The Syracuse University administration does not plan to publicly release the results of its 2005 investigation into the allegations against Bernie Fine, Chancellor Nancy Cantor said on Friday.

Cantor cited three reasons for not releasing the investigation: to protect the privacy of the people involved in the investigation, not interfere with the current investigation by the authorities and because another law firm is conducting an external review of the 2005 investigation. The 2005 investigation was carried out by Bond, Schoeneck & King, the firm for which Tom Evans, senior vice president and university counsel, works.

On protecting those involved in the 2005 investigation, Cantor said it ‘would be unfair to release publicly now’ what ‘at the time was confidential.’

The Daily Orange Editorial Board called for the university to release the investigation in an editorial Thursday, saying it would aid transparency and fact-based discussion.

SU turned over the 2005 investigation to Syracuse police and the district attorney’s office and the information part of the ongoing investigation. The U.S. attorney’s office and the U.S. Secret Service have now taken the lead on the investigation.

The SU Board of Trustees hired a second law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, on Nov. 18 to review the 2005 investigation. The purpose of this external review is to evaluate how SU handled the investigation and what could have been done differently to ensure best practices in the future.

Three members from the Board of Trustees’ executive committee in 2004-05 said they had no knowledge of the original investigation, according to an article published by The Post-Standard on Sunday.

Jim Haggerty, president and CEO of The PR Consulting Group and an expert in litigations and crisis communication, said in this type of internal investigation, SU likely holds the attorney client privilege. This means it is SU’s decision whether to waive that privilege and release the results, not the decision of anyone who may have been interviewed as part of the investigation. The reason some organizations do not waive privilege is because the information could be used for other purposes.

‘In most cases the organization is not protecting anyone but themselves by refusing to release,’ Haggerty said. He said he is not familiar with the details of the Fine allegations but spoke generally on attorney client privilege in internal investigations.

Haggerty said now more and more corporations or institutions that conduct internal investigations release the results because it is a good public relations move.

‘It’s very often the case in corporations and in other institutions when they do arrange for an internal investigation they’ll waive attorney client privilege at the outset in order to be forthcoming with the public,’ he said.

The concern about impeding the current investigation is a legitimate one, Haggerty said.

‘You don’t want to do anything that would compromise that, even inadvertently,’ he said.

In an email Cantor sent to the SU community on Nov. 18, she said the university investigation lasted four months. Bobby Davis, the accuser, originally contacted SU anonymously about the allegations. He later provided the university with a list of people he said would corroborate his story. None of those people did, Cantor said in her email.

‘At the end of the investigation, as we were unable to find any corroboration of the allegations, the case was closed,’ Cantor said in the email. ‘Had any evidence or corroboration of earlier allegations surfaced … we would have acted.’

kronayne@syr.edu 

Published on December 4, 2011 at 12:00 pm