Kelty pleads guilty, avoids jail

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) - Matt Kelty has pleaded guilty to three of the nine counts against him regarding illegal campaign financing.

As part of the plea agreement, he will serve no jail time.

Kelty was facing nine charges, including seven felonies, for allegedly misreporting campaign finances when he ran for mayor.

In a plea agreement, Kelty pleaded guilty to two felonies and one misdemeanor. His punishment is a $250 fine for each charge, 80 hours of community service and one year probation.

"I think justice was done today as best it can be done in these kind of cases," Special Prosecutor Dan Sigler said. "If it had gone to trial the sentences would have run together anyway and it would have been unlikely he'd get much jail time anyway because he had no prior criminal record."

Kelty will be allowed to keep his architecture license, but will not be allowed to run for public office again.

His trial had been scheduled to start Monday morning at 9:00a.m., but Judge Kenneth Schiebenberger granted the former Fort Wayne Republican mayoral candidate and his lawyers a second continuance since his trial date was set back in February 2008.

On Saturday, Sigler got new evidence, emails he said are from Kelty's campaign that would shed more light on when Kelty knew certain pieces of information. The defense got to see the new evidence on Sunday.

"I don't know that it was a smoking gun, but it was certainly the piece of evidence that pushed the case over the top," Sigler said.

Monday, Kelty's lawyer, Bob Gevers, asked for a week's time to deal with new information that he'd learned from a Kelty campaign member over the weekend. Sigler told the judge he thought a week's time was too much, but did understand Gevers circumstances.

Kelty had no comment after the morning's proceedings, which lasted less than 10 minutes.

"Based upon all the evidence put before us and in depth analysis of all the evidence provided to us, Mr. Kelty decided to enter pleas to the charges as delineated in the plea agreement and to move on," Gevers said.

NewsChannel 15 asked Kelty why he changed his plea and he responded, "Not today."

"Mr. Kelty is deferring to his attorney today [Monday]. He may have something to say tomorrow," Gevers added.

Gevers wouldn't say if the new evidence presented over the weekend changed Kelty's mind about the plea agreement.

"It's not just something that just comes up and you make a decision. You have to look at all the evidence that's come before you and will be placed in the record in court," Gevers said.

Two of the felony charges Kelty faced were from perjury during a grand jury hearing. Sigler didn't include them in the plea deal. All the charges Kelty pleaded guilty to dealt with campaign finance law.

"If he had been convicted of perjury, I'm sure that would have made things difficult for him. That's what he got out of the agreement. He hopefully took away the risk of having to lose his [architecture] license," Sigler said.

Sigler also explained why he allowed Kelty to keep his license.

"I didn't mind giving him the opportunity to continue to practice his profession. I'm aware he's got a family to feed and he needed that and I didn't think his conduct should have affected his license," Sigler said.

Background of how he came to be charged:

In October 2006, architect Matt Kelty launched his campaign for Fort Wayne Mayor. He beat County Commissioner Nelson Peters on the Republican ticket with 49 percent of the vote in the May 2007 primary.

He would face Democrat Tom Henry in the November Election. But less than 20 days after the primary, questions arose about whether or not he broke campaign finance laws.

Kelty filed new reports with the Allen County Election Board. Those reports brought concern over campaign contributions, totaling $158,000. Original reports said all those came from Kelty, but the new reports said they were personal loans to him from his campaign manager and campaign advisor. Kelty then lent that money to his campaign, but didn't report the original sources of the money.

Kelty said he only came forward to keep his campaign transparent, and that transparency would launch months of investigations.

In June 2007, the Allen County Election Board ruled Kelty did *not break the law, but the group Common Cause filed a complaint, and the case was forwarded to a special prosecutor.

In August 2007 his case went before a grand jury. Kelty was arrested when it indicted him on seven felony counts: two of perjury and five of fraudulently reporting election funds. He was also charged with two misdemeanors.

The case would go to trial, but it didn't happen before the November election and Democrat Tom Henry won the mayor's race.

In February 2008, Kelty's motion to drop the charges was denied, and a trial was set for August 18th.

In March 2008 an appeal was denied and in April, the court pushed Kelty's trail back to October.

In August 2008, Kelty requested to push the trial back further, but that was denied.