This might be your worst post ever. Literally nothing of value here. Please turn off your computer and go hang out with the ostriches. You are clueless.
FC: ESPN takes on Penn State once again
- Thread starter GulfCoastLion
- Start date
Yes it is. You are wrong and I have proved it. You are being pedantic.
You haven't proved anything! Show me where the words "major" or "infraction" are used on that website. It isn't.
Show me in the database where PSU has received a major infraction. It doesn't exist.
You are completely and totally wrong about this.
Sanctions occur because of infractions Buzzy. try harder.
I am correct and proven such. Shall I post it again?
Wrong. In this case sanction occurred with an investigation. Without the NCAA finding infractions. PSU basically asked for the sanctions and the NCAA obliged (because they knew there were actually no infractions based on NCAA rules but they still wanted a "win").
Proven wrong repeated. Waste your time posting whatever you want, Boots.
That didn't happen. PSU committed infractions and were punished. Otherwise there would have been no sanctions. PSU just admitted guilt
Well, since you won't rad it it would be a waste of time.
You are incorrect. Please tell me which NCAA bylaws were broken and attached the NCAA investigation (which is required for imposing sanctions based on infractions).
I've "rad" (read) it multiple times. It doesn't say what you think it does. It literally does not use the word "infractions". This is not an accident because PSU did not commit any infractions.
I am correct
It does. You cannot have sanctions without infractions. Your position is nonsense.
Then it should be pretty simple for you to tell me which NCAA by laws were broken to result in sanctions. It should be easy to you to point to where on that web page you are so fond of it mentions the word infractions. It should be pretty simple for you to find the PSU infractions in the database.
The whole thing is nonsense because this was not an NCAA issue. It had nothing to do with player safety or on the field competition. Completely out of the NCAA's jurisdiction. That's why there were sanctions with no infractions --which only happened because PSU asked them to do it.
Read some more
Pedantic
Read what the NCAA said about that.
Says you
Where did PSU "ask" the NCAA for sanctions? Stupid post. Show prove and not your opinion but a document where PSU said "please fine us 60 million" of STFU
I've read it. You apparently haven't or you'd know it doesn't mention infractions. Literally not once.
The truth is sometime pedantic.
I did. No mention of infractions, major or otherwise. And it's not in their database. Just admit you are wrong about this.
Where did PSU ask for sanctions?
No, but liars are
Nope. Facts are stubborn things.
They obviously didn't do it in writing but by agreeing to "work with" the NCAA and use the Freeh report as a basis for punishment they were de facto "asking" for sanctions.
Prove it.
Yes they are. Show me in the database where PSU is listed. Show me where on your previous website it mentions infractions of any kind.
So, no proof again cool
That is on you
Can't have sanctions without infractions blinky. Keep trying lol
Remember, it was the Freeh Report that the NCAA relied upon in 2012 to impose draconian sanctions on Penn State, including a $60 million fine, a bowl game ban that lasted two years, the loss of 170 athletic scholarships and the elimination of 111 of Joe Paterno's wins, although the wins were subsequently restored.
On Friday, a group of 11 trustees called on the full 38-member board to release the full 200-page critique of the 267-page Freeh Report, formally renounce Freeh's findings, and try to recoup some of the $8.3 million that the university paid Freeh.
"I want to put the document in your hands so you can read it yourself, but I can't do that today," said Alice Pope, a trustee and St. John's University professor about the internal review of the source materials for the Freeh report.
But the materials that Pope and six other trustees had to sue the university to obtain are still under seal according to a 2015 court order. And the university's lawyers have recently advised the 11 minority trustees that the report they worked on for more than two years remains privileged and confidential, and out of reach of the public.
So yesterday, Pope called on the full board to release the 200-page report as early as their next meeting, on July 20th. But chances are slim and none that the board's chairman, Mark Dambly, and other majority board members will ever willingly open Pandora's box. They don't want to reveal to the public the facts that the university has spent millions of dollars in legal fees to keep buried for the past six years. Facts that will present further evidence of just how badly the trustees, Louie Freeh, and the attorney general's office thoroughly botched the Penn State investigation in a rush to judgment. Not to mention the media.
The full board of trustees, Pope noted yesterday, never voted to formally adopt the findings of the Freeh Report, which found that Penn State officials had covered up the sex crimes of Jerry Sandusky.
"Rather, the board adopted a don't act, don't look and don't tell policy" Pope said that amounted to a "tacit acceptance of the Freeh Report." A report that Pope said has resulted in "profound reputational harm to our university along with $300 million in costs so far."
In addition to the $60 million in fines, the university's board of trustees has -- while doing little or no investigating -- paid out a minimum of $118 million to 36 alleged victims of sex abuse, in addition to spending more than $80 million in legal fees, and $50 million to institute new reforms aimed at preventing future abuse.
That internal 200-page report and the materials it draws upon may still be privileged and confidential. But Big Trial has obtained a seven-page "Executive Summary of Findings" of that internal review dated Jan. 8, 2017, plus an attached 25-page synopsis of evidence gleaned from those confidential files still under court seal.
According to the executive summary, "Louis Freeh and his team disregarded the preponderance of the evidence" in concluding there was a cover up at Penn State of Jerry Sandusky's crimes.
There's more: "Louis Freeh and his team knowingly provided a false conclusion in stating that the alleged coverup was motivated by a desire to protect the football program and a false culture that overvalued football and athletics," the executive summary states.
In the executive summary, the trustees faulted Freeh and his investigators for their "willingness . . . to be led by media narratives," as well as "an over reliance on unreliable sources," such as former Penn State Counsel Cynthia Baldwin.
Freeh, the executive summary states, also relied on "deeply flawed" procedures for interviewing witnesses. The interviews conducted by Freeh's investigators weren't done under oath, or subpoenas, and they weren't tape-recorded, the executive summary states. Those faulty methods led to "biased reporting of interview data" and "inaccurate summaries" of witness testimony.
At yesterday's press conference, Pope said the 11 trustees wanted to know the degree of cooperation Freeh's team had with the NCAA and the state attorney general's office during their investigations. According to statecollege.com, state Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman has previously stated that the coordination between Freeh and the NCAA during the Penn State investigation was at best inappropriate, and at worst "two parties working together to get a predetermined outcome."
In the executive summary, the trustees cited "interference in Louis Freeh's investigation by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, wherein information gathered in the criminal investigations of Penn State officials was improperly (and perhaps illegally) shared with Louis Freeh and his team."
This is a subject Big Trial will explore in a subsequent blog post. But earlier this year, I wrote to Louis Freeh, and asked if he and his team was authorized to have access to grand jury secrets in Pennsylvania. He declined comment.
