Bribery charges against SA dismissed

Nearly a year after bribery charges were leveled against Student Association election winners, the Student-wide Judiciary was prepared last week to send the case to a trial. Instead, the scandal came to an abrupt end Tuesday, as the accusers failed to file basic paperwork and the judiciary dismissed their case.

Matthew Pelkey, who led the push to oust SA Treasurer Mazin Kased from office since March 2005, claims there was a communication breakdown. He missed the deadline to submit a brief outlining his grievances, he said, because he did not receive a notice from the judiciary until the day the brief was due.

Fellow party member Francisco Baiocchi said he did not receive any letter requesting paperwork. Elizabeth Salzman could not be reached for comment, though Pelkey said she also received her letter late.

The motion to dismiss was made with prejudice, which means the decision is final and cannot be appealed. William Sherlock, chief justice of the Student-wide Judiciary, didn't announce the ruling until Thursday in order to notify both the plaintiffs and defendants before public disclosure.

The defendants - Elevation '05's Kased, SA President Dela Yador, and SA Vice President Sonia Kang - each received their letters shortly after Sherlock sent them. Judiciary rules give each involved person three business days to reply, which Elevation '05 promptly did.

Even after the deadline passed on Feb. 14, Sherlock allowed a weeklong grace period for Pelkey and his Reform Our Campus party members to come forward with extenuating circumstances, any reasons they missed the deadline.

"There was nothing at all," Sherlock said.

All of the charges, including slander and perjury, stemmed from a recorded conversation in which Kased offered Baiocchi a future job with SA if he were to drop from the election. Baiocchi was running for a SUNY SA delegate position.

Kased, who has maintained his innocence throughout, said that after 11 months, counter-charges, petitions and a police investigation, he's angry Pelkey missed the deadline because he wanted to see the situation resolve itself.

"It was more for them than it was for me," he said. "The fact of the matter was that it finally went to where they wanted it to go, and they don't file?"

Sherlock, too, said he would rather have had a trial, so the allegations could be openly resolved.

"All they needed to give us was, 'This is what happened this and is what we want you to do,' so we can decide if there's going to be a trial," Sherlock said.

If it had gone to trial, Elevation '05 was planning to challenge the legality of the tape on which Baiocchi secretly recorded his conversation with Kased.

Was the recording against federal law? "There was a good chance that it was," Sherlock said.

A trial would also have seen the use of information gathered in a separate University Police investigation. John Grela, director of Public Safety, said the probe found no criminal wrongdoing, but he could not divulge Investigator Dan Jay's findings regarding any possible university violations.

The Student-wide Judiciary hadn't even started considering evidence.

"We're here to hear the case," Sherlock said. "We're not here to research the case, build up the evidence or support either side."

Having heard nothing from Reform Our Campus, Sherlock and the judiciary moved to throw out all alleged charges, honoring a motion to dismiss that Kased submitted on Feb. 15.

Pelkey, who could be reached only for brief comment on Thursday, said he had never been told how the case was being treated or handled, nor was he aware it was in danger of falling apart.

"I don't know the means or the reason why they did this," he said.

Both Yador and Kang expressed relief that the situation was over with, although Yador said there was never much concern about the final ruling.

"There was more concern over the general perception of SA than what the penalties would be for this," he said. "There are people who have been looking down on SA and thinking there is just one big clique. It's disheartening when people just give you a whole bunch of negativity when you're trying to do something positive."

Looking back on the mess that led to this week's decision - including an SA Election & Credentials Committee that never made a judgment on the case - Kang called the whole conclusion oddly funny. On the other side, Baiocchi, although disappointed, agreed the paperwork mishap made for a "darkly funny" end.

Baiocchi said he didn't realize he was supposed to have received a letter until Monday, after an informal conversation with Sherlock. He approached the judiciary about the situation but was told nothing could be done.

Had he received a letter, Baiocchi said he would have submitted a brief, which was already prepared anyway for the prior police investigation.

"I can't say I was denied my due process, because obviously I was (given an opportunity)," he said. "I'm not saying the SWJ has done something wrong. It's just a real shame I never knew."

Although Pelkey received his letter on the last day to respond, and essentially had the weeklong grace period, he said he had been busy and caught up in other work.

Some students, especially within SA, saw Reform Our Campus' charges as a stunt for attention, but Baiocchi said their motives had nothing to do with publicity.

"I'm not about being sensational in the media, because I just wanted it taken care of," he said. "This was really a simple matter."

Baiocchi also questioned the fairness of getting 72 hours to respond to a letter, while it took SA almost a year to defer the case to the Student-wide Judiciary.

"Once again, bureaucracy is impeding rationality in the student government," he said.

According to Sherlock, there was nothing the judiciary could have done to intervene and speed the process along. As a check on the judiciary's power, the justices can only hear election cases once every remedy has been exhausted within the student government.

"Their constitution might need to be tweaked a little bit to make things more accountable," Sherlock said.