A former longtime Nashville town councilwoman was recently cleared in N.C. District Court after facing an allegation of violating the part of state law written to protect confidential information in municipal government employee personnel records.
Louise Hinton, when reached by phone Sunday afternoon and asked her reaction, said of the claim, “It should never have happened to begin with.”
Hinton declined further comment, other than to emphasize that she had done nothing wrong.
Hinton on Nov. 30 was issued a summons via the magistrate’s office stating that she was accused of having committed a misdemeanor offense.
Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Koehler on May 8 dismissed the case without leave. That means the case cannot be reopened.
Koehler, in a document that is part of the District Court records, said that the District Attorney’s Office was unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hinton maliciously permitted another person to have access to information contained in the file in question in the case.
Attorney Will Farris represented Hinton in the case.
According to the court records, former police Chief John Winstead, who was listed as the complaining person, alleged that on Sept. 26, Hinton, as a public official, did “knowingly, willfully and with malice” allow another person or other persons to have access to information contained in a personnel file.
Specifically, Winstead alleged that Hinton allowed her son, Jeff Hinton, to read or keep a packet containing information “regarding an ongoing internal investigation between plaintiff and another employee.”
The court records did not give further specifics from Winstead on that point, and Louise Hinton declined to get into specifics when reached for comment for a story the Telegram published on Dec. 7.
A criminal summons provides one with a formal notice of a criminal offense in the judicial system. The difference between a criminal summons and a warrant for an arrest is that a criminal summons does not result in one being arrested or taken into custody.
Hinton, a retired educator, was appointed in 2005 to the town council to fill a vacancy on the panel resulting from the death of her husband, Larry. In 2007, she won election to the council in her own right.
In the Nov. 7 election contest, she sought re-election to a fifth four-year term, but she finished fourth in a four-candidate contest for two at-large seats. The top two candidates in the race were sworn in to their respective posts on the council in December.
Winstead, a former Nash County sheriff’s deputy, had been on the Nashville police force since July 2019 before becoming the police department’s chief in August 2022.
Winstead, in a prepared statement on Oct. 30, announced his resignation, saying his decision had more to do with small-town politics than anything related to the job of serving as the town’s top cop.
Winstead and Matt Joyner, who had been hired as the town’s human resources director in May 2022, were both suspended with pay from their positions on Sept. 27 by Town Manager Randy Lansing. On Oct. 20, Lansing fired Joyner.
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