The problem is they are flawed analogies. But then being a Joebot that is SOP for you.
FC: ESPN takes on Penn State once again
- Thread starter GulfCoastLion
- Start date
When have you had a traffic ticket send you to jail?
Not for CSS. It's over buddy
I don't think it is many as you say but it does happen. Won't happen with Sandusky though. The evidence is overwhelming.
It means the state didn't prove the case, it's not the same as an exoneration;
Bourbon's made up friend is exactly the kind of lie someone would tell; it is hyper relevant to the case. It is also nonsensical what he is claiming.
My background is so unrelated to the case that no one would lie about it. Also, I've provided proof of my background. Bourbon has shown nothing to suggest he is telling the truth.
Yep. Try getting a ticket for >80 mph (regardless of speed limit) in Virginia. Automatic reckless driving, automatic jail time. Try again, "Attorney" Ginger.
There are different level of opinions, but both "the red sox suck" and "Sandusky is guilty" are opinions. Acceleration due to gravity on Earth is 9.8 m/s2 is a fact. "The fingerprint on this gun is an exact match with the defendant" is a fact. I hope you understand the difference between opinions and facts.
The cite doesn't say what you claim it does. Furthermore, my citation (database) disproves your assertion.
It isn't at all about football, but the NCAA *made* it about football, which was both unjust and unfair. PSU football ability to overcome this catastrophically bad decision is truly exceptional. (this is what we were talking about; NCAA punishments even though there were no NCAA infractions).
Takes careful reading to figure this one out.
In a 16-page application for recusal filed yesterday, Spanier's lawyers argue that state Superior Court Judge Victor P. Stabile should disqualify himself because he previously testified in a lawsuit against Penn State and Spanier, and also attacked Spanier in an old email as an "emperor" in "new clothes."
In the application for recusal, Spanier's lawyers seek the vacating of the Superior Court's decision upholding Spanier's conviction, and a chance to reargue their appeal before a new panel of judges, or the entire Superior Court.
Three days after Judge Stabile authored a 2-1 Superior Court decision upholding Spanier's conviction, Spanier got an email from an old colleague, Philip McConnaughay, former dean of the Penn State Dickinson School of Law [DSL] from 2002 to 2013.In the email, McConnaughay informed Spanier that "between 2003 and 2006, Judge Stabile, then a lawyer in private practice, was a leader of a group of DSL alumni who were stridently opposed to Penn State's plans to either relocate DSL or to create a second campus of DSL in State College," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
While leading that opposition, Stabile "made critical personal comments about those Penn State administrators, including Dr. Spanier, who favored such a plan," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
"Emails and documents from that period that Dr. Spanier has obtained in the past few days demonstrate that there are grounds for Judge Stabile's recusal from participation in this matter. In light of this information, the Court should vacate the Panel's decision, and the matter should be reassigned and reargued before another panel or before the Court en banc."
Penn State had proposed moving DSL from it's longtime location in Carlisle, PA to Penn State's main campus in State College. The plan "was eventually abandoned in favor of a proposal to create a two-campus law school, with facilities in Carlisle and State College," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Both the plan to merge the two institutions, and the two-campus plan "met with substantial and vociferous opposition from a faction of the DSL alumni," Spanier's lawyers wrote. During that period, Stabile, a DSL graduate from 1982, was a member of DSL's General Alumni Association [GAA] board of directors. Stabile also served on a five-person committee of the GAA board that "criticized the proposal" put forward by Penn State, and in the process, "made several disparaging comments about those members of the Penn State administration who favored the proposal, including Dr. Spanier," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
"I still do not understand why Penn State bothered to merge Dickinson if it seems intent on changing everything about the school," Stabile wrote in a 2003 email. "They could have built their own damn school in State College and accomplished the same thing without eradicating an institution."
In another email a few days later, Stabile wrote about the plan to relocate DSL, "There is a certain arrogance here that is unacceptable."
In their brief, Spanier's lawyers cite emails critical of Spanier that were sent to the GAA, of which Stabile was a member, referring to "that chief hustler Spanier" who was allegedly "pushing for approval Saturday" of the two-campus proposal.
A report issued by the GAA board, endorsed by Stabile, described the Penn State administration as "incompetent" and criticized Spanier several times, Spanier's lawyers wrote.
"For example, the report questioned Dr. Spanier's motives in proposing the two-campus model and implied that he [Spanier] falsely attributed the original relocation idea to the DSL dean, rather than the Penn State administration," Spanier's lawyers wrote. "The report posed a rhetorical question regarding Dr. Spanier's alleged motives in putting forth the two-campus proposal: 'Surely it has nothing to do with an employment contract extended in 2003 and expiring in the next year?' "
The report also contended that Spanier "promoted in his biography his role in the DSL merger but hid his responsibility for other mergers that allegedly failed," Spanier's lawyers wrote, quoting the report.In January 2005, the DSL Board of Governors met to vote on whether to agree with Penn State, and move forward with the two-campus plan. The day before the vote, Stabile sent an email to the GAA board, complaining that "I can't imagine why many think this is a great proposal. The emperor certainly has new clothes . . ."
"The crisis here has been been wholly fabricated by PSU," Stabile wrote. In the same email, Stabile also claimed that the two-campus plan would result in "complete subjugation by DSL."
"I have no more words left; the process that has proceeded through does not do justice to our profession, nonetheless to its leadership -- and this is an institution that teaches the rule of law!!" Stabile wrote. "Count me as embarrassed and disgusted."
In February 2005, three DSL alumni sued Penn State, Spanier, and the DSL board of governors, seeking to stop implementation of the two-campus plan. At a GAA board meeting a couple days later, Stabile "advocated intervening on behalf of the plaintiffs in their suit against Dr. Spanier," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
That's just what happened.
On May 19, 2005, Stabile testified in that litigation about his opposition to the two-campus proposal. He admitted during that dispute, "emotions were running high on both sides," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
During his testimony, Stabile described the reaction to GAA's opposition to the two-campus plan as "very hurtful to see us cast in this light. Stabile also admitted while testifying that he "was particularly hurt" to be "dismissed as . . . merely angry or somewhat of a malcontent."
"The standard for recusal requires a judge to recuse from hearing a matter where the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned," Spanier's lawyers wrote. "Recusal is warranted where a judge has a 'personal bias or interest which would preclude an impartial review' or where 'his participation in the matter would give the appearance of impropriety,'" Spanier's lawyers wrote.
It's not necessary for a judge to have an actual conflict of interest to recuse himself, Spanier's lawyers wrote. Merely having "an appearance of impropriety alone forms an independent basis for recusal even when no actual bias, unfairness, or prejudice is shown" on the judge's part, Spanier's lawyers wrote, quoting case law.
"Disqualification is mandatory 'in any proceeding in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned,' " Spanier's lawyers wrote. "Avoiding the appearance of impropriety . . . is mandatory."
"Judge Stabile should recuse from this matter because of his prior role in strenuously and personally opposing the actions of Dr. Spanier and Penn State University regarding Dickinson School of Law," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Stabile's past actions provide a "substantial basis to request Judge Stabile's recusal." Documents also reveal a "strident and personal reaction from Judge Stabile" to the proposals from Spanier and Penn State to move DSL, Spanier's lawyers wrote.Stabile was "a leader of a faction of the alumni that severely criticized" Spanier, his lawyers wrote. In addition, Stabile and others "met, communicated, and prepared reports that attacked the motives, the integrity, and the competence of Dr. Spanier and other administrators involved in the two-campus proposal. Judge Stabile strongly opposed the proposal, actively worked to stop it [including by testifying in litigation filed against Dr. Spanier to accomplish this goal] and admitted that he was 'hurt' by the criticism of his opposition."
During the "bitter dispute over the two-campus proposal," Stabile "exhibited anger and personal animosity toward the Penn State administration, headed by Dr. Spanier," his lawyers wrote. Although "any bias or prejudice" against Spanier "may have diminished in the decade or so since the dispute took place," Stabile's partisan involvement "is something that should have been disclosed when Dr. Spanier's appeal was assigned to a panel that included Judge Stabile," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Then, Spanier's lawyers quoted the standard for judicial disclosure of an apparent conflict of interest:
"Where a court has specific knowledge of a private matter or situation in which his or her impartiality may reasonably be questioned, it is his duty to disclose that information to the parties."
Judge Stabile, Spanier's lawyers argued, clearly failed to meet that standard.
Spanier, convicted on June 24, 2017, was given a sentence of 4 to 12 months, with at least two months to be served in jail. His sentence, however, has been suspended pending his appeal.
The filing seeking the recusal of Judge Stabile was the second filing in the case made yesterday by Spanier's lawyers, who also appealed the state Superior Court's upholding of Spanier's conviction on technical grounds.The basic problem is that the attorney general's office indicted Spanier on Nov. 1, 2012 for allegedly endangering the welfare of a child back in 2001, by supposedly not doing anything about the alleged shower rape witnessed by Mike McQueary.
The problem on appeal is that the statute of limitations for endangering the welfare of a child [EWOC] is two years, so the Commonwealth's indictment of Spanier missed the mark by more than a decade. To uphold Spanier's appeal, the Commonwealth invoked an exception to the statute of limitations that wasn't law until 2007, an exception that wasn't raised by the Commonwealth at trial, nor considered by the jury.
In a 15-page application for re-argument, filed yesterday, Spanier's lawyers argue that in upholding Spanier's conviction"on the basis of a statue-of-limitations exception the Commonwealth never raises constitutes a dramatic departure from longstanding due process jurisprudence." Under state law, the Commonwealth was required "to give a defendant notice on the specific basis on which it alleges a prosecution is timely," according to the brief written by Timothy K. Lewis, Samuel W. Silver and Bruce P. Merensteain of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP of Philadelphia. The same set of lawyers wrote the application for recusal of Judge Stabile.
In their application for re-argument, Spanier's lawyers argued that the Superior Court cannot uphold a conviction "when the jury was not instructed to find, and did not find, that the prosecution was timely."
