Murder trial set in attorney's 2012 shooting
Was it murder, or was it self-defense?
That's what a Campbell County jury will be asked to decide next month, when Shayna Hubers will stand trial for shooting her boyfriend six times in the dining room of his Highland Heights condominium.
Nearly two and a half years have passed since the night of October 12, 2012, when police arrived at the condo on Meadow Lane around 9 p.m. and found Ryan Poston, a 29-year-old attorney, dead on the dining room floor. Hubers has never denied that she fired the fatal shots.
The trial is set to begin April 13 before Campbell Circuit Judge Fred A. Stine, and it's expected to be a lengthy and contentious trial over the course of at least two weeks.
Court documents indicate the character of both the accused and the victim will be called into question, and those connected with the case say emotions are running high between the two sides.
At least two national news networks plan to cover the proceedings, and locals will be paying close attention, too: Poston comes from a prominent Northern Kentucky family.
His uncle is well-known attorney Jim Poston of Fort Mitchell and his stepfather is Peter Carter, a Procter & Gamble marketing executive. He is the son of Jay Poston and Lisa Carter, and the grandson of James R. Poston, Sr., former senior counsel for PG&E and vice president of the Committee of 500 that rid Newport of vice and corruption during the 1960s.
The victim's family has also filed a wrongful death civil lawsuit against Hubers that seeks to prevent her from benefiting from Poston's death by selling her story to the media. That lawsuit is still pending in Campbell Circuit Court.
Hubers, who will turn 24 on April 8, is from Lexington. She attended the prestigious Governor's School for the Arts in 2008 and made the dean's list at the University of Kentucky in 2010. Investigators have said she was pursing a master's degree in school counseling at the time of the shooting.
The couple's relationship has been described as tumultuous, and nobody disputes that Hubers fired the fatal shots. What the jury will be asked to decide is why.
From the beginning, Hubers has maintained that it was self-defense.
She called 911 at 8:53 p.m. the night of Oct. 12, and said, "Ma'am, I have, I have, I killed my boyfriend in self-defense."
When the dispatcher asked what, exactly, happened, Hubers responded: "He beat me and tried to carry me out of the house and I came back in to get my things. He was right in front of me and he reached down and grabbed the gun, and I grabbed it out of his hands and pulled the trigger."
Hubers later told investigators she shot Poston in the head and the face, and then four more times to stop his body from twitching.
"The defendant then made a spontaneous utterance that she shot him in the face and then he fell and started shaking and she shot him again to put him out of (his) misery," police wrote in the incident report.
Poston's family has called the self-defense argument "absurd" and has said Ryan Poston was trying to end their relationship at the time of his death.
"We know Ryan was a caring young man, full of hope and potential to do great and wonderful things with his life," the Poston and Carter families said in a statement to The Enquirer. "His senseless murder is not what our community stands for. We treasure our young adults, and when they are taken away from us it damages not just our families but our entire community. As difficult as the trial will be for our families, we look forward to justice being served."
The four-volume case file indicates Hubers' attorneys plan to assert that she acted in justifiable self-defense and are likely to call into question Poston's character and state of mind at the time of the shooting to help make their case.
Experts expected to testify for the defense include those that will breakdown the forensics of the case -- whether Poston was sitting or standing when he was killed -- and those who have knowledge of Hubers' medical history and Poston's use of prescription medications.
Prosecutors haven't tipped quite as much of their hand, but documents indicate they will argue the shooting was murder, not self-defense. Hubers remains jailed at the Campbell County Detention Center in Newport, where she is being held without bond.
Poston is buried at St. John Cemetery in Fort Mitchell. A scholarship fund at Blessed Sacrament School also bears his name.
Each year, a sixth grade student who demonstrates "compassion and caring for others" receives an award from the fund, which has raised more than $100,000 from about 200 donors since it was established in early 2013.