February 10, 2012

State prosecutors don’t want the people who live near former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky in central Pennsylvania to sit as jurors in his pending child sex-abuse trial. On Friday, they will try to persuade a judge to fill the jury box with people from outside the State College area instead.

The proceeding before Judge John M. Cleland is also expected to address Sandusky’s request to have his house-arrest bail conditions modified so that he can have contact with his grandchildren and others.

The state attorney general’s office has asked for tougher bail rules, arguing that safety concerns among Sandusky’s neighbors warrant restricting him indoors.

Cleland has asked defense and prosecution lawyers to narrow the disputes on which he will have to rule, a list that includes whether Sandusky should be given transcripts of secret grand jury testimony before trial, and which other records prosecutors must turn over.

Sandusky faces 52 criminal counts for alleged sexual misconduct involving boys over 15 years, actions that police and prosecutors say have included violent sexual assault inside the Penn State football team facilities. He has denied the allegations.

Prosecutors have said the special position Penn State holds for people in Centre County would make it a challenge for jurors there to render a fair verdict, but Harrisburg attorney Barb Zemlock, president of the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the same issue would apply throughout the state.

“The commonwealth of Pennsylvania is replete with individuals who have graduated from Penn State,” Zemlock said. “And if you are going to say nobody who graduated from Penn State can be fair and impartial, then you are really going to slice your jury pool considerably.”

Sandusky, 68, wants a Centre County jury, and neither the defense nor prosecutors have sought to move the proceedings to another county.

Both sides want to change the rules of Sandusky’s house arrest. He is seeking permission to allow his 11 grandchildren to visit his home, accompanied by a parent, as well as to be allowed to communicate with them by phone or computer.

The attorney general’s office, on the other hand, has asked Cleland to restrict Sandusky indoors.

In a court filing on Tuesday, prosecutors said Sandusky had been seen on his back porch watching children play in an adjacent schoolyard, and concerns have been raised for the children’s safety.

“Such concerns will only mushroom if defendant is permitted to roam at will outside his house,” they said.

In response, Sandusky attorney Joe Amendola said safety concerns were unfounded, and that Sandusky has complied with bail rules in the months since his arrest.

Given Sandusky’s age and the nature and number of charges against him, a conviction could be tantamount to a life sentence, so it is possible the time he is spending on house arrest may be his last months as a free man.

Sandusky is requesting pretrial release of grand jury transcripts, something Zemlock said courts have been known to grant, but she said it would be unusual for the defense to obtain them months before trial. No trial date has been set.

“The last thing the court needs to do is build an appellate issue, and if I don’t have time to properly prepare for my cross-examination, my client is being denied the effective representation of counsel,” Zemlock said.

Amendola said this week that he wasn’t sure if Cleland or the jurist who supervised the investigative grand jury, Judge Barry Feudale, would decide whether to release the transcripts.

“A determination of the motion for the production of copies of transcripts of testimony of individuals who appeared before the grand jury may be delayed, depending upon whether Judge Cleland or Judge Feudale decides that issue,” Amendola said.

Cleland said prosecutors did not have to file a written answer to Amendola’s detailed motion seeking other records. The judge’s order scheduled the motion for “argument and/or hearing” on Friday but asked the sides to “narrow the issues in dispute and reach agreement, if possible.”

Zemlock said additional pretrial motions might still be filed on a range of possible topics, including any alibi defense, a claim that so much time has passed that the statute of limitations requires dismissal, or efforts to prevent one side or the other from presenting certain evidence.

Judges have leeway when it comes to setting a timeline for those types of motions, Zemlock said.

Pennsylvania’s speedy trial rules give the state a year from the filing of the complaint to bring a defendant to trial, unless he or she is in jail, then the limit is six months.

Sandusky was arrested on two sets of charges, filed against him in November and December. Zemlock said trial in late summer or early fall would be a good guess, but that may depend on Centre County’s court timetable and Cleland’s schedule.

The scandal led the Penn State trustees to push out university president Graham Spanier and football coach Joe Paterno, who died last month.

Two Penn State administrators are awaiting trial on charges they lied to a grand jury investigating Sandusky and failed to properly report suspected child abuse. Gary Schultz, a former vice president, and Tim Curley, the athletic director, have both denied the allegations.