There are other problems with the EWOC charge that the corrupt legal system of Pennsylvania fails to recognize -- even McQueary admitted in writing he never saw an anal rape of a 10-year-old boy by Sandusky, as alleged in the grand jury presentment. The marquee crime in that indictment amounts to fiction. A jury also found Sandusky not guilty of that crime. The victim has never come forward, and a concurrent federal investigation in 2012 by former NCIS Special Agent John Snedden, previously undisclosed, determined that McQueary was not a credible witness.At Spanier's trial, according to his lawyers, it was the state's burden to give a criminal defendant notice when the prosecution is pulling some legal games to get around the statute of limitations, which in this case had clearly lapsed by more than 10 years.
The other legal problem with Spanier's conviction was that the state's original child endangerment law, passed in 1972, did not apply to Spanier when the alleged crime that never happened, the 2001 shower rape witnessed by McQueary, supposedly took place.
In 2001, the child endangerment law, as previously discussed on this blog, did not apply to supervisors such as Spanier; it only applied to people who had direct contact with children, such as parents, teachers and guardians.
In 2007, the state legislature amended the child endangerment law to include supervisors. So convicting Spanier of a law that wasn't in effect when the crime allegedly occurred violates what's know as "the Ex Post Facto and Due Process Clauses of the state and federal constitutions, which do not permit a jury to convict a defendant for violating a state statute enacted after the conduct on which the conviction is based," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
According to Spanier's lawyers, "Pennsylvania law is clear: the Commonwealth must provide a defendant with notice of the specific exception . . . on which it relies to salvage an otherwise time-barred prosecution" at a "reasonable time before trial."
The exception that the Superior Court relied on to get around the statute of limitations was enacted by the state Legislature when it amended the child endangerment statute in 2007 to include supervisors. According to the exception, if the victim who was abused was under 20 years of age when the abuse occurred, the victim had until his 50th birthday to file criminal charges.
But that exception wasn't even law when the shower rape that didn't happen allegedly occurred. Spanier's lawyers also point out that the jury was never instructed on the exception "despite Dr. Spanier's repeated requests that the jury be instructed on the statute of limitations."
"The trial court's failure to instruct the jury on what it must find to conclude that the prosecution was timely and the lack of a jury finding that the prosecution is timely renders Dr. Spanier's conviction invalid," his lawyers concluded.
"Over Dr. Spanier's objections, the trial court instructed the jury that it could find him guilty of child endangerment if, among other things, he employed or supervised someone else who was supervising the welfare of a child," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
But that language "did not become part of the child endangerment statue until January 2007, almost six years after the events on which Dr. Spanier's" conviction was based on," Spanier's brief states.
"An instruction that permitted the jury to convict Dr. Spanier of violating a statute that was not in existence at the time of the events forming the basis for that conviction is a violation of the Ex Post Facto and Due Process Clauses of the federal and state constitutions," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
In upholding Spanier's conviction, the Superior Court relied on a case known as the Commonwealth v. Lynn, as in Msgr. William J. Lynn, the former secretary for clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.In the Lynn case, Spanier's lawyers argue, the state Supreme Court held that Lynn was the "point man" who was "specifically responsible" for handling all child abuse allegations because he was "uniquely responsible for safeguarding all of their physical and moral welfare, and he supervised and directed the priests who directly interacted with [the children]."
But Spanier 's case doesn't measure up to these standards, his lawyers concluded.
"No evidence was presented that Dr. Spanier was the 'point man' for all child-abuse allegations, that he was 'specifically responsible' for handling such allegations, that he was 'uniquely responsible' for safeguarding the welfare of minor children, or that he supervised or directed an actual child abuser," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Sandusky was a retired former employee when the 2001 shower incident allegedly occurred.
The Lynn case, as previously disclosed on this blog, was cited by Judge Stabile a total of 34 times in 29 pages to justify his upholding of Spanier's conviction. But, as previously discussed on this blog, the Lynn case is another case of imaginary rape that's an embarrassment to law enforcement.
The alleged victim in the case, former altar boy Billy Doe, AKA Danny Gallagher, has been repeatedly exposed in court transcripts and records multiple times as a lying, scheming fraud. The most recent destruction of Gallagher's credibility was filed last year by retried Detective Joe Walsh. In a 12-page affidavit, Walsh, the former lead investigator on the case, wrote that he caught Gallagher in multiple lies, and that when cornered, Gallagher admitted to the detective that he had "just made stuff up." And when Walsh repeatedly brought Gallagher's lack of credibility to the prosecutor's attention, former assistant district attorney Mariana Sorensen, she replied, "You're killing my case."
On top of Danny Gallagher the fraudulent star witness, the corrupt prosecutor who brought the case is Rufus Seth Williams, now sitting in a federal prison after he admitted to 29 counts of political corruption.
In a 16-page application for recusal filed yesterday, Spanier's lawyers argue that state Superior Court Judge Victor P. Stabile should disqualify himself because he previously testified in a lawsuit against Penn State and Spanier, and also attacked Spanier in an old email as an "emperor" in "new clothes."
In the application for recusal, Spanier's lawyers seek the vacating of the Superior Court's decision upholding Spanier's conviction, and a chance to reargue their appeal before a new panel of judges, or the entire Superior Court.
Three days after Judge Stabile authored a 2-1 Superior Court decision upholding Spanier's conviction, Spanier got an email from an old colleague, Philip McConnaughay, former dean of the Penn State Dickinson School of Law [DSL] from 2002 to 2013.In the email, McConnaughay informed Spanier that "between 2003 and 2006, Judge Stabile, then a lawyer in private practice, was a leader of a group of DSL alumni who were stridently opposed to Penn State's plans to either relocate DSL or to create a second campus of DSL in State College," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
While leading that opposition, Stabile "made critical personal comments about those Penn State administrators, including Dr. Spanier, who favored such a plan," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
"Emails and documents from that period that Dr. Spanier has obtained in the past few days demonstrate that there are grounds for Judge Stabile's recusal from participation in this matter. In light of this information, the Court should vacate the Panel's decision, and the matter should be reassigned and reargued before another panel or before the Court en banc."
Penn State had proposed moving DSL from it's longtime location in Carlisle, PA to Penn State's main campus in State College. The plan "was eventually abandoned in favor of a proposal to create a two-campus law school, with facilities in Carlisle and State College," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Both the plan to merge the two institutions, and the two-campus plan "met with substantial and vociferous opposition from a faction of the DSL alumni," Spanier's lawyers wrote. During that period, Stabile, a DSL graduate from 1982, was a member of DSL's General Alumni Association [GAA] board of directors. Stabile also served on a five-person committee of the GAA board that "criticized the proposal" put forward by Penn State, and in the process, "made several disparaging comments about those members of the Penn State administration who favored the proposal, including Dr. Spanier," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
"I still do not understand why Penn State bothered to merge Dickinson if it seems intent on changing everything about the school," Stabile wrote in a 2003 email. "They could have built their own damn school in State College and accomplished the same thing without eradicating an institution."
In another email a few days later, Stabile wrote about the plan to relocate DSL, "There is a certain arrogance here that is unacceptable."
In their brief, Spanier's lawyers cite emails critical of Spanier that were sent to the GAA, of which Stabile was a member, referring to "that chief hustler Spanier" who was allegedly "pushing for approval Saturday" of the two-campus proposal.
A report issued by the GAA board, endorsed by Stabile, described the Penn State administration as "incompetent" and criticized Spanier several times, Spanier's lawyers wrote.
"For example, the report questioned Dr. Spanier's motives in proposing the two-campus model and implied that he [Spanier] falsely attributed the original relocation idea to the DSL dean, rather than the Penn State administration," Spanier's lawyers wrote. "The report posed a rhetorical question regarding Dr. Spanier's alleged motives in putting forth the two-campus proposal: 'Surely it has nothing to do with an employment contract extended in 2003 and expiring in the next year?' "
The report also contended that Spanier "promoted in his biography his role in the DSL merger but hid his responsibility for other mergers that allegedly failed," Spanier's lawyers wrote, quoting the report.In January 2005, the DSL Board of Governors met to vote on whether to agree with Penn State, and move forward with the two-campus plan. The day before the vote, Stabile sent an email to the GAA board, complaining that "I can't imagine why many think this is a great proposal. The emperor certainly has new clothes . . ."
"The crisis here has been been wholly fabricated by PSU," Stabile wrote. In the same email, Stabile also claimed that the two-campus plan would result in "complete subjugation by DSL."
"I have no more words left; the process that has proceeded through does not do justice to our profession, nonetheless to its leadership -- and this is an institution that teaches the rule of law!!" Stabile wrote. "Count me as embarrassed and disgusted."
In February 2005, three DSL alumni sued Penn State, Spanier, and the DSL board of governors, seeking to stop implementation of the two-campus plan. At a GAA board meeting a couple days later, Stabile "advocated intervening on behalf of the plaintiffs in their suit against Dr. Spanier," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
That's just what happened.
On May 19, 2005, Stabile testified in that litigation about his opposition to the two-campus proposal. He admitted during that dispute, "emotions were running high on both sides," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
During his testimony, Stabile described the reaction to GAA's opposition to the two-campus plan as "very hurtful to see us cast in this light. Stabile also admitted while testifying that he "was particularly hurt" to be "dismissed as . . . merely angry or somewhat of a malcontent."
"The standard for recusal requires a judge to recuse from hearing a matter where the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned," Spanier's lawyers wrote. "Recusal is warranted where a judge has a 'personal bias or interest which would preclude an impartial review' or where 'his participation in the matter would give the appearance of impropriety,'" Spanier's lawyers wrote.
It's not necessary for a judge to have an actual conflict of interest to recuse himself, Spanier's lawyers wrote. Merely having "an appearance of impropriety alone forms an independent basis for recusal even when no actual bias, unfairness, or prejudice is shown" on the judge's part, Spanier's lawyers wrote, quoting case law.
"Disqualification is mandatory 'in any proceeding in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned,' " Spanier's lawyers wrote. "Avoiding the appearance of impropriety . . . is mandatory."