At yesterday's board meeting, Pope addressed this topic, saying, "additional information has emerged in the public domain indicates cooperation between the PA Office of Attorney General and Freeh. We believed it was important to understand the degree of cooperation between the Freeh investigation and the Office of Attorney General."
Yesterday, Freeh issued a statement that ripped the minority trustees. "Since 2015," he wrote, "these misguided alumni have been fighting a rear-guard action to turn the clocks back and to resist the positive changes which the PSU students and faculty have fully embraced." He concluded that despite consistent criticism of his report by the minority trustees, in the last six years, they have produced "no report, no facts, news and no credible evidence" that have damaged the credibility of his investigation.
But in the executive summary, the trustees blasted Freeh for having an alleged conflict of interest with the NCAA, and they cited some credible evidence to prove it.
"Louis Freeh's conflict of interest in pursuing future investigative assignments with the NCAA during his contracted period of working for Penn State," the executive summary states, "provided motivation for forming conclusions consistent with the NCAA's goals to enhance their own reputation by being tough on Penn State."
In a criminal manner, such as the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia investigation, the NCAA lacked legal standing. But the NCAA justified its intervention in the case by finding that a lack of institutional control on the part of Penn State enabled the Jerry Sandusky sex scandal.
In their synopsis of evidence, the trustees relied on internal Freeh Group emails that showed that while Freeh was finishing up his investigation of Penn State, he was angling for his group to become the "go to investigators" for the NCAA.
On July 7, 2012, a week before the release of the Freeh Report on Penn State, Omar McNeill, a senior investigator for Freeh, wrote to Freeh and a partner of Freeh's. "This has opened up an opportunity to have the dialogue with [NCAA President Mark] Emmert about possibly being the go to internal investigator for the NCAA," McNeill wrote. "It appears we have Emmert's attention now."
In response, Freeh wrote back, "Let's try to meet with him and make a deal -- a very good cost contract to be the NCAA's 'go to investigators' -- we can even craft a big discounted rate given the unique importance of such a client. Most likely he will agree to a meeting -- if he does not ask for one first."
A spokesman for Freeh did not respond to a request for comment.
At yesterday's board meeting, Pope said the "NCAA knew that their own rules prevented them from punishing Penn State," but that the "NCAA decided to punish Penn State anyway in order to enhance its own reputation." She added that documents made public to date show that the "NCAA was closely involved with the Freeh investigation."
"We believed it was important to understand the degree of cooperation between the Freeh investigation and the NCAA."
At yesterday's press conference, Pope also raised the issue of a separate but concurrent federal investigation conducted on the Penn State campus in 2012 by Special Agent John Snedden. The federal investigation, made public last year, but completely ignored by the mainstream media, reached the opposite conclusion that Freeh and the attorney general did, that there was no official cover up at Penn State.
Pope stated she wanted to know more about the discrepancies between the parallel investigations that led to polar opposite conclusions.
Back in 2012, Snedden, a former NCIS special agent working as a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services [FIS], was assigned to determine whether Spanier deserved to have a high-level national security clearance renewed. During his investigation, Snedden placed Spanier under oath and questioned him for eight hours. Snedden also interviewed many other witnesses on the Penn State campus, including Cynthia Baldwin, who told him that Spanier was a "man of integrity."
About six months after Baldwin told Snedden this, she flipped, and appeared in a secret grand jury proceeding to not only testify against Spanier, but also against former Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley, and former Penn State Vice President Gary Schultz.
Baldwin, who had previously represented Spanier, Curley and Schultz before the grand jury, testified last month before the disciplinary board of the state Supreme Court, where she has been brought up on misconduct charges for allegedly violating the attorney-client privilege.
After his investigation, Special Agent Snedden concluded in a 110-page report that Spanier had done nothing wrong, and that there was no coverup at Penn State.
That's because, according to Snedden, Mike McQueary, the alleged whistleblower in the case, was an unreliable witness who told many different conflicting stories about an alleged incident in the Penn State showers where McQueary saw Jerry Sandusky with a naked 10-year-old boy. "Which story do you believe?" Snedden told Big Trial last year.
In his grand jury testimony, McQueary said his observations of Sandusky were based on one or two "glances" in the shower that lasted only "one or two seconds," glances relating to an incident at least eight years previous. But in the hands of the attorney general's fiction writers, those glances of "one or two seconds" became an anal rape of a child, as conclusively witnessed by McQueary.
That, my friends, is what we call prosecutorial misconduct of the intentional kind, the kind that springs convicted murderers out of a Death Row jail cell. And it's a scandal that for six years, the attorney general's office has refused to address, a scandal that the mainstream media has failed to hold the AG accountable for.
On March 1, 2002, according to the 2011 grand jury presentment, [McQueary] walked into the locker room in the Lasch Building at State College and heard “rhythmic, slapping sounds.” Glancing into a mirror, he “looked into the shower . . . [and] saw a naked boy, Victim No. 2, whose age he estimated to be 10 years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Jerry Sandusky.”
"The graduate assistant went to his office and called his father, reporting to him what he had seen. The graduate assistant and his father decided that the graduate assistant had to promptly report what he had seen to Coach Joe Paterno . . . The next morning, a Saturday, the graduate assistant telephoned Paterno and went to Paterno's home, where he reported what he had seen."
But the alleged victim of the shower rape has never came forward, despite an avalanche of publicity, and, according to the prosecutors, his identity was known "only to God." But McQueary knew the prosecutors weren't telling the truth. Days, after the presentment, McQueary wrote in an email to the attorney general's office that they had "slightly twisted his words" and, "I cannot say 1000 percent sure that it was sodomy. I did not see insertion."
On top of that, all the witnesses that the grand jury presentment claimed that McQueary had reported to them "what he had seen," the alleged anal rape of a 10-year-old boy [plus another witness cited by McQueary, a doctor who was a longtime family friend] have all repeatedly denied in court that McQueary ever told them that he witnessed an anal rape.
"I've never had a rape case successfully prosecuted based only on sounds, and without credible victims and witnesses," Snedden told Big Trial. As for the Freeh Report, Snedden described it as "an embarrassment to law enforcement."
Snedden also told Big Trial that the real cause behind the Penn State scandal was "a political hit job" engineered by former attorney general and Gov. Tom Corbett, who had it in for Spanier, after they feuded over drastic budget cuts proposed by the governor at Penn State. Corbett has previously denied the charges.
At the same time Snedden was investigating Penn State, former FBI Director Louis Freeh was writing his report on the Penn State scandal, a report commissioned by the university, at a staggering cost of $8.3 million.
