R. Budd Dwyer
Robert Budd Dwyer was an American politician who served as the 70th Treasurer of Pennsylvania from 1981 until his suicide in 1987. He had previously served from 1965 to 1971 as a Republican member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and from 1971 to 1981 as a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate representing the state's 50th district. Dwyer committed suicide by gunshot during a press conference.
During the early 1980s, Pennsylvania discovered that its state workers had overpaid federal taxes due to errors in state withholding before Dwyer's administration. A multimillion-dollar recovery contract was required to determine the compensation to be given to each employee. In 1986, Dwyer was convicted of accepting a bribe from Computer Technology Associates, a small California-based company, to award them the contract over more experienced and less expensive competitors. Pennsylvania would have lost $6,000,000 had the scheme been successful. He was found guilty on 11 counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, perjury, and interstate transportation in aid of racketeering, and was scheduled to be sentenced on January 23, 1987. On January 22, Dwyer arranged a press conference in his office in the Pennsylvania Finance Building, during which he fatally shot himself with a.357 Magnum revolver in the presence of reporters. Dwyer's suicide was broadcast to many television viewers throughout Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley.
All posthumous appeals made by Dwyer's lawyers on Dwyer's behalf were denied, and his convictions were sustained. Along with Barbara Hafer and Rob McCord, Dwyer is one of three former Pennsylvania State treasurers to be convicted of corruption since the 1980s.
Early life and education
Robert Budd Dwyer was born on November 21, 1939, in St. Charles, Missouri to Robert Malcolm Dwyer and Alice Dwyer. He had one younger sister named Mary. He graduated in 1961 with an A.B. in Political Science and Accounting from Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the Beta Chi chapter of Theta Chi fraternity. After earning a master's degree in education in 1963, he taught social studies and coached football at Cambridge Springs High School.Career
Pennsylvania Assembly
A Republican, Dwyer became active in politics. He was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from the 6th district in 1964 and was reelected in 1966 and 1968. In 1970, while still a State Representative, Dwyer campaigned to become a Pennsylvania State Senator for the Senate's 50th district, and won. Soon after his victory he resigned as Representative and was sworn in as Senator in January 1971. Dwyer also was a delegate to the 1976 Republican National Convention.Pennsylvania Treasurer
After being elected two additional terms in 1974 and 1978, Dwyer decided to try for a statewide office and in 1980 campaigned for and won the office of Pennsylvania Treasurer which had been held by Robert E. Casey since 1976. He campaigned for a second and last term in 1984 and won re-election, defeating Democratic nominee and former auditor general Al Benedict. Dwyer stated that his Treasury administration "transformed the Department from a financial antique into one of the most modern in the nation, earning and saving hundreds of millions of dollars each year".Dwyer publicly refused to approve expense vouchers for Republican Governor Dick Thornburgh's wife Ginny's trip to Europe, and criticized Thornburgh for his private use of the Pennsylvania State Police to chauffeur his children to prep school in Massachusetts.
Bribery investigation and conviction
From 1979 to 1981, before Dwyer was state treasurer, public employees of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania overpaid millions of dollars in Federal Insurance Contributions Act taxes. As a result, the state required an accounting company to determine refunds for its employees. Dwyer awarded the no-bid $4.6 million contract to Computer Technology Associates, a California-based company, owned by John Torquato Jr., a native of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on May 10, 1984.During early 1984, Dennis Schatzman, deputy comptroller of Pittsburgh Public Schools, noticed financial discrepancies in the CTA contract, and wrote to Pittsburgh school officials regarding these. Schatzman later contacted officials of the accounting company Arthur Young and Associates, who confirmed that the no-bid CTA contract was overpriced by millions of dollars. In June 1984, the Office of the Pennsylvania Auditor General informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the alleged bribery that occurred during the awarding of the contract. During late July 1984, Janice R. Kincaid, a former CTA employee, released a sworn statement claiming that Dwyer awarded the contract to CTA because he was promised a $300,000 kickback by the company. Kincaid also indicated that Torquato directed women who worked for CTA to give sexual favors to potential clients. Torquato was also said to have targeted multiple other state and local officials in Pennsylvania for bribes, including Pennsylvania Attorney General LeRoy Zimmerman.