"Judge Stabile should recuse from this matter because of his prior role in strenuously and personally opposing the actions of Dr. Spanier and Penn State University regarding Dickinson School of Law," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Stabile's past actions provide a "substantial basis to request Judge Stabile's recusal." Documents also reveal a "strident and personal reaction from Judge Stabile" to the proposals from Spanier and Penn State to move DSL, Spanier's lawyers wrote.Stabile was "a leader of a faction of the alumni that severely criticized" Spanier, his lawyers wrote. In addition, Stabile and others "met, communicated, and prepared reports that attacked the motives, the integrity, and the competence of Dr. Spanier and other administrators involved in the two-campus proposal. Judge Stabile strongly opposed the proposal, actively worked to stop it [including by testifying in litigation filed against Dr. Spanier to accomplish this goal] and admitted that he was 'hurt' by the criticism of his opposition."
During the "bitter dispute over the two-campus proposal," Stabile "exhibited anger and personal animosity toward the Penn State administration, headed by Dr. Spanier," his lawyers wrote. Although "any bias or prejudice" against Spanier "may have diminished in the decade or so since the dispute took place," Stabile's partisan involvement "is something that should have been disclosed when Dr. Spanier's appeal was assigned to a panel that included Judge Stabile," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Then, Spanier's lawyers quoted the standard for judicial disclosure of an apparent conflict of interest:
"Where a court has specific knowledge of a private matter or situation in which his or her impartiality may reasonably be questioned, it is his duty to disclose that information to the parties."
Judge Stabile, Spanier's lawyers argued, clearly failed to meet that standard.
Spanier, convicted on June 24, 2017, was given a sentence of 4 to 12 months, with at least two months to be served in jail. His sentence, however, has been suspended pending his appeal.
The filing seeking the recusal of Judge Stabile was the second filing in the case made yesterday by Spanier's lawyers, who also appealed the state Superior Court's upholding of Spanier's conviction on technical grounds.The basic problem is that the attorney general's office indicted Spanier on Nov. 1, 2012 for allegedly endangering the welfare of a child back in 2001, by supposedly not doing anything about the alleged shower rape witnessed by Mike McQueary.
The problem on appeal is that the statute of limitations for endangering the welfare of a child [EWOC] is two years, so the Commonwealth's indictment of Spanier missed the mark by more than a decade. To uphold Spanier's appeal, the Commonwealth invoked an exception to the statute of limitations that wasn't law until 2007, an exception that wasn't raised by the Commonwealth at trial, nor considered by the jury.
In a 15-page application for re-argument, filed yesterday, Spanier's lawyers argue that in upholding Spanier's conviction"on the basis of a statue-of-limitations exception the Commonwealth never raises constitutes a dramatic departure from longstanding due process jurisprudence." Under state law, the Commonwealth was required "to give a defendant notice on the specific basis on which it alleges a prosecution is timely," according to the brief written by Timothy K. Lewis, Samuel W. Silver and Bruce P. Merensteain of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP of Philadelphia. The same set of lawyers wrote the application for recusal of Judge Stabile.
In their application for re-argument, Spanier's lawyers argued that the Superior Court cannot uphold a conviction "when the jury was not instructed to find, and did not find, that the prosecution was timely."
There are other problems with the EWOC charge that the corrupt legal system of Pennsylvania fails to recognize -- even McQueary admitted in writing he never saw an anal rape of a 10-year-old boy by Sandusky, as alleged in the grand jury presentment. The marquee crime in that indictment amounts to fiction. A jury also found Sandusky not guilty of that crime. The victim has never come forward, and a concurrent federal investigation in 2012 by former NCIS Special Agent John Snedden, previously undisclosed, determined that McQueary was not a credible witness.At Spanier's trial, according to his lawyers, it was the state's burden to give a criminal defendant notice when the prosecution is pulling some legal games to get around the statute of limitations, which in this case had clearly lapsed by more than 10 years.
The other legal problem with Spanier's conviction was that the state's original child endangerment law, passed in 1972, did not apply to Spanier when the alleged crime that never happened, the 2001 shower rape witnessed by McQueary, supposedly took place.
In 2001, the child endangerment law, as previously discussed on this blog, did not apply to supervisors such as Spanier; it only applied to people who had direct contact with children, such as parents, teachers and guardians.
In 2007, the state legislature amended the child endangerment law to include supervisors. So convicting Spanier of a law that wasn't in effect when the crime allegedly occurred violates what's know as "the Ex Post Facto and Due Process Clauses of the state and federal constitutions, which do not permit a jury to convict a defendant for violating a state statute enacted after the conduct on which the conviction is based," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
According to Spanier's lawyers, "Pennsylvania law is clear: the Commonwealth must provide a defendant with notice of the specific exception . . . on which it relies to salvage an otherwise time-barred prosecution" at a "reasonable time before trial."
The exception that the Superior Court relied on to get around the statute of limitations was enacted by the state Legislature when it amended the child endangerment statute in 2007 to include supervisors. According to the exception, if the victim who was abused was under 20 years of age when the abuse occurred, the victim had until his 50th birthday to file criminal charges.
But that exception wasn't even law when the shower rape that didn't happen allegedly occurred. Spanier's lawyers also point out that the jury was never instructed on the exception "despite Dr. Spanier's repeated requests that the jury be instructed on the statute of limitations."
"The trial court's failure to instruct the jury on what it must find to conclude that the prosecution was timely and the lack of a jury finding that the prosecution is timely renders Dr. Spanier's conviction invalid," his lawyers concluded.
"Over Dr. Spanier's objections, the trial court instructed the jury that it could find him guilty of child endangerment if, among other things, he employed or supervised someone else who was supervising the welfare of a child," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
But that language "did not become part of the child endangerment statue until January 2007, almost six years after the events on which Dr. Spanier's" conviction was based on," Spanier's brief states.
"An instruction that permitted the jury to convict Dr. Spanier of violating a statute that was not in existence at the time of the events forming the basis for that conviction is a violation of the Ex Post Facto and Due Process Clauses of the federal and state constitutions," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
In upholding Spanier's conviction, the Superior Court relied on a case known as the Commonwealth v. Lynn, as in Msgr. William J. Lynn, the former secretary for clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.In the Lynn case, Spanier's lawyers argue, the state Supreme Court held that Lynn was the "point man" who was "specifically responsible" for handling all child abuse allegations because he was "uniquely responsible for safeguarding all of their physical and moral welfare, and he supervised and directed the priests who directly interacted with [the children]."
But Spanier 's case doesn't measure up to these standards, his lawyers concluded.
"No evidence was presented that Dr. Spanier was the 'point man' for all child-abuse allegations, that he was 'specifically responsible' for handling such allegations, that he was 'uniquely responsible' for safeguarding the welfare of minor children, or that he supervised or directed an actual child abuser," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Sandusky was a retired former employee when the 2001 shower incident allegedly occurred.
The Lynn case, as previously disclosed on this blog, was cited by Judge Stabile a total of 34 times in 29 pages to justify his upholding of Spanier's conviction. But, as previously discussed on this blog, the Lynn case is another case of imaginary rape that's an embarrassment to law enforcement.
The alleged victim in the case, former altar boy Billy Doe, AKA Danny Gallagher, has been repeatedly exposed in court transcripts and records multiple times as a lying, scheming fraud. The most recent destruction of Gallagher's credibility was filed last year by retried Detective Joe Walsh. In a 12-page affidavit, Walsh, the former lead investigator on the case, wrote that he caught Gallagher in multiple lies, and that when cornered, Gallagher admitted to the detective that he had "just made stuff up." And when Walsh repeatedly brought Gallagher's lack of credibility to the prosecutor's attention, former assistant district attorney Mariana Sorensen, she replied, "You're killing my case."
On top of Danny Gallagher the fraudulent star witness, the corrupt prosecutor who brought the case is Rufus Seth Williams, now sitting in a federal prison after he admitted to 29 counts of political corruption.
Key was Dranov.
On Friday, Nov 11, 2011, Sara Ganim, who had publicly identified Mike McQueary as the “graduate assistant” in the grand jury presentment who had supposedly witnessed Sandusky sodomizing a boy in the shower, wrote that McQueary was “getting blasted by the public for doing too little.”
He had received several death threats. The same day, newly appointed Penn State President Rodney Erickson announced that McQueary was being placed on administrative leave “after it became clear he could not continue coaching.” Erickson pointedly continued: "Never again should anyone at Penn State feel scared to do the right thing.”
McQueary was hard to miss around town. He stood six feet five inches, topped by short bristles of bright orange-red hair, which gave him the nickname Big Red. Now people were asking one another, “Why didn’t Big Red stop it?”
On Tuesday, McQueary had called an emotional meeting with his Penn State players. He looked pale and his hands were shaking.
“I’m not sure what is going to happen to me,” he said. He cried as he talked about the Sandusky shower incident. According to one of the players, “He said he had some regret that he didn’t stop it.”
Then McQueary revealed that he himself had been molested as a child. Perhaps because he had been sexually abused, McQueary was particularly alert to possible abuse, and so he leaped to the conclusion that the slapping sounds he heard in the Lasch Building locker room were sexual.
It is clear from the testimony of Dr. Dranov and others, however, that McQueary did not witness sodomy that night in February 2001. He thought something sexual was happening, but as he emphasized later, the entire episode lasted 30 to 45 seconds, he heard the sounds for only a few seconds, and his glance in the mirror was even quicker.
Ten years after the event, his memory had shifted and amplified, after the police told him that they had other Sandusky victims. Under that influence, his memory made the episode much more sexually graphic.
As I have written previously, all memory is reconstructive and is subject to distortion. That is particularly true when many years have intervened, and when current attitudes influence recall of those distant events. It is worthwhile quoting here from psychologist Daniel Reisberg’s 2014 book, The Science of Perception and Memory: A Pragmatic Guide for the Justice System.
“Connections between a specific memory and other, more generic knowledge can allow the other knowledge to intrude into our recollection,” Reiserberg notes. “Thus, a witness might remember the robber threatening violence merely because threats are part of the witness’s cognitive ‘schema’ for how robberies typically unfold.”
That appears to be what happened to McQueary, who had a “schema” of what child sexual abuse in a shower would look like. He had thought at the time that some kind of sexual activity must have occurred in the shower. The police were telling him that they had other witnesses claiming that Sandusky had molested them. Thinking back to that long-ago night, McQueary now visualized a scene that never occurred, but the more he rehearsed it in his memory, the more real it became to him.