Freeh concluded that there had been a cover up. His report found a “striking lack of empathy for child abuse victims by the most senior leaders of the university,” which included Spanier, who had repeatedly been severely beaten by his father as a child, requiring several operations as an adult. Freeh also found that Spanier, Paterno, along with Schultz, the former Penn State vice president and Curley, the school’s ex-athletic director, “repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse from the authorities.”
But critics such as the minority trustees have noted that the ex-FBI director reached his sweeping conclusions without his investigators ever talking to Paterno, Schultz, Curley, McQueary or Sandusky. Freeh only talked to Spanier briefly, at the end of his investigation. And confidential records viewed by the trustees show that Freeh’s own people disagreed with his conclusions.
According to those records, Freeh's own staff reviewed a May 21, 2012 draft of the Freeh Report, which was subsequently turned over to Penn State officials. The lead paragraph of the draft said, “At the time of the alleged sexual assaults by Jerry Sandusky, there was a culture and environment in the Penn State Athletic Department that led staff members to fail to identify or act on observed inappropriate conduct by Sandusky.”
The draft report talked about an environment of fear that affected even a janitor who supposedly saw Sandusky assaulting a boy in the showers in 2002: “There existed an environment within the athletic department that led an employee to determine that the perceived threat of losing his job outweighed the necessity of reporting the violent crime of a child.”
Over that paragraph in the draft report, a handwritten note said, “NO EVIDENCE AT ALL!” Freeh, however, in his final version of his report, included that charge about the janitor who allegedly saw Sandusky assault another boy in the showers but was so fearful he didn’t report it.
But when the state police interviewed that janitor, Jim Calhoun, he stated three times that it wasn’t Sandusky he had seen sexually abusing a boy. [The state police didn’t ask Calhoun who was the alleged assailant.] At Sandusky’s trial, however, the jury convicted the ex-coach of that crime, in part because his defense lawyer never told the jury about the janitor’s interview with the state police.
In a written statement, Freeh confirmed that the person who wrote “NO EVIDENCE AT ALL!” was one of his guys.
"Throughout the review at the Pennsylvania State University, members of the Freeh team were encouraged to speak freely and to challenge any factual assertions that they believed are not supported," Freeh wrote on Jan. 10, 2018.
"Indeed the factual assertions of the report were tested and vetted over a period of many months and, as new evidence was uncovered, some of the factual assertions and conclusions evolved," he wrote. "Our staff debated, refined and reformed our views even in the final hours before the report's release."
In another handwritten note on the draft of the report, somebody wrote that there was "no evidence" to support Freeh's contention that a flawed football culture was to blame for the Sandusky sex scandal.
"Freeh knew the evidence did not support this," the executive summary says. But in his final report, Freeh wrote about "A culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community."
While Freeh concluded there was a coverup at Penn State, his investigators weren’t so sure, according to records cited by the trustees in their executive summary.
On March 7, 2012, in a conference call, Kathleen McChesney, a former FBI agent who was one of Freeh’s senior investigators, noted that they had found “no smoking gun to indicate [a] cover-up.”
In a written statement to this reporter, Freeh claimed that shortly after McChesney made that observation, his investigators found “the critical ‘smoking gun’ evidence” in a 2001 “email trove among Schultz, Curley and Spanier.”
In that email chain, conducted over Penn State’s own computer system, the administrators discussed confronting Sandusky about his habit of showering with children at Penn State facilities, and telling him to stop, rather than report him to officials at The Second Mile, as well as the state Department of Public Welfare.
In the email chain, Curley described the strategy as a “more humane approach” that included an offer to provide Sandusky with counseling. Spanier agreed, but wrote, “The only downside for us if the message isn’t ‘heard’ and acted upon [by Sandusky] and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it.”
Curley subsequently told Sandusky to stop bringing children into Penn State facilities, and informed officials at The Second Mile about the 2002 shower incident witnessed by McQueary, an incident that the prosecutors subsequently decided really happened in 2001. But Penn State didn’t inform the state Department of Public Welfare about Sandusky, which Freeh claimed was the smoking gun.
By definition, however, a cover-up needs a crime to hide. And Penn State’s administrators have repeatedly testified that when McQueary told them about the 2001 or 2002 shower incident, he described it as horseplay.
Also, an earlier 1998 shower incident involving Sandusky and another boy, referred to by Freeh, was also investigated by multiple authorities, who found no crime, nor any evidence of sex abuse.
Freeh, however, claimed that a trio of college administrators should have caught an alleged serial pedophile who, in that 1998 shower incident, had already been cleared by the Penn State police, the Centre County District Attorney, as well as a psychologist and an investigator from Centre County’s Department of Children and Youth Services. To buy into the conclusions of the Freeh Report, you’d also have to believe that Penn State’s top officials were dumb enough to plot a cover up on the university’s own computers.
In their executive report, the trustees refer to the allegations of a cover up as "unfounded." Freeh, however, maintained that in the six years since he issued his report, its findings have been repeatedly validated in court.
"The Freeh team's investigative interviews and fact-finding were not biased and no outcome was ever predetermined," Freeh wrote. "Their only mandate, to which they adhered, was to follow the evidenced wherever it led. The final report I issued is a reflection of this mandate."
"The accuracy and sustainability of the report is further evidenced by the criminal convictions of Spanier, Schultz, Curley," Freeh wrote. Other developments that verified the conclusions of his report, Freeh wrote, include "voluntary dismissals by the Paterno Family of their suit against the NCAA, Spanier's dismissal of his defamation suit against Freeh, the jury and court findings in the McQueary defamation and whistleblower cases, and the U.S. Department of Education's five-year investigation resulting in a record fine against Penn State."
At yesterday's board of trustees meeting, however, trustee Pope, cited public criticisms of the Freeh Report that included:
-- "On a foundation of scant evidence, the [Freeh] report adds layers of conjecture and supposition to create a portrait of fault, complicity and malfeasance that could well be at odds with the truth . . . [As] scientists and scholars, we can say with conviction that the Freeh Report fails on hits own merits as the indictment of the university that some have taken it to be. Evidence that would compel such an indictment is simply not there." -- A group of 30 past chairs of the Penn State faculty.
-- "The Freeh Report was not useful and created an 'absurd' and 'unwarranted' portrait of the University. There's no doubt in my mind, Freeh steered everything as if he were a prosecutor trying to convince a court to take the case." -- Penn State President Eric Barron.
-- "On Nov. 9th, 2011, I and my fellow Trustees, voted to fire Joe Paterno in a hastily called meeting. We had little advance notice or opportunity to discuss and consider the complex issues we faced. After 61 years of exemplary service, Coach Paterno was given no chance to respond. That was a mistake. I will always regret that my name is attached to that rush to injustice."