By Jessica Durando

Dec 16, 2011

Penn State assistant football coach Mike McQueary took the stand Friday against former University officials accused of lying to a grand jury about child sexual abuse allegations against former coach Jerry Sandusky.

Former Penn State athletic director Tim Curley walks out of the Magisterial District Court after being arraigned on charges of perjury and failure to report under Pennsylvania’s child protective services law on November 7 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

By Patrick Smith, Getty ImagesThe waiver means that Sandusky’s case is directly referred to trial on 52 counts of child abuse and misconduct.

Curley and Schultz are accused of providing inaccurate information to a Pennsylvania grand jury and failing to report allegations of child sex abuse involving Sandusky to law enforcement authorities.

“Mr. Curley and Mr. Schultz look forward to the preliminary hearing to start the process of clearing their good names and demonstrating that they testified truthfully to the grand jury,” attorneys Thomas Farrell and Caroline Roberto said in a joint statement prior to Friday’s hearing.

The hearing determines whether Curley and Schultz will face a criminal trial.

The charges against the longtime administrators hinge largely on the testimony of Penn State assistant football coach Michael McQueary who told a Pennsylvania grand jury that he witnessed Sandusky raping a child — believed to be about 10 years old — in the showers of a Penn State locker room on March 1, 2002.

According to the grand jury, McQueary first reported the incident the next day to head football coach Joe Paterno who then passed on information about the incident to Curley.

Curley and Schultz, according to the grand jury, met with McQueary about 10 days later, when McQueary related that he had “witnessed what he believed to be Sandusky having anal sex with a boy in the Lasch Building showers.”

A few weeks later, Curley told McQueary that Sandusky’s keys to the locker room were taken away and the incident had been reported to The Second Mile, a charity for at-risk children founded by Sandusky.

However, both former administrators told the grand jury that McQueary reported only that Sandusky was involved in “inappropriate” conduct with a young boy. The report did not include, they said, details about the rape of a young boy.

Joe Paterno Said to Delay Sex Assault Report to Avoid Ruining Weekend

Dec. 16, 2011

Former Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno was in no hurry to forward to authorities a witness’ report of a sexual abuse of a young boy because he didn’t want to “interfere with their weekends,” according to a deposition read in court today.

The man Paterno told about the abuse, former athletic director Tim Curley, testified in a deposition today that he didn’t think it was a crime, so he didn’t call the police.

Their testimony was among a series of accounts by Penn State officials who displayed a remarkable lack of urgency after a boy was allegedly sexually assaulted in a Penn State locker room shower in 2002 by former coach Jerry Sandusky.

The day ended with Judge William C. Wenner ruling that there was enough evidence to try Curley and former vice president of finance Gary Schultz on charges of perjury.

In a hearing at Dauphin County District Court today, Paterno’s deposition was read in which he recounts being told by assistant coach Mike McQueary that he saw Sandusky fondling a boy.

Paterno, who is 84 and battling cancer, did not appear in court. His deposition was entered into the record.

“He (McQueary) had seen a person, an older person, fondling a young boy,” Paterno testified. “I don’t know what you would call it, but it was of a sexual nature. I didn’t push Mike to describe it because he was already upset, but it was something inappropriate to a youngster.”

“I didn’t want to interfere with their weekends, (so) either Saturday or Monday, I talked to my boss, Tim Curley, by phone, saying, ‘Hey we got a problem’ and I explained the problem to him,” Paterno said.

Curley, in his deposition, said he did not think the incident constituted a crime worthy of calling the police, despite admitting to the grand jury that he knew Sandusky had been seen showering naked with a boy and inappropriately horsing around and wrestling with him.

“I never reported it to University Police. I didn’t think that it was a crime at the time,” Curley testified.

The reactions by Paterno and Curley follow a pattern of lax responses by university and Second Mile officials to sex abuse allegations against Sandusky.

McQueary, who witnessed the 2002 incident in the locker room, said that rather than physically stopping the assault, or even saying anything to Sandusky while he was in the shower with the boy, he merely slammed his locker and walked out of the building.