“As your memory for an episode becomes more and more interwoven with other thoughts you’ve had about that episode, it can become difficult to keep track of which elements are linked to the episode because they were, in truth, part of the episode itself and which are linked merely because they are associated with the episode in your thoughts,” Reisberg writes. That process “can produce intrusion errors – so that elements that were part of your thinking get misremembered as being actually part of the original experience.”
In conclusion, Reisberg writes, “It is remarkably easy to alter someone’s memory, with the result that the past as the person remembers it differs from the past as it really was.”
On Nov. 23, 2010, McQueary wrote out a statement for the police in which he said he had glanced in a mirror at a 45 degree angle over his right shoulder and saw the reflection of a boy facing a wall with Sandusky standing directly behind him.
“I am certain that sexual acts/the young boy being sodomized was occuring [sic],” McQueary wrote. “I looked away. In a hurried/hastened state, I finished at my locker. I proceeded out of the locker room. While walking I looked directly into the shower and both the boy and Jerry Sandusky looked directly in my direction.”
But it is extremely unlikely that this ten-year-later account is accurate. Dranov was adamant that McQueary did not say that he saw anything sexual. When former Penn State football player Gary Gray went to see Joe Paterno in December 2011, the month before he died, Gray told Paterno that he still had a hard time believing that Sandusky had molested those children. “You and me both,” Paterno said.
In a letter to the Penn State Board of Trustees after the trial, Gray recalled their conversation about McQueary’s telling Paterno about the shower incident. “Joe said that McQueary had told him that he had seen Jerry engaged in horseplay or horsing around with a young boy. McQueary wasn’t sure what was happening, but he said that it made him feel uncomfortable. In recounting McQueary’s conversation to me, Coach Paterno did not use any terms with sexual overtones.”
Similarly, in November 2011, when biographer Joe Posnanski asked Paterno about what McQueary told him back in 2001, Paterno told him, “I think he said he didn’t really see anything. He said he might have seen something in a mirror. But he told me he wasn’t sure he saw anything. He just said the whole thing made him uncomfortable.”
If McQueary had told Paterno, Curley or other administrators that he had seen Sandusky in such a sexual position with the boy, it is inconceivable that they would not have turned the matter over to the police.
This was not a “cover-up.” Sandusky didn’t even work for Penn State by the time of the incident, so what was there to cover up? Paterno and Sandusky had never really liked one another, and Paterno was famed for his integrity and honesty. If he thought Sandusky was molesting a child in the shower, he would undoubtedly have called the police.
It is clear that Paterno, Curley, Schultz, and Spanier took the incident for what it apparently was – McQueary hearing slapping sounds that he misinterpreted as being sexual.
McQueary gave five different versions of what he heard and saw, but all were reconstructed memories over a decade after the fact. They changed a bit over time, but none of them are reliable.
McQueary had painted himself into a difficult corner. If he had really seen something so horrendous, why hadn’t he rushed into the shower to stop it? Why hadn’t he gone to the police? Why hadn’t he followed up with Paterno or other Penn State administrators to make sure something was being done? Why had he continued to act friendly towards Sandusky, even taking part in golfing events with him?
When angry people began to ask these questions, that first week in November 2011, McQueary emailed a friend. "I did stop it not physically but made sure it was stopped when I left that locker room,” he wrote. He now said that he had in essence contacted the police about the incident by alerting Joe Paterno, which led to Gary Schultz talking to him about it, and Schultz was the administrator the campus police reported to.
“No one can imagine my thoughts or wants to be in my shoes for those 30-45 seconds," McQueary said. "Trust me…. I am getting hammered for handling this the right way ... or what I thought at the time was right … I had to make tough, impacting quick decisions.”
Subsequently, McQueary changed his story somewhat. He now recalled that he had loudly slammed his locker door, which made Sandusky stop the abuse, and that he had taken yet a third look in the shower to make sure they had remained apart.
At the trial, he said that he had “glanced” in the mirror for “one or two seconds,” then lengthened his estimate to “three or four seconds, five seconds maybe.” During that brief glance, he now said that he had time to see Sandusky standing behind a boy whose hands were against the shower wall, and that he saw “very slow, slow, subtle movement” of his midsection.
But neither the newly created sodomy scene nor the slammed locker would save McQueary
By the time of the trial, eight accusers had been “developed,” as Assistant Attorney General Jonelle Eshbach put it. But Allan Myers, the boy in the shower in the McQueary incident, had been so public and vehement in his previous defense of Sandusky that the prosecution did not dare call him to testify.
When police inspector Joseph Leiter first interviewed him on September 20, 2011, Myers had emphatically denied that Sandusky had abused him or made him uncomfortable in any way.
After the Grand Jury Presentment was published on November 5, 2011, with its allegations that Mike McQueary had witnessed sodomy in a locker room shower, Myers realized that he was “Victim 2,” the boy in the shower that night, but that the sounds McQueary heard were just snapping towels or slap boxing. Myers then gave a detailed statement to Joseph Amendola’s investigator, Curtis Everhart, denying that Sandusky had ever abused him.
But within two weeks, Myers had become a client of Andrew Shubin. For months, Shubin refused to let the police interview Myers without Shubin being present, and he apparently hid Myers in a remote Pennsylvania hunting cabin to keep them from finding him.
After a February 10, 2012, hearing, Shubin verbally assaulted Anthony Sassano, an agent for the attorney general's office, outside the courthouse, cursing him roundly. “He was very vulgar, critical of me,” Sassano recalled. “Let’s call it unprofessional [language], for an attorney.”
Shubin was angry because the Attorney General’s Office wouldn’t interview Myers, who, he claimed, had stayed at Sandusky’s house “over 100 times” where he had been subjected to “both oral and anal sex.” But the police still refused to allow Shubin to be present during any interview.
Soon afterwards, Shubin relented, allowing a postal inspector named Michael Corricelli to talk to Allan Myers alone on February 28, 2012. But during the three-hour interview, Myers never said Sandusky had abused him. On March 8, Corricelli tried again, but Myers again failed to provide any stories of molestation. On March 16, Corricelli brought Myers to the police barracks for a third interview in which Anthony Sassano took part. Asked about three out-of-state trips, Myers denied any sexual contact and said that Sandusky had only tucked him into bed.
“He did not recall the first time he was abused by Sandusky,” Sassano wrote in his notes, nor did Myers recall how many times he was abused. “He indicated it is hard to talk about the Sandusky sexual abuse because Sandusky was like a father to him.” Finally, Myers said that on a trip to Erie, Pennsylvania, Sandusky put his hand inside his pants and touched his penis. Sassano tried valiantly to get more out of him, asking whether Sandusky had tried to put Myers’ hand on his own penis or whether that had been oral sex. No.
Still, Myers now estimated that there had been ten sexual abuse events and that the last one was in the shower incident that McQeary overheard. “I attempted to have Myers elaborate on the sexual contact he had with Sandusky, but he refused by saying he wasn’t ready to talk about the specifics,” Sassano wrote. Myers said that he had not given anyone, including his attorneys, such details. “This is in contrast to what Shubin told me,” Sassano noted.
On April 3, 2012, Corricelli and Sassano were schedule to meet yet again with the reluctant Allan Myers, but he didn’t show up, saying that he was “too upset” by a friend’s death.
“Corricelli indicated that Attorney Shubin advised him that Myers had related to him incidents of oral, anal, and digital penetration by Sandusky,” Sassano wrote in his report. “Shubin showed Corricelli a three page document purported to be Myers’ recollection of his sexual contact with Sandusky. Corricelli examined the document and indicated to me that he suspected the document was written by Attorney Shubin. I advised that I did not want a copy of a document that was suspected to be written by Attorney Shubin.” Sassano concluded: “At this time, I don’t anticipate further investigation concerning Allan Myers.”
That is how things stood as the Sandusky trial was about to begin. Karl Rominger wanted to call Myers to testify as a defense witness, but Amendola refused. “I was told that there was a détente and an understanding that both sides would simply not identify Victim Number 2,” Rominger later recalled. The prosecution didn’t want such a weak witness who had given a strong exculpatory statement to Curtis Everhart. Amendola didn’t want a defense witness who was now claiming to be an abuse victim. “So they decided to punt, to use an analogy,” Rominger concluded.
Mike McQueary Takes The Stand [From Chapter 15]
Mike McQueary then took the stand to tell his latest version of the shower incident with “Victim 2” (i.e., the unnamed Allan Myers), where he heard “showers running and smacking sounds, very much skin-on-skin smacking sounds.” (Later in his testimony, he said he heard only two or three slapping sounds that lasted two or three seconds.) He had re-framed and re-examined his memory of the event “many, many, many times,” he said, and he was now certain that he had looked into the shower three separate times, for one or two secondseach, and that he saw “Coach Sandusky standing behind a boy who is propped up against the shower. The showers are running and, and he is right up against his back with his front. The boy’s hands are up on the wall.” He saw “very slow, slow, subtle movement.” After he slammed his locker, McQueary said, they separated and faced him. Surprisingly, he said that Sandusky did not have an erection. When Amendola failed to object, Judge Cleland inserted himself, obviously fearful of future appeal or post-conviction relief issues. “Wait, wait, wait, just a second,” he warned McGettigan. “I think you have to be very careful for you not to lead this witness.”A few minutes later, the judge asked both lawyers to approach the bench. “I don’t know why you’re not getting objections to this grossly leading [questioning],” he told McGettigan, who said, “I’m just trying to get through it fast.”McQueary recounted how he had met with Joe Paterno.“I made sure he knew it was sexual and that it was wrong, [but] I did not go into gross detail.” Later, he said, he met with Tim Curley, the Penn State athletic director, and Gary Schultz, a university vice president. In an email quoted during his testimony, McQueary had written, “I had discussions with the police and with the official at the university in charge of the police.” He now explained that by this he meant just one person, since Schultz oversaw the university police department. With only an hour’s warning, Joe Amendola asked Karl Rominger to conduct the cross-examination of McQueary and handed him the file. Rominger did the best he could, asking McQueary why in 2010 he had told the police that he’d looked into the showers twice but had now added a third viewing, and he questioned him about his misremembering that the shower incident occurred in 2002 rather than 2001. Rominger also noted that McQueary had told the grand jury, “I was nervous and flustered, so I just didn’t do anything to stop it.” Now he was saying that he slammed the locker, which allegedly ended the incident. Without meaning to, McQueary indirectly helped Sandusky’s case by explaining the demanding work schedule of a Penn State football coach, typically reporting to work Sunday through Tuesday at 7 a.m. and working until 10 p.m. or later. Then, Wednesday through Friday, it was 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. If Sandusky kept the same hours, it was difficult to see when he would have managed to molest all those boys, at least during preseason training and football season.