"Hiring Louis Freeh and the tacit acceptance of his questionable conclusions, without review, along with his broad criticism of our Penn State culture was yet another mistake. . . Those who believe we can move on without due process for all who have been damaged by unsupported accusations are not acting in Penn State's best interest . . . We have the opportunity to move forward united inner commitment to truth. I urge all who love Penn State's name to fight on." -- Resignation speech of former 18-year trustee Alvin Clemens.
-- "Louis Freeh . . . assigned motivations to people, including Paterno, which at best were unknowable, and at worst might have been irresponsible." -- reporter Bob Costas.
-- "Clearly the more we dig into this, the more troubling it gets. There clearly is a significant amount of communication between Freeh and the NCAA that goes way beyond merely providing information. I'd call int coordination . . . Cleary, Freeh was way past his mandate. He was the enforcement person for the NCAA. That's what it looks like. I don't know how you can look at it any other way. It's almost like the NCAA hired him to do their enforcement investigation on Penn State. At a minimum, it is inappropriate. At a maximum, these were two parties working together to get an outcome that was predetermined."-- State Senate majority leader Jake Corman.
In summation, Pope said, "Some have said that the university's interests are best served by putting this unfortunate chapter behind us. We think differently. We believe that the only way to move forward is from a solid foundation based on an honest appraisal of our history. How can we create effective solutions if we might be working with a fundamental misunderstanding of the problems involved?"
"Our review, which took nearly two and a half years to complete, was a serious and thorough effort," Pope said. "We look forward with sharing the results of our analysis of the Freeh Report's source material without colleagues on the board at our meeting in July."
Please show me the proof that anyone was abused.
It isn't. You are the one making the accusation that I am lying. Prove it.
You SHOULDN'T have sanctions without infractions which is part of why the PSU sanctions were unjustified.
Again, if there were infractions, please tell us what they were and cite the NCAA bylaw that applies. Furthermore, if they were MAJOR infractions, please point to them in the database.
You cannot do either of these things which illustrates two things:
1) There were no major infractions.
2) By your own admission, there cannot be sanctions without infractions, which proves the invalidity of the PSU sanctions.
Trial record of Sandusky
You have to verify your claim. Prove it
It's not possible to do what you say.
Read the report
The PSU infractions were worse than what is on that database as the NCAA explained. Read it.
True
Fixed it for ya
There is no proof there. Only the lies of lying liars.
I don't actually. If you don't believe me, it is on you to prove that I am lying. However, despite the onus being on you, I did prove it (with triplicate documentation) AND have offered further proof if you tell me specifically what would convince you. You refuse to do that because you know you are are wrong about this and will never admit it. I've backed you into a corner and I'm not letting you out.
Sure it is. The NCAA just circumvented their own rules to make themselves look less impotent.
I have. Literally no mention of infractions.
No, because there were ZERO infractions. No mention of infractions of any kind.
Your opinion and not what the jury found. Their verdict counts, not your opinion.
Yes you do. Especially since you are anonymous
Can't do that if you are anonymous
It is not
No you didn't
I have done so
I don't wish to be banned because you report me to the mods.
The reverse is true. I've checkmated you
Yet the ruling still stands.
Can't have sanctions without infractions
Can't have sanctions without infractions
The jury's findings are literally an opinion. They are not fact. We've been through this before. Try to keep up.
If am anonymous, why do you care? Why not just either accept what I say (it is true) or ignore it? Why do you care about any of this?
You can if you tell me what you need for confirmation. But you won't do that because you know you will be proven wrong.
I don't report people to the mods and won't in this instance. You are hiding behind this excuse because you are a lying coward.
Not even close, Boots.
Then please cite what the infractions were and what NCAA bylaws were broken. Your website doesn't do that. Surely the NCAA documented this somewhere (hint: they didn't).
No they are a verdict. I have explained the difference before. You are falling behind.
I like watching you dance. Why do you care if I believe it? Lol
I have done so
You are a liar and did report me and they warned me not to ask for personal info so I won't as you will report it.
Your king is dead
Can't have sanctions without infractions
A verdict is not a fact it is an opinion. Try to keep up as a lap you. It's like an F1 car against a go cart. Quite sad actually.
Your life must be quite sad and devoid of meaning then. Have you tried drugs?
Then cite the infractions. If you are correct, this should be easy exercise. But you can't. Because they don't exist. So you just keep parroting "Can't have sanctions without infractions". You lose.
A verdict is not a mere opinion. "Try to keep up as a lap you." A what? LOLOLOL
Pot meet kettle. I'm just making you dance. That's better to watch.
Can't have sanctions without infractions. I win and PSU lost.
Hey Gomer. What a jury decides does not prove shit. You don’t understand that. You don’t understand factual data versus opinion and judgement. Carry on
Hey Goober (I liked him better) what the jury decides is where Sandusky gets to spend the rest of his life and where CSS got to spend a few months of theirs. I get you don't like our legal system because of your religion but conspiracy theories are not facts. Carry on!
I take exception to how ESPN portrayed my fraternity - FIJI, in such a negative light. First the "gang rape that was reported to have taken place a few weeks earlier at a party the night before a football game, the victim drugged and unconscious" was an exaggeration/fabrication of facts. The "victim" was not a student at Penn State and was talked into pressing charges by the friend she was visiting that weekend at a campus sorority. The girl was NOT drugged and unconscious... she freely drank on her own volition Purple Passion Punch (grape juice, orange ice cream, grain alcohol) out of a garbage can garnished with knee-high striped athletic socks that were the fad at the time (all brand new and clean). IF anyone drank too much punch they'd be thoroughly wasted - as many in attendance were. Back in the day, IF a girl agreed to have sex it was thought to be consensual - UNLESS the person was passed out which she wasn't. She had sex with one frat brother she apparently was enamored with, and then came back downstairs to the party (she was mobile and functional) afterward when her first fling left the house. With the passage of time, she agreed to go upstairs with a different frat brother (thereby allegation of gang rape). There was a hearing in State College Municipal Court, but charges were dropped because of insufficient evidence (no drugs, no gang, no rape).
BUT what irks me is that ESPN failed to go into any detail about one of my former roommates Greg Hanks - FIJI's president at that time. They purposely chose to focus mostly on any negative aspect they could dig up the entire article. Understanding this was a recent article and interview, why not address Greg respectfully as Dr. Gregory A. Hanks? And why not mention that Greg graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a Medical Degree in 1982. Furthermore, he was an Associate Professor of Orthopedics at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and was a team physician for Penn State football and other sports teams.