Dwyer's awarding of the CTA contract was investigated by federal prosecutors. Upon learning of this investigation, Dwyer rescinded the contract with CTA on July 11, 1984. Subsequently, Dwyer repeatedly attempted to stop, divert and forestall the investigation, stating that the U.S. attorney had neither the authority nor evidence to pursue prosecution. Dwyer later admitted to telling his staff to withhold request for proposal information from the U.S. attorney and the FBI during the investigation. After being indicted by a federal grand jury, Dwyer was finally charged with agreeing to receive a kickback of $300,000 in return for awarding CTA the contract.
Dwyer stated that he offered to take a polygraph test but only on the condition that if he passed it, he would not be indicted. The state rejected Dwyer's offer. Prior to Dwyer's indictment, on October 22, 1984, a grand jury indicted Torquato, Torquato's attorney William T. Smith, Judy Smith, Alan R. Stoneman, and David Herbert. At his 1985 trial, Smith, who was a friend of Dwyer's, testified that he did not bribe Dwyer, and instead that Torquato offered Dwyer a campaign contribution in return for the CTA contract, yet Dwyer rejected Torquato's offer. In contrast, Torquato testified that Smith offered Dwyer a $300,000 bribe in return for the CTA contract. Dwyer, acting as a defense witness at Smith's trial, denied that he was offered a contribution. In August 1984, Smith failed a polygraph test when he stated that he did not bribe Dwyer or any state official. However, prior to his trial on October 27, 1984, Smith confessed to offering Dwyer a bribe, and stated that Dwyer accepted this offer.
Robert B. Asher, the then Pennsylvania Republican Party Chairman, objected to this, and requested that the $300,000 be directed entirely to the Republican State Committee, since Asher "did not want Dwyer to go to jail".
Dwyer, along with Asher, was indicted by a federal grand jury on May 13, 1986. In the hopes of reducing his twelve-year sentence resulting from his 1985 conviction, Smith testified on behalf of the federal government against Dwyer and Asher at their 1986 trial. Ultimately, Smith did not receive any reduction of his sentence for testifying against Dwyer. Before testifying against Dwyer, Smith passed a polygraph test.
It was revealed at Dwyer's trial that he sought and won approval for special legislation—Act 38 of 1984 —that authorized him to recover the FICA overpayments, and that coded computer tape seized from CTA's office on July 6, 1984, showed that Dwyer was to receive a $300,000 pay-off for awarding CTA the contract. Moreover, Smith and Torquato's claims about Dwyer being bribed were corroborated by four independent and impartial witnesses, and Smith's testimony against Dwyer was virtually identical to written statements Smith made long before entering into a plea agreement. Additionally, FBI agents testified that Dwyer attempted to conceal his involvement with the scheme when, after learning of the FBI investigation, he erased the entry in his appointment book of the March 2, 1984, meeting with Torquato and Smith in which he was first offered a bribe.
Dwyer maintained that he awarded CTA the contract on the basis of his treasury task force recommendation; this conflicted with the fact that Dwyer personally managed all matters relating to the contract six days prior to awarding it to CTA. Furthermore, his task force's contribution merely consisted in the making of a single telephone call to David I. Herbert. Dwyer awarded the contract to CTA—an obscure California-based company with three employees, little equipment, and little experience—despite being informed in April 1984 by the major Pennsylvania-based accounting company Arthur Young and Associates, which had 250 employees and submitted a proposal on April 13, 1984, at least 14 days prior to CTA's proposal, that they could perform the FICA recovery as fast as CTA for half the cost.