Instead of calling the police, McQueary talked about it to his father and didn’t call Paterno until the next day.

Schultz, the vice president of finance, was informed of two such allegations against Sandusky, once in 1998 and again in 2002, but did not think that he should investigate the claims further, according to testimony given today.

John McQueary, Mike McQueary’s father, testified that following the 2002 incident he spoke to Schultz during a routine business meeting, and Schultz said he was aware of multiple allegations against Sandusky but had not been able to do anything about it.

“I was expecting something to be done,” John McQueary testified today. “(Schultz said) ‘John, there had been other allegations and we looked into them before and we have never been able to unearth or sink teeth into something that was substantial.’ But I got the sense that he was going to investigate what Mike saw.”

The former head of university police, Thomas Harmon, testified that in 1998, a mother reported to campus police that Sandusky had hugged her son in the shower. Harmon notified Schultz and the district attorney, who launched an investigation. Harmon said he kept Schultz closely updated on the investigation until it was closed by the DA. He also said he was never told by Schultz of the 2002 incident, despite being head of campus police until 2005.

University president Graham Spanier was notified of the 2002 incident by Schultz and Curley but also did not report the incident to police.

McQueary Testifies About Sandusky Sex With Boy

The hearing today hinged on the testimony of Mike McQueary, who is the prosecution’s main witness in the cases against Curley, Schultz, and Sandusky.

McQueary said that while he didn’t actually witness Sandusky penetrating a young boy in the shower, he saw activity he believed was sexual and said as much to Paterno and top university officials.

“I never used the word sodomy or anal sex out of respect for Joe Paterno,” McQueary said on the witness stand today, relating what he reported to the head coach. “I would not have done it [said it that way]. I sat at the kitchen table and told him that I saw Jerry with a young boy in the shower and it was way over the lines, extremely sexual in nature and thought I needed to tell him about it.”

McQueary testified to determine what Penn State officials knew about Sandusky’s alleged child sexual abuse on the Penn State campus. Curley and Schultz are charged with perjury for testifying that they only knew of Sandusky “horsing around” with a boy in the Penn State showers, but were not told it was sexual. McQueary’s testimony contradicts their stories.

In today’s hearing, McQueary said he did not actually see rape, but something he believed was sexual in nature.

“I thought that Jerry was molesting him, having intercourse with him. I didn’t see insertion or hear protest,” McQueary said. “Jerry having some type of intercourse with him, that’s what I believe I saw.”

“I heard rhythmic slapping sounds, two or three slapping sounds, like skin on skin,” he said of when he walked into the locker room around 9:30 the night of the incident. “I looked into the mirror and shockingly and surprisingly saw Jerry in the shower with a young boy, with Jerry behind the boy.”

“The boy was up against the wall, his hands up, Jerry behind him in a close position, with his hands wrapped around the boy. I thought to myself this is a sexual position,” he testified.

McQueary conceded that he did nothing physically to stop the attack, but said he made his presence known.

“I stepped back and didn’t want to see it anymore. I slammed the locker shut, and when I looked in, they had separated. I know they saw me, they both looked directly into my eyes, and neither said anything to me.”

“Seeing that they both saw me, I left the locker room. I can’t describe what I was thinking or feeling: shocked, horrified, distraught,” he said.

McQueary testified that he told Paterno the next morning that he saw an incident that was extremely sexual in nature, but did not describe specifics or use the words “rape” or “anal sex.” Paterno, he said, was shocked and saddened.

“I told Paterno I saw Jerry with a young boy in the showers. It was way over the lines, extremely sexual in nature and I thought I needed to tell him,” McQueary said. “You don’t go to Coach Paterno and describe in detail those kinds of sexual acts. I wouldn’t do that. I told him it was extremely sexual.”

McQueary was adamant that he told the same story, emphasizing that he witnessed something sexual, to Curley and Schultz when they had him come in for a meeting in the Bryce Jordan center the next day.

Tuesday 13 December 2011

Former Penn State assistant football coach faces more than 50 charges of sexual abuse over 15 years

Jerry Sandusky, the man at the centre of a child sex abuse case that rocked the US and the world of college football, has waived his preliminary hearing, a surprise decision that avoided facing his accusers and moves him toward a trial.