Nope... THAT would show too bright a light on how POSITIVE a Penn State educational experience could be despite the "degenerate" football factory/jock house narrative they want to perpetuate. I believe this negative bias exposes ESPN's loathsome long-running agenda.
www.oip.com
TYPICAL ESPN SENSATIONALIST HACK JOB - in my opinion.
BUT what irks me is that ESPN failed to go into any detail about one of my former roommates Greg Hanks - FIJI's president at that time. They purposely chose to focus mostly on any negative aspect they could dig up the entire article. Understanding this was a recent article and interview, why not address Greg respectfully as Dr. Gregory A. Hanks? And why not mention that Greg graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a Medical Degree in 1982. Furthermore, he was an Associate Professor of Orthopedics at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and was a team physician for Penn State football and other sports teams.
Nope... THAT would show too bright a light on how POSITIVE a Penn State educational experience could be despite the "degenerate" football factory/jock house narrative they want to perpetuate. I believe this negative bias exposes ESPN's loathsome long-running agenda.
Gregory A. Hanks, M.D. - Orthopedic Institute of Pennsylvania
Gregory Hanks, M.D. is a physician at Orthopedic Institute of Pennsylvania that specializes in knee and shoulder injuries, knee and hip replacement and sports medicine.
www.oip.com
Yeah, to idiots like you? You haven't shown that you're a normal person. But seriously , thee was a trial, not all materials are ever made public , and you just have to deal .
Well, it's clear you haven't moved on, pathetic fan boy.
With everything that has come out in the last 10 years, and based on how the actual court proceedings played out, anyone that still thinks there was a cover-up is A) a Pitt fan; or B) really, really stupid. There is no option C).
No reason to believe you. Everyone has "friend" (or "cousin" or "barber") or whatever with secret information. Unless you've seen this evidence yourself, it doesn't exist.
It is actually only an opinion. It is an opinion that carries legal weight, but it is still just an opinion.
If this is so, then I will ask again: please provide which NCAA bylaws PSU violated and show me where in the major sanctions database I can find them listed. If you cannot do this, you are wrong.
PSU came out a winner. Winning the Big Ten championship 5 years after the harshest and most unfair sanctions ever levied against a team is blockbuster movie material. It makes "Rudy" look like barista at Starbucks.
Kind of like your made up background? Why won't you believe @bourbon n blues but expect me to believe your BS?
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Freeh is a genius.
Past his mandate?
Of course!
The trustees ripped the Freeh Report for its "flawed methodology & conclusions," as well as Louis Freeh himself, for not disclosing a personal conflict of interest.
The internal review, the preliminary contents of which were posted on Big Trial last June, had been the subject of a nine-month cover up by the majority of the board of trustees at Penn State, led by PSU board president Mark Dambly. He's a shady character who in his younger days got mixed up in a multimillion dollar cocaine ring but beat the rap by wearing a wire. Under Dambly's "leadership," the Penn State trustees have been ardently stonewalling, refusing to release the final version of the internal review of the Freeh Report, so they can continue to cover up their own corruption and failures.
"It's a document Penn State doesn't want you to see,"the WJAC anchorman told his audience before introducing Sinderson. "Penn State has kept it under wraps," Sinderson agreed. Then, to officially end the cover up, WJAC-TV promptly posted the entire 113-page report online.
The Freeh Report was supposed to be an independent investigation into what happened at Penn State. But, the seven trustees wrote, "the NCAA was closely involved with the Freeh investigation; the NCAA knew that their own rules prevented them from punishing Penn State, and the NCAA decided to punish Penn State in order to enhance its own reputation."The NCAA used the Freeh Report to justify draconian sanctions against Penn State, including a $60 million fine, a four-year bowl game ban, the loss of 40 athletic scholarships, and the vacating of 111 Joe Paterno wins.
In their report, the seven trustees note that an independent federal investigation done by former NCIS Special Agent John Snedden, another Big Trial scoop, came to the opposite conclusion that Freeh did, that there was no official cover up at Penn State.
Why did Snedden come to that conclusion? Because during a six-month confidential investigation done on the Penn State campus back in 2012, an investigation that was subsequently revealed in 2017, Snedden determined that Mike McQueary's story about witnessing Jerry Sandusky allegedly raping a 10-year-old boy in the showers, made no sense, and that McQueary wasn't a credible witness.
Another big fact that supports Snedden's conclusion: after two decades, no alleged victim of the shower rape has ever come forward, despite an avalanche of publicity and the certainty of a multimillion dollar payout from the overly generous trustees at Penn State. The identity of the victim, the prosecutors claimed at trial, was "known only to God."
Without a victim and a credible witness the infamous rape in the showers never happened. It's the work of fiction writers in the attorney general's office who, according to McQueary himself, "twisted" his words about "whatever it was" he actually saw in the shower. Even McQueary doesn't know what he saw nearly 20 years ago.
In their review of the Freeh Report, the seven trustees, who pored over thousands of pages of confidential documents, came to the same conclusion that Snedden did, that there was no official cover up at Penn State.
"We found no support for the Freeh Report's conclusion that Joe Paterno, Graham Spanier, Tim Curley or Gary Schultz knew that Sandusky had harmed children," the trustees wrote.
"We found no support for the Freeh Report's conclusion that Penn State's culture was responsible for allowing Sandusky to harm children." The trustees also concluded that the alleged "independence of the Freeh Report appears to have been fatally compromised by Louis Freeh's collaboration with three interested parties -- the NCAA, Governor [Tom] Corbett and his Office of Attorney General, and members of the Penn State Board of Trustees."
"The NCAA, Governor Corbett, and the Penn State Board of Trustees appear to have had their own conflicts of interest that influenced the unsupported conclusions of the Freeh Report," the trustees wrote. They also ripped Freeh for his having his own undisclosed conflict of interest, namely a stated desire to use the Penn State investigation as a step ladder on his way to becoming the "go-to investigators" for the scandal-plagued NCAA.The Freeh Report, the trustees found, was "rife with investigative and reporting flaws." Freeh's investigators were biased, used "unreliable methods of conducting and analyzing interviews, [and] failed to interview most of the individuals with direct knowledge of the events under investigation." Such as Joe Paterno, Sandusky, McQueary, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz.
Freeh also supplied "motivations and casual factors supported only by speculation and conjecture,"the trustees wrote. They accused Freeh of cherry-picking facts and "withholding the vast majority of investigative findings, which were contrary to the report's conclusions."
The trustees also concluded that Freeh failed in is obligation to conduct an "independent and comprehensive investigation;" they formally repudiated Freeh's conclusions as "unsupported by the investigative data."
