Former radio talk-show host found guilty of insurance fraud

Former KIRO radio talk show host Mike Webb was found guilty of insurance fraud this morning and sentenced to 240 hours of community service.

King County Superior Court Judge Julie Spector issued the verdict following an abbreviated trial, in which she reviewed police reports and documents from Webb's first trial, which ended in a mistrial. Webb opted for the abbreviated trial rather than be tried before a jury.

Webb worked for KIRO-AM (710) radio for 10 years and hosted a liberal late-night show before he was fired weeks after being charged with the felony in December 2005.

Prosecutors and police say that Webb filed a fraudulent insurance claim with Geico insurance after a traffic accident on June 28, 2005, when his Lexus was struck by another vehicle driven by an uninsured driver near the University Bridge in Seattle. During Webb's first trial, Geico investigators testified that it wasn't until the day after the accident that Webb purchased an insurance policy online from their company.

Webb, however, testified that he believed he had purchased insurance from the company about five weeks before the accident. He suggested a computer glitch might be at fault. He also said he thought he was pursuing the claim under the other driver's policy.

The first trial ended in a mistrial in September after a judge determined the jury had been tainted by seeing Webb handcuffed by police following an outburst outside the courthouse.

According to a Seattle Police Department report, police found Webb acting "irrational and irate" on James Street and Second Avenue after testimony in his trial concluded. A woman told police that Webb had threatened to kill himself if found guilty and that he had access to a gun in his house, the report stated.

When an officer contacted Webb on the street and asked if he would allow police to retrieve the gun from his home, Webb said no, according to the report.

Webb was not arrested, but he was handcuffed and taken to Harborview Medical Center for a mental-health evaluation, according to Seattle police spokesman Jeff Kappel.

After the incident, Judge Spector learned that several jurors had seen or heard about the incident, and ordered the jury to stop deliberating and go home for the day.

Spector later questioned half the jurors individually about what they saw. Five knew some details about the incident, though most or all mistakenly believed Webb had been apprehended for jaywalking. A sixth juror believed an attorney in the case had been caught jaywalking.

When interviewed, the jurors told Spector said they thought they could put the incident aside and deliver a fair verdict. But Webb's attorney, Mark Larranaga, asked the judge to grant a mistrial. "It's tainted more than a third of the jurors," he said of the police incident.