Obama pardons Tenn. bookkeeper

Crockett woman embezzled from bank

WASHINGTON — She was a bookkeeper at the former Bank of Friendship in Crockett County and attended the town’s United Methodist Church, but little more is known about Donna Kaye Wright except Friday she got a presidential pardon.

Wright, 63, who was sentenced to serve just 54 days on federal charges she embezzled and misapplied bank funds, was given the rare presidential clemency in an announcement late Friday afternoon by the White House. Sixteen others, including people from Athens and Chattanooga, in Tennessee, got pardons.

Attempts to reach Wright on Friday were unsuccessful.

Former Bank of Friendship President Donald E. Webster, now retired in Cadiz, Ky., said he worked with Wright for about 10 years.

“We were all shocked when the deal happened,” he said. Asked about the crime, which Webster said he guessed occurred during his tenure at the bank sometime in the mid- to late-1980s, he said she transferred some bank earnings and made use of the proceeds of one customer’s account. The case was turned over to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and resulted in the federal charges.

Webster said his “wild guess” was that the total amount she took was “in the neighborhood of $10,000. It wasn’t a real large sum.”

Of the pardon, he said, “That’s kind of surprising.”

Cathy Burnett, wife of the mayor of Friendship, who once worked at the bank as a teller, said she hadn’t seen Wright in at least five years.

Kim Hughes, a sales representative at The Crockett County Times newspaper, who used to attend the Friendship United Methodist Church with Wright, said she was involved in leading a youth group there. She said she, too, hadn’t seen her in years.

U. S. Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn., who farms in Crockett County, did not know Wright and did not intervene on her behalf, his press secretary, Elizabeth Lauten, said.

Most of the pardons announced Friday were for minor offenses. Twelve of the 17 had served terms of probation, like Wright’s three-year probationary period to which six hours of community service were added.

Obama granted his first nine pardons in December 2010 to people convicted of drug possession, counterfeiting and mutilating coins. He also issued two batches of pardons in 2011, including eight people in May for relatively minor offenses and five people that November.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.