The Freeh Report, the seven trustees concluded, has caused "grievous harm to the university," "profound repetitional damage," and has cost the university to date more than $300 million.
The trustees have publicly suggested that the university cut its losses by going after Freeh to recoup the $8.3 million paid to him.
The seven trustees also found that the full Penn State Board of Trustees breached their fiduciary duty "resulting in harm to the university" by "failing to formally review or evaluate the Freeh Report," and failing to vote to either accept or reject it.
Now that's pure cowardice. But it's only the start of the problems.
The trustees, as Big Trial reported, also failed in their fiduciary duty to vet the stories told by 36 alleged victims, who were paid a total of $118 million, an average of $3.3 million each, without the university asking any questions.
No depositions by lawyers, no personal interviews with psychiatrists or trained investigators, no lie detector tests. Almost all of the alleged victims in the case didn't even have to publicly state their real names. How's that for easy money?
The seven trustees who wrote their internal review also ripped Freeh for faulty methadology.
When Freeh interviewed more than 400 witnesses, the trustees found, the interviews weren't tape-recorded, or authenticated by the witnesses. In addition, multiple witnesses complained of "coercive tactics" employed by Freeh's investigators, the trustees wrote.
Freeh's investigators shouted at and insulted witnesses. They also demanded specific information such as, "Tell me that Joe Paterno knew Sandusky was abusing kids." One witness stated he was fired for not telling Freeh's investigators the story they were demanding.
Freeh's investigators were also routinely talking to prosecutors in the attorney general's office such as Frank Fina, whose brazen leaking of grand jury secrets was another story broken by Big Trial. According to the seven trustees at Penn State, Fina was routinely supplying Freeh's investigators with secret grand jury transcripts.And Anthony Sassano, the AG's lead investigator, was supplying Freeh with documents obtained from Sandusky's house through search warrants. As well as an AG interview with the son of a Penn State trustee who supposedly could provide information about "Sandusky showering with boys."
It was a real "cozy relationship" between Freeh's investigators and the state attorney general's office, the trustees charge, a relationship that tainted both probes since Freeh and his team were not authorized to be privy to any grand jury secrets.
Last year, I actually got a chance to ask Louis Freeh, through a spokesperson, to explain how he was authorized to access grand jury secrets. In a telling exchange, he declined comment.
But Freeh was clearly playing follow the leader.
Early on in his probe, in February 2012, Freeh emailed his team saying, "We should try to make sure the [grand jury] is not onto something new . . . which totally 'scoops' us."
Meanwhile, Freeh allegedly was also taking direction in his investigation from certain Penn State trustees such as Keith Masser, the vice chair. Masser told the Associated Press, before any investigation had been conducted, that he was convinced that there had been an official cover up at Penn State. The same conclusion was subsequently reached by Freeh, at the direction of trustees like Masser, the internal review stated.
Ken Frazier, the chairman of the Penn State board of trustees, also sent Freeh an ESPN story which claimed that Sandusky wasn't stopped earlier "because no one dared challenge the power of Penn State and Paterno, no one dared challenge the legacy of the football powerhouse and the great man himself."
"I happened to find this ESPN piece by Howard Bryant well written and well reasoned," Frazier wrote Freeh. "It focuses on the larger lessons to be learned from excessive respect for 'icons' [Coach Paterno and PS football.]"
Freeh dutifully sent along the story to his underlings, adding in an email and adding that "many people" were expecting his investigation to explain why the failure to report sex abuse at Penn State was because of "the desire to protect Paterno and the [football] program."
That opinion found its way into the Freeh Report, even though in an internal email, Freeh told one of his investigators that the allegation that Penn State was out to protect Paterno and the football team was "never really articulated in any evidence I have seen."
But Freeh wasn't going to let the facts get in the way of a good story.
In his report, Freeh wrote that Sandusky was allowed to continue abusing children because of Penn Sate's "culture of reverence for the football program." Instead of searching for facts, the Freeh Report became an echo chamber for the prejudices of certain trustees, and the media-driven narrative on the evils of Paterno and his highly-successful football program.
"Our university paid $8.3 million for an 'independent investigation' that was neither independent nor a fair and though investigation," the trustees concluded.
It was the end of a long journey for the seven minority trustees, who had to go to court in 2015 to sue their own university to gain access to the so-called "source materials" for the Freeh Report. Along the way, the trustees had to spend about $500,000 of their own money before a judge in 2016 approved reimbursement.
The trustees were granted access to review the so-called source materials that are still under a confidentiality seal from a Common Pleas Court judge. But as somebody who's read hundreds of pages of that stuff, there's nothing in there that should be marked confidential.
All of it should be revealed to the public, which has lingering and well-placed doubts about what happened at Penn State. The only people with a motive to continue the cover up are people who are trying to cover up proof of their own incompetence, breach of duties, and stunning ineptitude.
The fallout from the internal review: the official narrative of the Penn State scandal is a house of cards in the process of tumbling down.
To be fair, the internal report on Freeh didn't go far enough. It doesn't state an opinion on whether Sandusky is guilty or innocent, or whether he was railroaded, and deserves a new trial because of a botched prosecution, official conflicts of interest, the interference of politics in the criminal investigation, and pervasive media malpractice. Even though the internal review extensively quotes two of Big Trial's blog posts on former NCIS Special Agent John Snedden, and his finding of no cover up at Penn State, the internal reviews doesn't consider the implications of Snedden's other main conclusion -- that the whole rape in the showers story, as told by Mike McQueary doesn't make sense, and didn't really happen.
But the internal review on Freeh does detail so many official conflicts of interest, so much political corruption and collusion -- on the part of the NCAA, Corbett, Louis Freeh, the Penn State board of trustees and the attorney general's office -- that any fair-minded reader would have to conclude that the whole swamp at Penn State is tainted and corrupted, and we can't trust anything they told us.
What's needed now, as Snedden has repeatedly said, is the appointment of an independent federal prosecutor and a legitimate federal investigation to find out what really happened at Penn State.
But make no mistake, in a case dominated by willful leaks from the prosecution, the reform trustees have just struck back, presumably, with a big leak of their own.
It's devastating. And WJAC-TV wasn't the only beneficiary.
After nine months of stonewalling, the internal review on Louis Freeh allegedly has been mailed out to several parties. Rumor has it that even the sleepy Philadelphia Inquirer has a copy and may even write about it some day.
Or maybe not.
Sorry, but it's hard to trust that newspaper, especially when it comes to sex abuse. Big Trial has spent the past eight years unraveling a parallel sex scandal in the Philadelphia archdiocese. A scandal where a former altar boy claimed at 10 and 11 years old that he was repeatedly raped by two priests and a Catholic schoolteacher. They all went to jail in the prosecutorial crusade led by former D.A. and future criminal Rufus Seth Williams. As did Msgr. William J. Lynn, the first Catholic administrator in the country to be jailed in the nation's Catholic clergy sex scandals, not for touching a child, but for failing to adequately supervise an abusive priest.