At least some of the 10 accusers had been expected to testify against the former Penn State assistant football coach. He faces more than 50 charges related to what authorities say were sexual assaults over 15 years on 10 boys in his home, on Penn State property and elsewhere.

His waiver was announced as the hearing began Tuesday.

Sandusky told reporters as he left the courthouse that he would “stay the course” in defending himself.

Deputy attorney general Marc Costanzo said the amount of publicity generated by Sandusky’s attorney made the decision unexpected. He said, however, that Sandusky’s decision was not unusual given the strength of the state’s case.

“This development we believe provides maximum protection to most importantly the victims in this case,” Costanzo said. “It avoids their having to testify for a second time. They will of course testify at a trial in the case.”

Sandusky’s next court appearance is scheduled for 11 January. There have been no discussions about a plea bargain, Costanzo said. Sandusky remains under house arrest.

Sandusky, 67, has said repeatedly that he is innocent and has vowed to fight the case. He has taken the unusual approach of giving high-profile interviews in recent weeks to The New York Times and NBC in an attempt to defend himself.

Michael Boni, a lawyer for one accuser, told reporters he is encouraged by the development.

The accusers “do not have to relive the horrors they experience up on the witness stand” by having to testify at the hearing and at trial, Boni said.

Witnesses have said Sandusky committed a range of sexual offences against boys as young as 10, including alleged assaults in hotel swimming pools, the basement of his home in State College and in the locker room showers at Penn State.

Sandusky has been accused of finding the boys through the charity he founded for at-risk youth, The Second Mile.

The allegations rocked one of the largest and most well-regarded college football programme in the US and led to the firing of coach Joe Paterno, the winningest coach in major college football.

Sandusky has said his relationship to the boys was like that of an extended family. Sandusky characterized his experiences with the children as “precious times” and said the physical aspect of the relationships “just happened that way” and didn’t involve abuse.

Sandusky retired from Penn State in 1999, a year after the first known abuse allegation reached police.

The grand jury investigation began only in 2009, after a teenager complained that Sandusky, then a volunteer coach at his high school, had abused him.

Dec 8, 2011

Jerry Sandusky’s arrest on additional child sex-abuse charges presents him with a new challenge — how to assist his lawyer from behind bars in what was already a complicated case to defend.

“You really prefer to have your client available to you at all times,” said William Manifesto, a longtime Pittsburgh defence attorney not involved in the case. “The most difficult thing for counsel, for anyone who’s in jail, is the ability to communicate.”

Sandusky was jailed Wednesday after new child sex abuse charges were filed against him based on the claims of two new accusers, including one who says he screamed in vain for help while Sandusky attacked him in a basement bedroom.

Sex-crime cases that have more alleged victims — and prosecutors added two to Sandusky’s case with the latest charges — tend to be stronger, said Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman.

“Victims do often gather courage from the fact that others have come forward and it is not unusual for new victims to surface when multiple sex offence violations have been filed and become public,” Stedman said.

The latest accusers are the ninth and 10th alleged victims described in grand jury reports that claim Sandusky befriended and then molested boys he met through his Second Mile charity for troubled youth. A grand jury document released Wednesday echoed an earlier report, saying Sandusky gave the boys gifts while also making sexual advances toward them.

One of the new accusers said Sandusky kept him in a basement bedroom during overnight visits to Sandusky’s home, forced him to perform sex acts and assaulted him.

“The victim testified that on at least one occasion he screamed for help, knowing that Sandusky’s wife was upstairs, but no one ever came to help him,” the grand jury report said.

Sandusky was wide-eyed and quiet during the arraignment in a cramped district magistrate’s office outside the small town of Bellefonte. He could not immediately pay $250,000 US cash bail and was driven to Centre County jail by agents from the state attorney general’s office.

He had been arrested at his home, handcuffed behind his back and driven to court wearing a blue and white Penn State wrestling jacket and matching sweat pants.

After the hearing, Sandusky avoided eye contact and did not speak to about two dozen reporters and photographers before authorities placed him in the back of a silver sedan that would shuttle him to jail.

