 "Photo: Jeffrey McWhorter")
Former Sigma Alpha Epsilon President Chase Bolding, wearing a black suit and carrying a nervous expression on his face, walked into a county courtroom Monday, sat down before the judge's bench and took a deep breath.
Bolding, former pledge trainer William Evans and economics senior and former pledge trainer Austin Sherrill pleaded no contest to hazing and providing alcohol to a minor. Jimmy Berry, former fraternity vice president, pleaded no contest to failure to report hazing. All four received a $1,000 fine, 100 hours of community service and six hours of alcohol awareness classes. Berry and Bolding each received one year of deferred adjudication, while Evans and Sherrill received two years. Sherrill and Evans must also spend four days in Travis County Jail without good-time credit or work release starting May 30. Evans, who received an additional 80 hours of community service, Bolding and Sherrill also agreed not to fight their expulsion from the fraternity.
Probable cause affidavits released Friday described SAE hazing acts committed during the fall 2006 semester, including shocking pledges with cattle prods, beating them with pieces of bamboo and forcing them to binge drink. The affidavit also stated that Sherrill burned two pledges on the face with a hot clothes iron on one occasion and that Evans forced another pledge to put his hand against a dart board while Evans threw darts at him.
Travis County Attorney David Escamilla said the 2006 death of engineering freshman and pledge Tyler Cross sparked the hazing investigation. Some of the events described in the affidavits took place the night before Cross died.
Assistant District Attorney Claire Dawson-Brown said the felony investigation into Cross' death produced insufficient evidence to go before a grand jury and that the investigation is now closed.
"There was definitely a lot of evidence about what happened that night hours before," she said. "It's the attenuation between then and when he actually fell to his death that becomes problematic in showing causal effect."
Attorney Allan Williams, who represents Berry, said he believed the plea agreement was fair but had some misgivings about it. Bolding's attorney Wayne Meissner said his client accepted responsibility for his actions by accepting the plea deal. He said Bolding graduated from UT and now lives in New York.
"He is certainly remorseful for any difficulty that may have been caused during his presidency," Meissner said. "Of course his heart goes out to the Tyler Cross family, and he has had them in his thoughts and prayers since the tragedy unfolded."
The attorneys representing Evans and Sherrill did not return phone calls from The Daily Texan.
The fraternity signed an agreement with UT officials on April 7 restructuring SAE's pledge process. Escamilla said his office could also press charges against the fraternity but has decided to wait to see if the agreement will hold.
"You can't send [the entire chapter] to jail, obviously, but you can fine them money," he said. "This organization has the financial resources; they could have paid a fine. I'm more interested in seeing their behavior change."
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