The two Pennsylvania sex scandals both began in 2011 with grand jury reports that turned out to be works of fiction. The win scandals have amazing parallels -- Sandusky was convicted the same day as Msgr. Lynn, in two bombshells broadcast simultaneously that day on the Inquirer's front page.
Freeh's investigators also saw the twin scandals as similar in nature. In an email to Freeh, Kathleen McChesney, a former FBI agent who became one of Freeh's co-leaders of his investigation on Penn State, wrote, "Louie: Just wanted to reach out to you in the event that any of my experiences with the Catholic Bishops Conference would be of use to your team."
McChesney served as the executive director of the office of child and youth protection of the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference. She was also the editor of "Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: A Decade of Crisis, 2003-2012."
"Good luck with your investigation," McChesney wrote Freeh. "Too many sad parallels between this case and the Church."
Freeh responded by telling his staff in an email that McChesney's experience in investigating the church would come in handy at Penn State because "the church has an insularity similar to what we are seeing" at Penn State.
"It is important to note that before the investigation had begun, Freeh investigators were making assumptions about an insular culture at Penn State and making connections with the Catholic Church cover up of pedophile priests," the seven trustees note in their report.
How about that for bias and preconceived notions?
But, as Big Trial has revealed time and time again on this blog, as well as documented in two cover stories for Newsweek, the former altar boy who was at the center of the Philadelphia sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church -- Danny Gallagher AKA "Billy Doe" -- turned out to be a junkie hustler and conman who made the whole story up.
As Seth Williams' former lead detective, Joe Walsh, has come forward to document, the entire Philadelphia prosecution of the church was a knowing fraud. And Gallagher was a complete liar that Detective Walsh caught in one lie after another, until Gallagher finally admitted to the detective that he made up the whole story.
And what was the Inky's response, at the paper where they have cranked out more than 60 pro-prosecution stories and editorials always presenting Billy Doe as a legitimate victim of sex abuse -- they have never outed Gallagher or wrote one story exposing him for the fraud he is.
Even after the D.A.'s office let the Catholic schoolteacher, a convicted child rapist, out of jail nearly a dozen years early, because of Walsh's testimony about prosecutorial misconduct. How often does that happen?
As I said before, it's hard to trust that newspaper; especially when it comes to sex abuse. With the Inky that topic is always black and white. The victims are anonymous and always 100 percent pure. And the perps, who are hung in the public square, are always 100 percent guilty.
The deeper problem at the Inky is that the newspaper has always been pro-prosecution. At the moment, too many Inky reporters are tied up tied up handling all the latest prosecution leaks in the newest federal corruption case against Philadelphia labor leader "Johnny Doc" Dougherty.
The idea, of course, is convict Johnny Doc in the court of public opinion before he ever goes to trial, and taint yet another jury pool.
It's just the kind of thing that the prosecutors at Penn Stated used to love to do, leak, leak, leak. Especially through a certain friendly and cooperative 23-year-old reporter at the Patriot-News who wound up with a Pulitzer for essentially being a dupe for a completely phony story line.
Maybe it's time to give that Pulitzer back. Because at Penn State, the prosecutors -- as well as their accomplices in the media -- not only blew the big story but also the case.
Curley would have had the same response.
Former Penn State President Graham Spanier is 69 years old, and has had five operations in the past year, in addition to 35 radiation treatments for advanced prostate cancer. According to a sentencing memorandum prepared by Spanier's lawyers, Spanier is being evaluated for imminent open-heart cardiac valve replacement surgery. He's also being treated for high blood pressure, depression and anxiety.
Former Penn State VP Gary Schultz, 67, is the primary caretaker for his wife, Karen, his high school sweetheart, who has MS. Schultz also cares for his 86-year-old mother-in-law, who moved into Schultz's house in November, 2015. Both Schultz's wife and mother-in-law depend on Schultz's assistance to get through their daily lives, Schultz's lawyers stated in a sentencing memorandum ignored by the judge.
Former Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley, 63, suffers from "incurable lung cancer," his lawyer wrote. "Any term of incarceration would negatively impact his health, his ongoing treatment and continuity of health care and cause extreme hardship to himself and his family." In addition, Curley's cancer treatment "has caused liver damage making him susceptible to infection and illness," his lawyer wrote.
But in the interests of "justice," the show must go on. The Penn State trio must do jail time for misdemeanors, after seeing their careers torched, and their reputations destroyed.
According to the judge's rulings, Spanier must do two months in jail, followed by up to ten months of house arrest.
Schultz got two months behind bars and up to 21 months of home confinement.
Curley will do three months in jail followed by up to 21 months of house arrest.
The charade of the Penn State trio going off to prison for supposedly turning a blind eye to the suffering of the sainted "victims" of Jerry Sandusky must play out. So in this morality play staged by the prosecutors and judges, the media and public must see someone pay for the sins of Jerry Sandusky.
Even though Jerry's already doing up to 60 years in solitary confinement.
The official Penn State storyline, as promulgated by the media and the justice system, is like King Nebuchadnezzar's 90-foot tall golden statue in the Old Testament book of Daniel. Everyone must bow and worship before it. Or be thrown into the fiery media furnace, as well as jail.
As stated by the prosecutors and the judge in this case, the Penn State trio must also may for the sins of the deniers of the official version of the truth. Bloggers and blasphemers like former PSU trustee Al Lord, who famously said he was "running out of sympathy for 35 so-called victims with 7-digit net worth."
But anyone with a sane mind would have to see some gaping holes in the Penn State storyline we've been fed for the past seven years. Such as:
-- The entire 2011 grand jury report is built upon a lie, that Mike McQueary supposedly saw Jerry Sandusky in the Penn State showers engaged in an "anal rape" of a 10-year-old boy. Even McQueary wrote in an email to the prosecutors that it never happened, he never saw penetration, and that the prosecutors "twisted" his words.
-- Of the 24 original charges filed by the attorney general's office against the Penn State trio, the only three that stuck were three misdemeanor charges for endangering the welfare of a child. Charges that I've already explained were filed under an original 1972 state law that didn't even apply to the Penn State trio.
-- Many in Penn State nation seem to think that Jerry Sandusky was a master pedophile, and that the AG's office should have spent their time investigating Sandusky's Second Mile charity, instead of Penn State. A vocal minority believe that Sandusky was innocent, and that the prosecutors manufactured evidence against him. As well as victims.
