“Dean, I can help you. I can work with you. Okay? But you need to know upfront that lying to a federal agent potentially could have … some criminal ramifications.”
It’s not every day that a campus police detective interrogates a dean. But a brief filed yesterday in a federal court in Kentucky offers a vivid portrait of the scene that unfolded last June, when Jeffrey G. Jewell, an investigator with the University of Louisville’s police department, spent more than six hours grilling Robert Felner, dean of the university’s College of Education and Human Development. Four months later, Mr. Felner was indicted on charges of embezzling more than $2-million from a federal research grant and from contracts with three urban school districts.
Now Mr. Felner’s lawyers are asking the court to throw out the evidence gathered during the June interview. They argue that Mr. Felner was never clearly informed of his right to a lawyer, and that the setting of the interview was so coercive that he ought to have been reminded of his Miranda rights. Mr. Felner was questioned by Mr. Jewell and Jason Tatum, an inspector with the U.S. Postal Service, in a conference room in the school of education. While the three men spoke, several other federal agents carted away computers and paper files. When Mr. Felner asked to use the bathroom, he was escorted by a campus police officer.
Near the end of the interview, Mr. Jewell asked Mr. Felner whether he understood that he was not under arrest, and Mr. Felner replied, “I really didn’t know that, sir.”
Felner: I didn’t feel like I could leave the premises.
Jewell: Okay. All right. Did you ever ask to?
Felner: No. … I mean, I’m, I’m not, I’m not trying, Jeff, I’m not saying that, I’m just saying I thought ….
Jewell: [W]hen we control an area, all we do is just walk with you. Okay? … [Y]ou see what I’m saying? All, all we did was just walk you around. I mean, we certainly didn’t stop you ….
Felner: I, I, I’m fine. I’m not trying to start anything.
In January, in an earlier round of briefs on the matter, federal prosecutors replied that Mr. Jewell and Mr. Tatum did tell Mr. Felner at one point, early in the interview, that he was not under arrest. The general context of the interview was such that Mr. Felner should have understood that he could leave at any time, prosecutors argued.
The full transcript of Mr. Felner’s interrogation has not been released. But The Courier-Journal recently obtained a copy. According to the newspaper’s account, when Mr. Felner was asked why he had not filed conflict-of-interest disclosures with the university, he answered, “Nobody around here, I mean, I’m sorry, but nobody around here submits their conflict-of-interest forms.”
Earlier this week, the university announced that it would not rescind the degree of John E. Deasy, a prominent educational administrator and researcher who received a doctorate at Louisville in 2004 after having been enrolled there for only one semester. Mr. Felner was the chairman of Mr. Deasy’s dissertation committee, and he signed a waiver that allowed Mr. Deasy to transfer many more credits to Louisville than are normally allowed.
The relationship has come under scrutiny in part because Mr. Deasy was superintendent of one of the school districts from which Mr. Felner is accused of stealing money. But prosecutors have not suggested that Mr. Deasy had any knowledge of the alleged embezzlement. —David Glenn