Finally, McQueary revealed that he had filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Penn State for having removed him from his football coaching job in the midst of the Sandusky scandal. “I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong to lose that job," he said.
In his brief appearance for the defense, physician Jonathan Dranov recalled the February night in 2001 that his friend and employee, John McQueary, had called to ask him around 9 p.m. to come over, because his son Mike was upset by something that had happened in a Penn State locker room.
When he came in, Mike was sitting on the couch, “visibly shaken and upset.” The younger McQueary said he had gone to the locker room to put away some new sneakers and “he heard what he described as sexual sounds.”
Dranov asked him what he meant. “Well, sexual sounds, you know what they are,” McQueary said. “No, Mike, you know, what do you mean?” But he didn’t explain. “He just seemed to get a little bit more upset. So I kind of left that.”
McQueary told him that he looked toward the shower “and a young boy looked around. He made eye contact with the boy.” Dranov asked him if the boy seemed upset or frightened, and McQueary said he did not. Then, as Dranov recalled, McQueary said that “an arm reached out and pulled the boy back.”
Was that all he saw? No, McQueary said “something about going back to his locker, and then he turned around and faced the shower room and a man came out, and it was Jerry Sandusky.” Dranov asked McQueary three times if he had actually witnessed a sexual act. “I kept saying, ‘What did you see?’ and each time he [Mike] would come back to the sounds. I kept saying, ‘But what did you see?’ “And it just seemed to make him more upset, so I back off that.”
Karl Rominger asked Dranov, “You’re a mandatory reporter?” Yes, he was, meaning that he was legally bound to report criminal sexual activity to the police. He did not do that, since he obviously didn’t conclude that it was warranted. He only told Mike McQueary to report the incident to his immediate supervisor, Joe Paterno.
As a follow-up witness, a Second Mile administrator named Henry Lesch explained that he had been in charge of the annual golf tournament, in which Mike McQueary had played in June 2001 and 2003. The implication was that this seemed strange behavior, supporting an activity in which Jerry Sandusky was a leading sponsor and participant, if McQueary had witnessed sodomy in the shower in February 2001.
One last hearing took place three months later, on November 4, 2016, when Allan Myers finally took the stand. He had evaded all subpoena attempts for the August hearings. Jerry Sandusky could hardly
recognize the overweight, bearded, sullen 29-year-old, who clearly didn’t want to be there.
He wouldn’t use Sandusky’s name, referring to him as “your client” in response to Al Lindsay’s questions. Yes, he had gone to the Second Mile camps for a couple of years “until your client hand-picked me,” he said. He admitted, however, that he had regarded Sandusky as a father figure and that he had lived with the Sandusky’s the summer of 2005, before he attended Penn State. “I left because he was controlling,” Myers said.
Lindsay had him read the notes of his September 2011 police interview, in which he said that Sandusky never made him uncomfortable and had not abused him, and that he didn’t believe any of the allegations.
“That would reflect what I said then,” Myers said, “not what I would say now.” That would become his refrain during his testimony, which appeared to be well-rehearsed, along with “I don’t recall.”
Yes, he had told Curtis Everhart that “Jerry never violated me while I was at his home or anywhere else….I felt very safe and at ease at his home, whether alone with Jerry or with others present.” Yes, he had denied any anal or oral intercourse or any abuse at all. “That’s what I said then," he said.
Yes, Shubin was Myers’ lawyer for his DUI charge, and then he represented him as a claimed Sandusky victim, and yes, he had received a settlement from Penn State. And yes, he said, he was Victim 2.
During her cross-examination, Jennifer Peterson asked Myers, “And you told him [Anthony Sassano] that you were sexually abused by Mr. Sandusky, right?” Surprisingly, he didn’t agree. “I don’t remember exactly what I said in the meetings. I know then I was more forthcoming, but not all the way coming, because still processing everything and dealing with it.” It sounded as if he might have been in repressed memory therapy.
Peterson asked again, “Were you sexually abused?” This time he answered, “Yes,” although he didn’t actually say that it was Sandusky who had abused him. And there the matter was left.
* * *
Meanwhile, several Sandusky-related legal decisions came down, all of them relying on the truth of the abuse narrative.
Three weeks before Cleland’s recusal, Mike McQueary won his whistleblower lawsuit against Penn State, with the jury awarding the former Penn State coach $7.3 million.
At the end of November 2016, Judge Thomas Gavin ruled that that amount wasn’t enough, so he added another $5 million. In doing so, he cited prosecutor Jonelle Eshbach’s testimony during the trial that McQueary had been a terrific grand jury witness: “He was rock solid in his testimony as to what he had seen,” Eshbach said. “He was very articulate. His memory was excellent.”
Eshbach, the author of the notorious Grand Jury Presentment, was correct that McQueary had been articulate, but his “rock solid” testimony had morphed from what he told his father and Jonathon Dranov in February 2001 – that he heard sounds but witnessed no sexual abuse – to his grand jury testimony ten years later.
And he kept modifying his story and memory after that. Nonetheless, the judge ruled that McQueary had suffered “humiliation” when Graham Spanier publicly supported Curley and Schultz, which by implication impugned the assistant coach. Gavin later added another $1.7 million to pay for McQueary’s lawyers’ fees.
The Fallout [From Chapter 23]
Former federal investigator John Snedden, who interviewed many players in the Penn State drama soon after the trial, concluded that there was no cover-up because there was nothing to cover up. Mike McQueary had only heard slapping sounds in the shower. If McQueary really thought he was witnessing a sexual assault on a child, Snedden said, wouldn't he have intervened to stop a "wet, defenseless naked 57-year-old guy in the shower?"
Snedden’s boss told him, as a rookie agent, that the first question to ask in an investigation is, “Where is the crime?” In this case, there didn’t appear to be one. "I've never had a rape case successfully prosecuted based only on sounds, and without credible victims and witnesses.”
* * *
In 2016, psychologist Julia Shaw published The Memory Illusion, a summary of her own and others’ work. “[My colleagues and] I have convinced people they have committed crimes that never occurred, suffered from a physical injury they never had, or were attacked by a dog when no such attack ever took place,” she wrote.
The Memory Hackers (2016), a Nova public television program, featured one of Shaw’s subjects recalling an illusory crime in three sessions. In that study, over 70 percent of her subjects developed false memories.
“What could have been turns into what would have been turns into what was,” the experimental psychologist explained. Her conclusion? “Any event, no matter how important, emotional or traumatic it may seem, can be…misremembered, or even be entirely fictitious…. All of us can come to confidently and vividly remember entire events that never actually took place.”
Experimental psychologist Frederic Bartlett made similar observations in his classic 1932 text, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. Our memories, he noted, “live with our interests and with them they change.” We tend to incorporate details of what really happened, along with other inserted elements, perhaps from a movie we saw or a book we read, or a story someone else told us. This kind of “source amnesia” is amazingly common. In fact, many of us are sure something happened to us, when it was our sibling who actually experienced it.
That is how Mike McQueary’s memory of the infamous 2001 shower changed. The night of the shower, he said he had heard slapping sounds but had not seen anything incriminating. Ten years later, his retrospective bias led him to have questionable memories of seeing Sandusky moving his hips behind a boy in the shower. With rehearsal, his new memories were solidified, and he became quite confident in them. That phenomenon, called “the illusion of confidence” by The Invisible Gorilla authors, is not unusual, either.
There may have been other factors influencing McQueary's recollections of that infamous shower incident.
When he was first contacted by police, Mike McQueary, at that time a married man, apparently sent a “sexting” photo of his own penis to a female Penn State student in April 2010. He may have thought that was why the police wanted to talk to him, and why he didn’t want to meet with them in his home.
ESPN journalist Don Van Natta, Jr, initially intended to include this information in a feature article about McQueary, but it was cut from the published piece.
In 2017 McQueary, now divorced, texted another photo of his erect penis to a woman. Investigator John Ziegler obtained the text messages and photo and published them at framingpaterno.com.
@PSU2UNC You should be jamming this up BnB's butt.
www.inquirer.com
Jury foreman calls guilty verdict against Spanier a 'mistake'
Jury foreman calls guilty verdict against Spanier a 'mistake'
www.inquirer.com
Do you realize I read nothing of the nonsense you post here? None of it. I will repeat again, I am good friends with a detective who worked this case, he has seen every bit of evidence in the case, he interviewed many of the witnesses, including Ganter and Bradley, and he has no doubt at all about PSU's role in this mess.Takes careful reading to figure this one out.
In a 16-page application for recusal filed yesterday, Spanier's lawyers argue that state Superior Court Judge Victor P. Stabile should disqualify himself because he previously testified in a lawsuit against Penn State and Spanier, and also attacked Spanier in an old email as an "emperor" in "new clothes."
In the application for recusal, Spanier's lawyers seek the vacating of the Superior Court's decision upholding Spanier's conviction, and a chance to reargue their appeal before a new panel of judges, or the entire Superior Court.
Three days after Judge Stabile authored a 2-1 Superior Court decision upholding Spanier's conviction, Spanier got an email from an old colleague, Philip McConnaughay, former dean of the Penn State Dickinson School of Law [DSL] from 2002 to 2013.
In the email, McConnaughay informed Spanier that "between 2003 and 2006, Judge Stabile, then a lawyer in private practice, was a leader of a group of DSL alumni who were stridently opposed to Penn State's plans to either relocate DSL or to create a second campus of DSL in State College," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
While leading that opposition, Stabile "made critical personal comments about those Penn State administrators, including Dr. Spanier, who favored such a plan," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
"Emails and documents from that period that Dr. Spanier has obtained in the past few days demonstrate that there are grounds for Judge Stabile's recusal from participation in this matter. In light of this information, the Court should vacate the Panel's decision, and the matter should be reassigned and reargued before another panel or before the Court en banc."
