during commission of a crime. The defendant Jack Webb was accus ... ed of the murder of a cousin who was acting as a caretaker for the defendant's elderly and increasingly senile father, and of then ultimately disposing of the victim's body first in Tennessee, then in a National Park in the Appalachain Mountains in North Carolina. The defendant had admitted to taking the dead body of the victim out of the jurisdiction and trying to destroy and hide the body in two different places in Tennessee and North Carolina, but denied the murder. The defense was that despite all of the incriminating evidence and actions of the defendant in trying to get rid of the evidence of a murder (the dead body of the victim), there was not sufficient evidence that he actually killed the victim, and that the defendant had been acting to protect his elderly father after another relative suggested to him that his elderly father had committed the murder. There was testimony by a key state witness, developed under cross-examination, that left open the door of possibility that the very (uncharged) relative who implicated the elderly father to the defendant was actually responsible for the murder. The jury returned verdicts of Not Guilty on Counts 1, 2, 3, and 5. The Defendant having admitted his guilt in Count 4 (Concealing a Death)before and throughout the trial, he was convicted of that count and received a sentence of ten years.