Both sides should agree that Sandusky deserves a new trial, after the earlier farce that he was railroaded at. BigTrial has covered the incompetence of Sandusky's lawyer in an excerpt from a soon-to-be published book by journalist Mark Pendergrast.
-- If Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile, where's the evidence? The only pornography discovered in this case was on the computers of the prosecutors. Knowledgable law enforcement sources say they have never heard of a case of pedophilia not accompanied by large caches of pornography.
Also, after three years of investigating, the prosecutors had found only one so-called victim, Aaron Fisher. And this was a guy who initially said nothing ever happened with Jerry. Until he underwent six months of psychotherapy and many more skull sessions with investigators. I'm talking about two state troopers who admitted on a tape-recorded interview with another suspected victim that it took months for the cops to coax to a sex abuse story line out of Fisher.
-- The identity of the victim of one of the most infamous sex abuse crimes in history, the 10-year-old boy in the showers whose alleged anal rape by Jerry Sandusky was supposedly witnessed by McQueary, is "known only to God," the prosecutor said. After seven years of a full-blast, highly publicized media scandal? It makes no sense. Especially to the guy doing 60 years in jail.
It was the marquee crime in the state attorney general's indictment of Sandusky, and the prosecutors were unable to produce a victim. That says a lot.
If Sandusky gets a new trial, maybe some of these issues will finally be investigated. But don't expect the mainstream media to show any interest in digging for the truth. They already have their official story line.
Meanwhile, those sentencing memorandums detail the pain and suffering that the official scapegoats of the Penn State scandal have already been subjected to.
"Dr. Spanier has become the subject of public debate, incessant and vitriolic media commentary [both traditional and 'social' media] and endless ridicule and scorn," wrote lawyers Samuel W. Silver and Bruce P. Merenstein.
"Dr. Spanier has already suffered severely through public shaming, loss of employment and significant repetitional harm," his lawyers wrote. "He is almost 70 years old and in worsening health."
In the sentencing memorandum, a doctor detailed those health problems, both mental and physical.
"Due to the chronic psychological stress from prolonged legal issues, as well as the chronic burden of severe medical problems, Dr. Spanier was diagnosed with major depression and anxiety," wrote Dr. Michael P. Flanagan, the Professor and Vice-Chair of Family and Community Medicine at Penn State's College of Medicine.
"In addition to his cardiac and prostate cancer medications, as well as extensive radiation therapy, Dr. Spanier has been prescribed three medications to treat underlying reactive depression and associated anxiety," Flanagan wrote.
In an unsuccessful effort to keep Spanier out of jail, his lawyers detailed Spanier's extraordinary accomplishments and many good deeds.
In 2005, Spanier was asked by FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA Director Porter Goss to take the "lead role in national security matters pertaining to higher education," his lawyers wrote.
In the sentencing memorandum, Tom Mahlik, former NCIS Deputy Assistant Director, told of Spanier's receipt of the Warren Medal.
"During the ceremony, it was said that 'No American has done more since 9/11 to bring the CIA and FBI closer together in a collaborative working relationship," Mahlik wrote. "Graham is courageous . . . Graham is transparent . . . Graham is trustworthy."
John R. Sipher, former member of the Clandestine Service of the CIA, described Spanier as "a man of integrity," a "patriot and a concerned citizen" who wasn't paid for his services to the intelligence community.
Steven L. Soboroff, a childhood friend of Spanier's, and the commissioner of the Los Angeles Police Department, described Spanier as a man of "truthfulness" and "unwavering integrity."
In the sentencing memorandum, Spanier's lawyers also documented their client's good deeds. Such as Spanier and his wife have donating almost $2 million to Penn State. The couple also has been honored for raising more than $700,000 for the Penn State Renaissance Fund scholarship endowment.
In Schultz's sentencing memorandum, Thomas J. Farrell and Emily C. McNally, Schultz's lawyers, included a handwritten note from Schultz's wife, Karen.
"My MS requires someone to be available in times of lack of strength and stability," she wrote. "I hope you understand how important Gary is to me and my well being."
In Tim Curley's sentencing memorandum, his lawyer, Caroline M. Roberto, tried to explain Curley's memory lapses on the witness stand, which drew the ire of prosecutors.
"The Commonwealth asserts that the astonishing forgetfulness that Curley demonstrated during his testimony . . . was simply not credible," the AG wrote. The AG states that Curley's forgetfulness "was designed to protect those who deserved to share blame with Curley for the decisions that led to the colossal failure to protect children from Sandusky."
His lawyer, however, stated that Curley "testified consistently with his proffered testimony and answered all questions to the best of his ability. Only once did he appear to misunderstand a question and immediately corrected his answer to conform with his prior statement."
Roberto, in her sentencing memorandum, included testimony from a witness who talked about a time before his cancer treatments, when Curley's memory was so good he knew all 26 members of the men's soccer team by name, as well as the names of every coach at Penn State.
"I had never seen anything like this," wrote Sandra Rogus. "He was doing this with every coach in every sport." Curley, Rugus wrote, "cared deeply about supporting every coach."
In Curley's sentencing memorandum, his lawyer wrote about the "pain" and "deep and substantial punishment" already inflicted upon Curley during a "media firestorm."
"Mr. Curley was subjected to epic international shaming and humiliation through relentless media frenzy that went on for years through the Sandusky trial and the publication of the dubious and frequently discredited Freeh Report," Roberto wrote.
"As well as the dubious and eventually vacated NCAA sanctions against Penn State," Roberto wrote. "Such public shaming of a man revered by so many who was at the peak of his job performance must be taken into account when determining a fair sentence to impose."
But Judge Boccabella ignored such pleas.
Sorry, Mr. Curley, Mr. Schultz and Mr. Spanier, the judge said.
We don't care about your health problems or the hell you've already been through.
It is not as I have explained earlier. Much more than that. Mere "opinions" don't get you locked up in prison. To compare a court verdict to an opinion like "The Red Sox sucks" is simplistic and rather stupid. The weight of law is serious stuff.
I have posted the cite and whether you choose to read or believe it is on you.
Your opinion and you are wrong
I know this is a lot about football for you but for me PSU was held accountable for the crimes committed by their employees and leaders. I have never thought the football program to be "guilty" of anything. JoeBots think that way. I held (and the courts agreed) that the leaders committed crimes and so they were punished.
Big punishment. Traffic ticket level. And legal proceedings are still ongoing. And in case you are unfamiliar, many, many, many courts have found defendants guilty only to be later exonerated…
K
Either way, nothing is going to move general public opinion. And these fantasy threads will probably be here when PSU is the farm team for the Steelers.