Penn State had proposed moving DSL from it's longtime location in Carlisle, PA to Penn State's main campus in State College. The plan "was eventually abandoned in favor of a proposal to create a two-campus law school, with facilities in Carlisle and State College," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Both the plan to merge the two institutions, and the two-campus plan "met with substantial and vociferous opposition from a faction of the DSL alumni," Spanier's lawyers wrote. During that period, Stabile, a DSL graduate from 1982, was a member of DSL's General Alumni Association [GAA] board of directors. Stabile also served on a five-person committee of the GAA board that "criticized the proposal" put forward by Penn State, and in the process, "made several disparaging comments about those members of the Penn State administration who favored the proposal, including Dr. Spanier," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
"I still do not understand why Penn State bothered to merge Dickinson if it seems intent on changing everything about the school," Stabile wrote in a 2003 email. "They could have built their own damn school in State College and accomplished the same thing without eradicating an institution."
In another email a few days later, Stabile wrote about the plan to relocate DSL, "There is a certain arrogance here that is unacceptable."
In their brief, Spanier's lawyers cite emails critical of Spanier that were sent to the GAA, of which Stabile was a member, referring to "that chief hustler Spanier" who was allegedly "pushing for approval Saturday" of the two-campus proposal.
A report issued by the GAA board, endorsed by Stabile, described the Penn State administration as "incompetent" and criticized Spanier several times, Spanier's lawyers wrote.
"For example, the report questioned Dr. Spanier's motives in proposing the two-campus model and implied that he [Spanier] falsely attributed the original relocation idea to the DSL dean, rather than the Penn State administration," Spanier's lawyers wrote. "The report posed a rhetorical question regarding Dr. Spanier's alleged motives in putting forth the two-campus proposal: 'Surely it has nothing to do with an employment contract extended in 2003 and expiring in the next year?' "
The report also contended that Spanier "promoted in his biography his role in the DSL merger but hid his responsibility for other mergers that allegedly failed," Spanier's lawyers wrote, quoting the report.
In January 2005, the DSL Board of Governors met to vote on whether to agree with Penn State, and move forward with the two-campus plan. The day before the vote, Stabile sent an email to the GAA board, complaining that "I can't imagine why many think this is a great proposal. The emperor certainly has new clothes . . ."
"The crisis here has been been wholly fabricated by PSU," Stabile wrote. In the same email, Stabile also claimed that the two-campus plan would result in "complete subjugation by DSL."
"I have no more words left; the process that has proceeded through does not do justice to our profession, nonetheless to its leadership -- and this is an institution that teaches the rule of law!!" Stabile wrote. "Count me as embarrassed and disgusted."
In February 2005, three DSL alumni sued Penn State, Spanier, and the DSL board of governors, seeking to stop implementation of the two-campus plan. At a GAA board meeting a couple days later, Stabile "advocated intervening on behalf of the plaintiffs in their suit against Dr. Spanier," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
That's just what happened.
On May 19, 2005, Stabile testified in that litigation about his opposition to the two-campus proposal. He admitted during that dispute, "emotions were running high on both sides," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
During his testimony, Stabile described the reaction to GAA's opposition to the two-campus plan as "very hurtful to see us cast in this light. Stabile also admitted while testifying that he "was particularly hurt" to be "dismissed as . . . merely angry or somewhat of a malcontent."
"The standard for recusal requires a judge to recuse from hearing a matter where the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned," Spanier's lawyers wrote. "Recusal is warranted where a judge has a 'personal bias or interest which would preclude an impartial review' or where 'his participation in the matter would give the appearance of impropriety,'" Spanier's lawyers wrote.
It's not necessary for a judge to have an actual conflict of interest to recuse himself, Spanier's lawyers wrote. Merely having "an appearance of impropriety alone forms an independent basis for recusal even when no actual bias, unfairness, or prejudice is shown" on the judge's part, Spanier's lawyers wrote, quoting case law.
"Disqualification is mandatory 'in any proceeding in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned,' " Spanier's lawyers wrote. "Avoiding the appearance of impropriety . . . is mandatory."
"Judge Stabile should recuse from this matter because of his prior role in strenuously and personally opposing the actions of Dr. Spanier and Penn State University regarding Dickinson School of Law," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Stabile's past actions provide a "substantial basis to request Judge Stabile's recusal." Documents also reveal a "strident and personal reaction from Judge Stabile" to the proposals from Spanier and Penn State to move DSL, Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Stabile was "a leader of a faction of the alumni that severely criticized" Spanier, his lawyers wrote. In addition, Stabile and others "met, communicated, and prepared reports that attacked the motives, the integrity, and the competence of Dr. Spanier and other administrators involved in the two-campus proposal. Judge Stabile strongly opposed the proposal, actively worked to stop it [including by testifying in litigation filed against Dr. Spanier to accomplish this goal] and admitted that he was 'hurt' by the criticism of his opposition."
During the "bitter dispute over the two-campus proposal," Stabile "exhibited anger and personal animosity toward the Penn State administration, headed by Dr. Spanier," his lawyers wrote. Although "any bias or prejudice" against Spanier "may have diminished in the decade or so since the dispute took place," Stabile's partisan involvement "is something that should have been disclosed when Dr. Spanier's appeal was assigned to a panel that included Judge Stabile," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Then, Spanier's lawyers quoted the standard for judicial disclosure of an apparent conflict of interest:
"Where a court has specific knowledge of a private matter or situation in which his or her impartiality may reasonably be questioned, it is his duty to disclose that information to the parties."
Judge Stabile, Spanier's lawyers argued, clearly failed to meet that standard.
Spanier, convicted on June 24, 2017, was given a sentence of 4 to 12 months, with at least two months to be served in jail. His sentence, however, has been suspended pending his appeal.
The filing seeking the recusal of Judge Stabile was the second filing in the case made yesterday by Spanier's lawyers, who also appealed the state Superior Court's upholding of Spanier's conviction on technical grounds.
The basic problem is that the attorney general's office indicted Spanier on Nov. 1, 2012 for allegedly endangering the welfare of a child back in 2001, by supposedly not doing anything about the alleged shower rape witnessed by Mike McQueary.
The problem on appeal is that the statute of limitations for endangering the welfare of a child [EWOC] is two years, so the Commonwealth's indictment of Spanier missed the mark by more than a decade. To uphold Spanier's appeal, the Commonwealth invoked an exception to the statute of limitations that wasn't law until 2007, an exception that wasn't raised by the Commonwealth at trial, nor considered by the jury.
In a 15-page application for re-argument, filed yesterday, Spanier's lawyers argue that in upholding Spanier's conviction"on the basis of a statue-of-limitations exception the Commonwealth never raises constitutes a dramatic departure from longstanding due process jurisprudence." Under state law, the Commonwealth was required "to give a defendant notice on the specific basis on which it alleges a prosecution is timely," according to the brief written by Timothy K. Lewis, Samuel W. Silver and Bruce P. Merensteain of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP of Philadelphia. The same set of lawyers wrote the application for recusal of Judge Stabile.
In their application for re-argument, Spanier's lawyers argued that the Superior Court cannot uphold a conviction "when the jury was not instructed to find, and did not find, that the prosecution was timely."
There are other problems with the EWOC charge that the corrupt legal system of Pennsylvania fails to recognize -- even McQueary admitted in writing he never saw an anal rape of a 10-year-old boy by Sandusky, as alleged in the grand jury presentment. The marquee crime in that indictment amounts to fiction. A jury also found Sandusky not guilty of that crime. The victim has never come forward, and a concurrent federal investigation in 2012 by former NCIS Special Agent John Snedden, previously undisclosed, determined that McQueary was not a credible witness.
At Spanier's trial, according to his lawyers, it was the state's burden to give a criminal defendant notice when the prosecution is pulling some legal games to get around the statute of limitations, which in this case had clearly lapsed by more than 10 years.
The other legal problem with Spanier's conviction was that the state's original child endangerment law, passed in 1972, did not apply to Spanier when the alleged crime that never happened, the 2001 shower rape witnessed by McQueary, supposedly took place.
In 2001, the child endangerment law, as previously discussed on this blog, did not apply to supervisors such as Spanier; it only applied to people who had direct contact with children, such as parents, teachers and guardians.
In 2007, the state legislature amended the child endangerment law to include supervisors. So convicting Spanier of a law that wasn't in effect when the crime allegedly occurred violates what's know as "the Ex Post Facto and Due Process Clauses of the state and federal constitutions, which do not permit a jury to convict a defendant for violating a state statute enacted after the conduct on which the conviction is based," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
According to Spanier's lawyers, "Pennsylvania law is clear: the Commonwealth must provide a defendant with notice of the specific exception . . . on which it relies to salvage an otherwise time-barred prosecution" at a "reasonable time before trial."
The exception that the Superior Court relied on to get around the statute of limitations was enacted by the state Legislature when it amended the child endangerment statute in 2007 to include supervisors. According to the exception, if the victim who was abused was under 20 years of age when the abuse occurred, the victim had until his 50th birthday to file criminal charges.
But that exception wasn't even law when the shower rape that didn't happen allegedly occurred. Spanier's lawyers also point out that the jury was never instructed on the exception "despite Dr. Spanier's repeated requests that the jury be instructed on the statute of limitations."
"The trial court's failure to instruct the jury on what it must find to conclude that the prosecution was timely and the lack of a jury finding that the prosecution is timely renders Dr. Spanier's conviction invalid," his lawyers concluded.
"Over Dr. Spanier's objections, the trial court instructed the jury that it could find him guilty of child endangerment if, among other things, he employed or supervised someone else who was supervising the welfare of a child," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
But that language "did not become part of the child endangerment statue until January 2007, almost six years after the events on which Dr. Spanier's" conviction was based on," Spanier's brief states.
"An instruction that permitted the jury to convict Dr. Spanier of violating a statute that was not in existence at the time of the events forming the basis for that conviction is a violation of the Ex Post Facto and Due Process Clauses of the federal and state constitutions," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
In upholding Spanier's conviction, the Superior Court relied on a case known as the Commonwealth v. Lynn, as in Msgr. William J. Lynn, the former secretary for clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
In the Lynn case, Spanier's lawyers argue, the state Supreme Court held that Lynn was the "point man" who was "specifically responsible" for handling all child abuse allegations because he was "uniquely responsible for safeguarding all of their physical and moral welfare, and he supervised and directed the priests who directly interacted with [the children]."