Trial
Charles Collins, Arthur Young's former management consulting director in Pittsburgh, testified at Dwyer's trial that Arthur Young and Associates, who, unlike CTA, had experience in identical tax recovery work, was prepared to negotiate the FICA recovery contract and that Dwyer was clearly aware of Arthur Young's offer before committing the contract to CTA. Additionally, 16 other competitors were willing to be considered for the FICA recovery contract and many had communicated with Treasurer Dwyer's office to request an opportunity to bid on the contract, yet Dwyer did not respond. Dwyer repeatedly stated that he awarded the contract to CTA as a result of his task force's recommendation on the basis of CTA's providing "immediate credit", yet the contract between CTA and Dwyer contained no information regarding CTA's ability to provide such credit. Moreover, Dwyer admitted that he did not mention the concept of "immediate credit" to Arthur Young and Associates when officials from the company asked why CTA was chosen instead of them. In contradiction to Dwyer's statements about awarding CTA the contract on the basis of their providing "immediate credit", Arthur Young and Associates were told that CTA got the contract since they first recognized that the overpayments could be recovered, and that they endorsed legislation that gave Dwyer the sole power to award said contract.Dwyer denied any wrongdoing, stating that after the CTA contract was signed, Smith merely made a "generic" offer to help him with his campaign. Dwyer's lawyer spoke to the prosecutor, acting U.S. Attorney James West, asking him if he would dismiss all charges against Dwyer if Dwyer resigned as state treasurer. West refused the offer. He instead offered to let Dwyer plead guilty to a single charge of bribe receiving, which would have meant a maximum of five years' imprisonment, as long as he resigned from his office as Treasurer of Pennsylvania and cooperated completely with the government's investigation, but Dwyer refused and went to trial. At his trial, Dwyer did not testify, and his lawyer, Paul Killion, presented no defense witnesses since he thought that the government did not sufficiently prove its case. It is possible that Dwyer did not testify in his own defense since he did not want to be questioned regarding his involvement in a 1980 conspiracy involving his wife's business "Poli-Ed," and two Pennsylvania State Education Association employees. One of these employees was Dwyer's close friend and campaign manager Fred Mckillop, who was subsequently dismissed by the PSEA for his involvement with the scheme, and who later featured in a 2010 documentary about Dwyer. In this conspiracy, which was investigated by the office of the Pennsylvania Attorney General, Dwyer allegedly siphoned money from his campaign into his personal funds.
On December 18, 1986, Dwyer was found guilty on 11 counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, perjury and interstate transportation in aid of racketeering, and was consequently liable to a sentence of as much as 55 years imprisonment and a $300,000 fine. His sentencing was scheduled for January 23, 1987, to be performed by U.S. District Court Judge Malcolm Muir. One mail-fraud charge against Dwyer was dismissed by Judge Muir. One juror, Carolyn Edwards of Williamsport, found it emotionally difficult to convict Dwyer since they were men of "very high integrity... they just made a mistake", while Dwyer made a statement after the verdict saying "This is a sad and shocking day for me, totally unbelievable, I'm totally innocent of all of these charges and I don't know how this could have happened". Robert B. Asher, Dwyer's co-defendant, was sentenced to one year in jail.
Accounting company Levin-Horwath ultimately fulfilled the contract for $1,300,000, with slightly more than a third of the fee possibly being subject to rebate. If CTA were to have performed the recovery work, Pennsylvania would have lost $6,000,000. Pennsylvania law stated that Dwyer could not officially be dismissed from office until his sentencing in January. Given this, Dwyer stated that until his legal appeal was resolved, he would continue as treasurer with a leave of absence without pay and would not resign before having the opportunity to appeal his conviction. In the interim, the treasury department would be managed by Deputy Treasurer Donald L. Johnson. Dwyer continued to profess his innocence after being convicted, and on December 23 wrote a letter to President Ronald Reagan seeking a presidential pardon, and to Senator Arlen Specter seeking assistance with this effort. The week of Dwyer's sentencing, Pennsylvania State Attorney General LeRoy Zimmerman and state prosecutors were investigating a provision of the Pennsylvania state constitution such that dismissal of a civil worker from office who has been convicted of a crime is "self-executing", thus, automatic upon that person's sentencing. A decision confirming this constitutional provision was expected on January 22, the day before Dwyer's sentencing hearing.