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No Short Cut Through Wake Forest

By Michael Frisch

The Winston-Salem Journal reported on a former prosecutor’s legal troubles.

A former prosecutor in Wilkes and Yadkin counties was convicted last week of going onto Wake Forest University’s campus even after the school banned him because he was accused of using a handheld mirror under a desk to look at a female student two years ago.

And because he trespassed on the campus, he violated a deferred-prosecution agreement that would have kept a conviction off his record if he had complied with all the conditions.

Instead, Brooke McKinley Webster, 44, of Surrey Path Court in Winston-Salem was convicted of misdemeanor secret peeping and second-degree trespass on Jan. 16. Judge Denise Hartsfield of Forsyth District Court placed him on unsupervised probation for a year. Because he had no prior criminal convictions, Webster would not have been eligible for an active jail sentence.

The deferred-prosecution program is for defendants who have no prior convictions for misdemeanor crimes and certain felonies. Webster admitted guilt but was not convicted of misdemeanor secret peeping on Nov. 22, 2017. The incident happened on April 20, 2017 at Z. Smith Reynolds Library on WFU’s campus. Wake Forest police escorted Webster off campus and issued him a trespass warning, meaning he would be arrested if he came back on campus. After the incident, WFU police increased campus patrols and monitoring of suspicious individuals.

As part of the deferred-prosecution program, Webster agreed to comply with a number of conditions, which included staying off WFU’s campus.

If he had complied with everything, Forsyth County prosecutors would have voluntarily dismissed the charge on or around Nov. 21.

Assistant District Attorney Lizmar Bosques said Webster violated the agreement. According to an arrest warrant, Webster is accused of being on the campus on Sept. 20, 2018. Bosques said Wake Forest University police notified her office that Webster’s car was seen on campus and that police had started an investigation.

During the course of the investigation, Webster told police that he was on campus but he was using the school as a cut-through. Bosques said that the police investigation showed Webster was on campus longer than it would have taken for him to simply drive through the school.

“He used it as a cut-through and that was the wrong thing to do,” he said. Freedman added that Webster had complied with all the other conditions in the agreement. That included submitting progress reports from his treating psychologist, Richard Cook. He also had to make a $750 donation to Family Services and comply with any conditions set by the N.C. State Bar Lawyer Assistance Program.

Because Webster didn’t comply with the agreement, prosecutors were able to use his admission of guilt in the secret peeping case to obtain an conviction. Webster also entered a guilty plea to the second-degree trespassing charge.

He worked as an assistant district attorney in Wilkes and Yadkin counties and handled Superior Court cases. He resigned on April 24, 2017, according to a statement from Tom Horner, the district attorney for Wilkes, Alleghany, Ashe and Yadkin counties. He had worked in the office since 2006.

Webster’s law license is still active, and he has a private law practice.

(Mike Frisch)