But Spanier 's case doesn't measure up to these standards, his lawyers concluded.
"No evidence was presented that Dr. Spanier was the 'point man' for all child-abuse allegations, that he was 'specifically responsible' for handling such allegations, that he was 'uniquely responsible' for safeguarding the welfare of minor children, or that he supervised or directed an actual child abuser," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Sandusky was a retired former employee when the 2001 shower incident allegedly occurred.
The Lynn case, as previously disclosed on this blog, was cited by Judge Stabile a total of 34 times in 29 pages to justify his upholding of Spanier's conviction. But, as previously discussed on this blog, the Lynn case is another case of imaginary rape that's an embarrassment to law enforcement.
The alleged victim in the case, former altar boy Billy Doe, AKA Danny Gallagher, has been repeatedly exposed in court transcripts and records multiple times as a lying, scheming fraud. The most recent destruction of Gallagher's credibility was filed last year by retried Detective Joe Walsh. In a 12-page affidavit, Walsh, the former lead investigator on the case, wrote that he caught Gallagher in multiple lies, and that when cornered, Gallagher admitted to the detective that he had "just made stuff up." And when Walsh repeatedly brought Gallagher's lack of credibility to the prosecutor's attention, former assistant district attorney Mariana Sorensen, she replied, "You're killing my case."
On top of Danny Gallagher the fraudulent star witness, the corrupt prosecutor who brought the case is Rufus Seth Williams, now sitting in a federal prison after he admitted to 29 counts of political corruption.
In a 16-page application for recusal filed yesterday, Spanier's lawyers argue that state Superior Court Judge Victor P. Stabile should disqualify himself because he previously testified in a lawsuit against Penn State and Spanier, and also attacked Spanier in an old email as an "emperor" in "new clothes."
In the application for recusal, Spanier's lawyers seek the vacating of the Superior Court's decision upholding Spanier's conviction, and a chance to reargue their appeal before a new panel of judges, or the entire Superior Court.
In the email, McConnaughay informed Spanier that "between 2003 and 2006, Judge Stabile, then a lawyer in private practice, was a leader of a group of DSL alumni who were stridently opposed to Penn State's plans to either relocate DSL or to create a second campus of DSL in State College," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
While leading that opposition, Stabile "made critical personal comments about those Penn State administrators, including Dr. Spanier, who favored such a plan," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
"Emails and documents from that period that Dr. Spanier has obtained in the past few days demonstrate that there are grounds for Judge Stabile's recusal from participation in this matter. In light of this information, the Court should vacate the Panel's decision, and the matter should be reassigned and reargued before another panel or before the Court en banc."
Penn State had proposed moving DSL from it's longtime location in Carlisle, PA to Penn State's main campus in State College. The plan "was eventually abandoned in favor of a proposal to create a two-campus law school, with facilities in Carlisle and State College," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Both the plan to merge the two institutions, and the two-campus plan "met with substantial and vociferous opposition from a faction of the DSL alumni," Spanier's lawyers wrote. During that period, Stabile, a DSL graduate from 1982, was a member of DSL's General Alumni Association [GAA] board of directors. Stabile also served on a five-person committee of the GAA board that "criticized the proposal" put forward by Penn State, and in the process, "made several disparaging comments about those members of the Penn State administration who favored the proposal, including Dr. Spanier," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
"I still do not understand why Penn State bothered to merge Dickinson if it seems intent on changing everything about the school," Stabile wrote in a 2003 email. "They could have built their own damn school in State College and accomplished the same thing without eradicating an institution."
In another email a few days later, Stabile wrote about the plan to relocate DSL, "There is a certain arrogance here that is unacceptable."
In their brief, Spanier's lawyers cite emails critical of Spanier that were sent to the GAA, of which Stabile was a member, referring to "that chief hustler Spanier" who was allegedly "pushing for approval Saturday" of the two-campus proposal.
A report issued by the GAA board, endorsed by Stabile, described the Penn State administration as "incompetent" and criticized Spanier several times, Spanier's lawyers wrote.
"For example, the report questioned Dr. Spanier's motives in proposing the two-campus model and implied that he [Spanier] falsely attributed the original relocation idea to the DSL dean, rather than the Penn State administration," Spanier's lawyers wrote. "The report posed a rhetorical question regarding Dr. Spanier's alleged motives in putting forth the two-campus proposal: 'Surely it has nothing to do with an employment contract extended in 2003 and expiring in the next year?' "
In January 2005, the DSL Board of Governors met to vote on whether to agree with Penn State, and move forward with the two-campus plan. The day before the vote, Stabile sent an email to the GAA board, complaining that "I can't imagine why many think this is a great proposal. The emperor certainly has new clothes . . ."
"The crisis here has been been wholly fabricated by PSU," Stabile wrote. In the same email, Stabile also claimed that the two-campus plan would result in "complete subjugation by DSL."
"I have no more words left; the process that has proceeded through does not do justice to our profession, nonetheless to its leadership -- and this is an institution that teaches the rule of law!!" Stabile wrote. "Count me as embarrassed and disgusted."
In February 2005, three DSL alumni sued Penn State, Spanier, and the DSL board of governors, seeking to stop implementation of the two-campus plan. At a GAA board meeting a couple days later, Stabile "advocated intervening on behalf of the plaintiffs in their suit against Dr. Spanier," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
That's just what happened.
On May 19, 2005, Stabile testified in that litigation about his opposition to the two-campus proposal. He admitted during that dispute, "emotions were running high on both sides," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
During his testimony, Stabile described the reaction to GAA's opposition to the two-campus plan as "very hurtful to see us cast in this light. Stabile also admitted while testifying that he "was particularly hurt" to be "dismissed as . . . merely angry or somewhat of a malcontent."
"The standard for recusal requires a judge to recuse from hearing a matter where the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned," Spanier's lawyers wrote. "Recusal is warranted where a judge has a 'personal bias or interest which would preclude an impartial review' or where 'his participation in the matter would give the appearance of impropriety,'" Spanier's lawyers wrote.
It's not necessary for a judge to have an actual conflict of interest to recuse himself, Spanier's lawyers wrote. Merely having "an appearance of impropriety alone forms an independent basis for recusal even when no actual bias, unfairness, or prejudice is shown" on the judge's part, Spanier's lawyers wrote, quoting case law.
"Disqualification is mandatory 'in any proceeding in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned,' " Spanier's lawyers wrote. "Avoiding the appearance of impropriety . . . is mandatory."
"Judge Stabile should recuse from this matter because of his prior role in strenuously and personally opposing the actions of Dr. Spanier and Penn State University regarding Dickinson School of Law," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Stabile was "a leader of a faction of the alumni that severely criticized" Spanier, his lawyers wrote. In addition, Stabile and others "met, communicated, and prepared reports that attacked the motives, the integrity, and the competence of Dr. Spanier and other administrators involved in the two-campus proposal. Judge Stabile strongly opposed the proposal, actively worked to stop it [including by testifying in litigation filed against Dr. Spanier to accomplish this goal] and admitted that he was 'hurt' by the criticism of his opposition."
During the "bitter dispute over the two-campus proposal," Stabile "exhibited anger and personal animosity toward the Penn State administration, headed by Dr. Spanier," his lawyers wrote. Although "any bias or prejudice" against Spanier "may have diminished in the decade or so since the dispute took place," Stabile's partisan involvement "is something that should have been disclosed when Dr. Spanier's appeal was assigned to a panel that included Judge Stabile," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Then, Spanier's lawyers quoted the standard for judicial disclosure of an apparent conflict of interest:
"Where a court has specific knowledge of a private matter or situation in which his or her impartiality may reasonably be questioned, it is his duty to disclose that information to the parties."
Judge Stabile, Spanier's lawyers argued, clearly failed to meet that standard.
Spanier, convicted on June 24, 2017, was given a sentence of 4 to 12 months, with at least two months to be served in jail. His sentence, however, has been suspended pending his appeal.
The basic problem is that the attorney general's office indicted Spanier on Nov. 1, 2012 for allegedly endangering the welfare of a child back in 2001, by supposedly not doing anything about the alleged shower rape witnessed by Mike McQueary.
The problem on appeal is that the statute of limitations for endangering the welfare of a child [EWOC] is two years, so the Commonwealth's indictment of Spanier missed the mark by more than a decade. To uphold Spanier's appeal, the Commonwealth invoked an exception to the statute of limitations that wasn't law until 2007, an exception that wasn't raised by the Commonwealth at trial, nor considered by the jury.
In a 15-page application for re-argument, filed yesterday, Spanier's lawyers argue that in upholding Spanier's conviction"on the basis of a statue-of-limitations exception the Commonwealth never raises constitutes a dramatic departure from longstanding due process jurisprudence." Under state law, the Commonwealth was required "to give a defendant notice on the specific basis on which it alleges a prosecution is timely," according to the brief written by Timothy K. Lewis, Samuel W. Silver and Bruce P. Merensteain of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP of Philadelphia. The same set of lawyers wrote the application for recusal of Judge Stabile.
In their application for re-argument, Spanier's lawyers argued that the Superior Court cannot uphold a conviction "when the jury was not instructed to find, and did not find, that the prosecution was timely."
At Spanier's trial, according to his lawyers, it was the state's burden to give a criminal defendant notice when the prosecution is pulling some legal games to get around the statute of limitations, which in this case had clearly lapsed by more than 10 years.
The other legal problem with Spanier's conviction was that the state's original child endangerment law, passed in 1972, did not apply to Spanier when the alleged crime that never happened, the 2001 shower rape witnessed by McQueary, supposedly took place.
In 2001, the child endangerment law, as previously discussed on this blog, did not apply to supervisors such as Spanier; it only applied to people who had direct contact with children, such as parents, teachers and guardians.
In 2007, the state legislature amended the child endangerment law to include supervisors. So convicting Spanier of a law that wasn't in effect when the crime allegedly occurred violates what's know as "the Ex Post Facto and Due Process Clauses of the state and federal constitutions, which do not permit a jury to convict a defendant for violating a state statute enacted after the conduct on which the conviction is based," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
According to Spanier's lawyers, "Pennsylvania law is clear: the Commonwealth must provide a defendant with notice of the specific exception . . . on which it relies to salvage an otherwise time-barred prosecution" at a "reasonable time before trial."
