Dallas Cowboys Collapse: Engineer Served Federal Prison Time

The Dallas Cowboys took advice from Jeffrey Lawrence Galland, who served federal prison time for drug trafficking and falsified his educational credentials. Jeffrey Galland, was the engineering director of JCI from Las Vegas with no valid engineering license. The company responsible to make major structural reinforcements to the Cowboys practice facility that collapse injured a dozen people.

The Dallas Morning News reported Sunday that the consultant, Jeffrey Lawrence Galland, was engineering director of that project and acknowledged the newspaper's findings, but said his background had no bearing on his ability to help clients. Galland, 42, said JCI president Scott Jacobs, who is a licensed engineer, supervised his Cowboys work.

His company has teamed up extensively in recent years with Canada-based Summit Structures, which built the Cowboys facility in 2003 and oversaw last year's reinforcements. "It is Summit's belief that all employees who worked on this project were qualified to perform the task he or she performed" and were properly licensed, Summit president Nathan Stobbe said in a statement Saturday, the newspaper reported.

Galland provided a written summary of his credentials that says he has a bachelor's degree in physics from Eastern Washington University. The school said he pursued that degree but never graduated. The summary also says he has been working toward a master's degree in structural engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. School records show no sign he ever attended, officials said.

Galland said Saturday that he completed all required credits for the physics degree, but did not receive it after Eastern Washington officials wanted him to take a class that "I felt was unnecessary."

In 1994 Galland was arrested after breaking into a home and pointing a gun at a woman in Great Falls, Mont., police there said. Charges included burglary and assault. One year later, Galland was convicted of burglary in state court.

Galland also pleaded guilty in federal court to using a firearm during a violent crime and conspiring to distribute cocaine and marijuana, court records show.

The practice facility came crashing down in fierce winds May 2, permanently paralyzing a Dallas Cowboys scouting assistant.

wrote by: Andrew Maisonneuve source statements provided by AP news wire, Dallas Morning News