The new alleged victims, who contacted officials after Sandusky’s initial arrest on Nov. 5, told the grand jury they met Sandusky through the charity he founded in 1977.

“I took it at first he was just a nice guy, like he went to church every weekend, his kids would come over every once in a while and stuff. And after a while, like, he got used to me and stuff and started getting further and further, wanting — to touchy feely,” the ninth accuser, who is now 18, told the grand jury.

He said he was 11 or 12 when he first met Sandusky in 2004 and Sandusky took him to Penn State football games and gave him gifts and money and sexually assaulted him over a period of years, according to the grand jury report.

The 10th accuser told the grand jury he was referred by a counselor to The Second Mile in 1997, when he was 10 and experiencing problems at home.

He also attended Penn State games with Sandusky, spent time at Sandusky’s house, and was subjected to “wrestling sessions” in the basement of the home that led to Sandusky performing a sex act on the boy, the report said. The accuser also detailed being molested in a pool on the Penn State campus and a time when Sandusky allegedly exposed himself in a car while driving and requested that the boy perform a sex act on him.

The boy refused and, after Sandusky expressed his displeasure, the boy told his foster mother he didn’t want to see Sandusky any more, the report said.

The grand jury report did not say whether the boys ever told anyone else about the assaults before testifying.

Asked what he told Sandusky during the arraignment, lawyer Joseph Amendola said he warned his client to be prepared for things to get worse.

“Jerry’s scratching his head saying `What’s next?”‘ Amendola said. “I said, ‘Don’t ask that question. Don’t ask, ‘Can it get worse?’ because it can. We just have to be prepared for whatever else comes down the road. And we will be.’”

Asked how Sandusky is dealing with the accusations, Amendola said, “How would you take it if you were facing the kind of charges he was facing and your life’s work was helping kids? You would be devastated.”

Amendola said he hoped to have Sandusky out of jail Thursday. If he does, Sandusky will have to wear an electronic monitor, which Amendola said would be the equivalent to house arrest.

Sandusky also was to have no contact with alleged victims or witnesses in the case and have no unsupervised contact with minors.

Prosecutors had sought $1 million in bail.

The bail and conditions ordered Wednesday by Senior Magisterial District Judge Robert E. Scott were in contrast to the $100,000 unsecured bail Sandusky was granted last month.

Sandusky now faces criminal accusations from 10 young men and 50 charges stemming from alleged assaults over 15 years on boys in his home, on Penn State property and elsewhere. The scandal has provoked strong criticism that Penn State officials didn’t do enough to stop the alleged assaults. The scandal prompted the ouster of Hall of Fame football coach Joe Paterno and the school’s longtime president, Graham Spanier.

The new charges against Sandusky include two counts each of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and unlawful contact with a minor, all first-degree felonies punishable by up to 20 years in prison and $25,000 in fines. He was also charged Wednesday with three lesser felonies and three misdemeanours.

Sandusky, 67, has said repeatedly that he is innocent and has vowed to fight the case. In interviews with NBC and The New York Times, he said he showered and horsed around with boys but never sexually abused them. Amendola said Wednesday that he had not yet read the latest grand jury report but had no reason to doubt Sandusky’s claims of innocence.

A preliminary hearing on the latest charges was scheduled for Tuesday, the same day as a hearing on the previous charges.

The new charges may enhance the judge’s view of the seriousness of the case, and protect against the chance some accusers wear down in court Tuesday.

“There’s strength in numbers, so, yes, it is a help to the prosecution. If one victim’s case isn’t good, they’ll have the others to fall back on,” said Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor.

The added charges may also encourage Sandusky to consider plea talks, she said.

“For the defence, it comes to the point where there are just too many cases to fight,” she said. “It may be, if they’re looking at plea offers, it gets him in the mind[set] … to resolve this case without a full-blown trial.”

Manifesto said the additional victims could be used by prosecutors to bolster people who may be reluctant to testify.

“That’s the kind of rhetoric that you would use as a prosecutor to get a witness who is reluctant to testify for whatever reason, such as embarrassment,” Manifesto said. “‘You’re not the only one out there,’ or ‘You will be more credible, the more people who come forward.”‘