No Charges In UA Probe

Larry Jegley's perjury probe of University of Arkansas officials is over.

The prosecuting attorney, in a two-paragraph letter to the state's legislative auditor, this week said the matter is closed.

There is no probable cause, he said, to continue the inquiry into possible perjury by David Gearhart, chancellor at the UA in Fayetteville, or John Diamond, the campus' former spokesman.

The two presented conflicting testimony under oath to state legislators in September during questioning related to a multi-million-dollar deficit in the UA's Advancement Division, the fundraising arm for the Fayetteville campus. Jegley investigated the perjury charge because the Legislature meets in his district, which include Pulaski and Perry counties.

"While there may be differing versions of the events and discussions concerning the matters at issue, none rise to meet the standards meriting further actions," Jegley said, citing the state perjury law.

With that response, Jegley supposedly quieted the controversy stirred by the entangled mess related to the $6 million deficit, including Diamond's accusations that Gearhart told officials to "get rid of" documents.

Jegley's decision that there is nothing to prosecute will not erase all suspicion. Some will linger. It was too public a display, too specific an allegation to be soon forgotten.

Again, Gearhart has denied he said any such thing. Diamond, who lost his job and has gone on to other pursuits, was equally adamant Gearhart had instructed others to destroy documents.

It was a he-said-he-said argument played out in Little Rock before lawmakers about something that took place in Fayetteville that was heard and interpreted differently by others in the room.

Even if Jegley had wanted to prosecute someone, he likely would have had a hard case to prove.

This finish won't satisfy all of the legislators in front of whom Gearhart and Diamond clashed. But the bottom line is neither man will be charged with perjury.

A few weeks back, another UA official, Don Pederson, was found by another prosecutor not to have lied to state lawmakers. Pederson's situation derived from that same audit controversy but happened much earlier in the process.

He was accused of lying when he signed a letter to the Division of Legislative Audit in late 2012 regarding the UA's audit for the prior fiscal year.

David Bercaw, the lead investigator on the UA deficit for the Washington County prosecutor's office, found Pederson had made no false representations to Legislative Audit.

Bercaw, however, presented his findings in a detailed letter that gave a lot more indication why he saw no reason to prosecute Pederson.

Jegley's letter referencing accusations against the chancellor and the former spokesman was too brief to show how the prosecutor reached his conclusion.

For the record, Pederson will retire from his university post at the end of the month. Diamond is long gone and has been replaced as head of University Relations.

Gone, too, are Brad Choate, who headed the Advancement Division when the deficit occurred, and Joy Sharp, his budget officer. They were the ones most scrutinized during the audit process.

The prosecutor's investigation related to the deficit itself ended with a lengthy finding that no one committed fraud or derived personal gain.

That's the most important part of all that has been learned as a result of all of these inquiries.

Despite the long-running audits of the fundraising division, legislative hearings and investigations by two different prosecutors, no one has been found to have committed any crime. No one benefited personally from the deficit, which has since been made up.

There were serious mistakes but the campus officials who remain, most notably Chancellor Gearhart, have surely learned from the experience. They have taken steps to correct the accounting practices that led to the deficit.

They'll get plenty of oversight from hawkish state auditors and state legislators, too, to make sure they have no recurrence of such problems.

If the UA officials can also learn to keep such matters totally transparent, they might actually get this whole controversy behind them.

BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.

Commentary on 06/04/2014

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