The exception that the Superior Court relied on to get around the statute of limitations was enacted by the state Legislature when it amended the child endangerment statute in 2007 to include supervisors. According to the exception, if the victim who was abused was under 20 years of age when the abuse occurred, the victim had until his 50th birthday to file criminal charges.
But that exception wasn't even law when the shower rape that didn't happen allegedly occurred. Spanier's lawyers also point out that the jury was never instructed on the exception "despite Dr. Spanier's repeated requests that the jury be instructed on the statute of limitations."
"The trial court's failure to instruct the jury on what it must find to conclude that the prosecution was timely and the lack of a jury finding that the prosecution is timely renders Dr. Spanier's conviction invalid," his lawyers concluded.
"Over Dr. Spanier's objections, the trial court instructed the jury that it could find him guilty of child endangerment if, among other things, he employed or supervised someone else who was supervising the welfare of a child," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
But that language "did not become part of the child endangerment statue until January 2007, almost six years after the events on which Dr. Spanier's" conviction was based on," Spanier's brief states.
"An instruction that permitted the jury to convict Dr. Spanier of violating a statute that was not in existence at the time of the events forming the basis for that conviction is a violation of the Ex Post Facto and Due Process Clauses of the federal and state constitutions," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
In the Lynn case, Spanier's lawyers argue, the state Supreme Court held that Lynn was the "point man" who was "specifically responsible" for handling all child abuse allegations because he was "uniquely responsible for safeguarding all of their physical and moral welfare, and he supervised and directed the priests who directly interacted with [the children]."
But Spanier 's case doesn't measure up to these standards, his lawyers concluded.
"No evidence was presented that Dr. Spanier was the 'point man' for all child-abuse allegations, that he was 'specifically responsible' for handling such allegations, that he was 'uniquely responsible' for safeguarding the welfare of minor children, or that he supervised or directed an actual child abuser," Spanier's lawyers wrote.
Sandusky was a retired former employee when the 2001 shower incident allegedly occurred.
The Lynn case, as previously disclosed on this blog, was cited by Judge Stabile a total of 34 times in 29 pages to justify his upholding of Spanier's conviction. But, as previously discussed on this blog, the Lynn case is another case of imaginary rape that's an embarrassment to law enforcement.
The alleged victim in the case, former altar boy Billy Doe, AKA Danny Gallagher, has been repeatedly exposed in court transcripts and records multiple times as a lying, scheming fraud. The most recent destruction of Gallagher's credibility was filed last year by retried Detective Joe Walsh. In a 12-page affidavit, Walsh, the former lead investigator on the case, wrote that he caught Gallagher in multiple lies, and that when cornered, Gallagher admitted to the detective that he had "just made stuff up." And when Walsh repeatedly brought Gallagher's lack of credibility to the prosecutor's attention, former assistant district attorney Mariana Sorensen, she replied, "You're killing my case."
On top of Danny Gallagher the fraudulent star witness, the corrupt prosecutor who brought the case is Rufus Seth Williams, now sitting in a federal prison after he admitted to 29 counts of political corruption.
Key was Dranov.
On Friday, Nov 11, 2011, Sara Ganim, who had publicly identified Mike McQueary as the “graduate assistant” in the grand jury presentment who had supposedly witnessed Sandusky sodomizing a boy in the shower, wrote that McQueary was “getting blasted by the public for doing too little.”
He had received several death threats. The same day, newly appointed Penn State President Rodney Erickson announced that McQueary was being placed on administrative leave “after it became clear he could not continue coaching.” Erickson pointedly continued: "Never again should anyone at Penn State feel scared to do the right thing.”
McQueary was hard to miss around town. He stood six feet five inches, topped by short bristles of bright orange-red hair, which gave him the nickname Big Red. Now people were asking one another, “Why didn’t Big Red stop it?”
On Tuesday, McQueary had called an emotional meeting with his Penn State players. He looked pale and his hands were shaking.
“I’m not sure what is going to happen to me,” he said. He cried as he talked about the Sandusky shower incident. According to one of the players, “He said he had some regret that he didn’t stop it.”
Then McQueary revealed that he himself had been molested as a child. Perhaps because he had been sexually abused, McQueary was particularly alert to possible abuse, and so he leaped to the conclusion that the slapping sounds he heard in the Lasch Building locker room were sexual.
It is clear from the testimony of Dr. Dranov and others, however, that McQueary did not witness sodomy that night in February 2001. He thought something sexual was happening, but as he emphasized later, the entire episode lasted 30 to 45 seconds, he heard the sounds for only a few seconds, and his glance in the mirror was even quicker.
Ten years after the event, his memory had shifted and amplified, after the police told him that they had other Sandusky victims. Under that influence, his memory made the episode much more sexually graphic.
As I have written previously, all memory is reconstructive and is subject to distortion. That is particularly true when many years have intervened, and when current attitudes influence recall of those distant events. It is worthwhile quoting here from psychologist Daniel Reisberg’s 2014 book, The Science of Perception and Memory: A Pragmatic Guide for the Justice System.
“Connections between a specific memory and other, more generic knowledge can allow the other knowledge to intrude into our recollection,” Reiserberg notes. “Thus, a witness might remember the robber threatening violence merely because threats are part of the witness’s cognitive ‘schema’ for how robberies typically unfold.”
That appears to be what happened to McQueary, who had a “schema” of what child sexual abuse in a shower would look like. He had thought at the time that some kind of sexual activity must have occurred in the shower. The police were telling him that they had other witnesses claiming that Sandusky had molested them. Thinking back to that long-ago night, McQueary now visualized a scene that never occurred, but the more he rehearsed it in his memory, the more real it became to him.
“As your memory for an episode becomes more and more interwoven with other thoughts you’ve had about that episode, it can become difficult to keep track of which elements are linked to the episode because they were, in truth, part of the episode itself and which are linked merely because they are associated with the episode in your thoughts,” Reisberg writes. That process “can produce intrusion errors – so that elements that were part of your thinking get misremembered as being actually part of the original experience.”
In conclusion, Reisberg writes, “It is remarkably easy to alter someone’s memory, with the result that the past as the person remembers it differs from the past as it really was.”
On Nov. 23, 2010, McQueary wrote out a statement for the police in which he said he had glanced in a mirror at a 45 degree angle over his right shoulder and saw the reflection of a boy facing a wall with Sandusky standing directly behind him.
“I am certain that sexual acts/the young boy being sodomized was occuring [sic],” McQueary wrote. “I looked away. In a hurried/hastened state, I finished at my locker. I proceeded out of the locker room. While walking I looked directly into the shower and both the boy and Jerry Sandusky looked directly in my direction.”
But it is extremely unlikely that this ten-year-later account is accurate. Dranov was adamant that McQueary did not say that he saw anything sexual. When former Penn State football player Gary Gray went to see Joe Paterno in December 2011, the month before he died, Gray told Paterno that he still had a hard time believing that Sandusky had molested those children. “You and me both,” Paterno said.
In a letter to the Penn State Board of Trustees after the trial, Gray recalled their conversation about McQueary’s telling Paterno about the shower incident. “Joe said that McQueary had told him that he had seen Jerry engaged in horseplay or horsing around with a young boy. McQueary wasn’t sure what was happening, but he said that it made him feel uncomfortable. In recounting McQueary’s conversation to me, Coach Paterno did not use any terms with sexual overtones.”
Similarly, in November 2011, when biographer Joe Posnanski asked Paterno about what McQueary told him back in 2001, Paterno told him, “I think he said he didn’t really see anything. He said he might have seen something in a mirror. But he told me he wasn’t sure he saw anything. He just said the whole thing made him uncomfortable.”
If McQueary had told Paterno, Curley or other administrators that he had seen Sandusky in such a sexual position with the boy, it is inconceivable that they would not have turned the matter over to the police.
This was not a “cover-up.” Sandusky didn’t even work for Penn State by the time of the incident, so what was there to cover up? Paterno and Sandusky had never really liked one another, and Paterno was famed for his integrity and honesty. If he thought Sandusky was molesting a child in the shower, he would undoubtedly have called the police.
It is clear that Paterno, Curley, Schultz, and Spanier took the incident for what it apparently was – McQueary hearing slapping sounds that he misinterpreted as being sexual.
McQueary gave five different versions of what he heard and saw, but all were reconstructed memories over a decade after the fact. They changed a bit over time, but none of them are reliable.
McQueary had painted himself into a difficult corner. If he had really seen something so horrendous, why hadn’t he rushed into the shower to stop it? Why hadn’t he gone to the police? Why hadn’t he followed up with Paterno or other Penn State administrators to make sure something was being done? Why had he continued to act friendly towards Sandusky, even taking part in golfing events with him?
When angry people began to ask these questions, that first week in November 2011, McQueary emailed a friend. "I did stop it not physically but made sure it was stopped when I left that locker room,” he wrote. He now said that he had in essence contacted the police about the incident by alerting Joe Paterno, which led to Gary Schultz talking to him about it, and Schultz was the administrator the campus police reported to.
“No one can imagine my thoughts or wants to be in my shoes for those 30-45 seconds," McQueary said. "Trust me…. I am getting hammered for handling this the right way ... or what I thought at the time was right … I had to make tough, impacting quick decisions.”
Subsequently, McQueary changed his story somewhat. He now recalled that he had loudly slammed his locker door, which made Sandusky stop the abuse, and that he had taken yet a third look in the shower to make sure they had remained apart.
At the trial, he said that he had “glanced” in the mirror for “one or two seconds,” then lengthened his estimate to “three or four seconds, five seconds maybe.” During that brief glance, he now said that he had time to see Sandusky standing behind a boy whose hands were against the shower wall, and that he saw “very slow, slow, subtle movement” of his midsection.
But neither the newly created sodomy scene nor the slammed locker would save McQueary
By the time of the trial, eight accusers had been “developed,” as Assistant Attorney General Jonelle Eshbach put it. But Allan Myers, the boy in the shower in the McQueary incident, had been so public and vehement in his previous defense of Sandusky that the prosecution did not dare call him to testify.
When police inspector Joseph Leiter first interviewed him on September 20, 2011, Myers had emphatically denied that Sandusky had abused him or made him uncomfortable in any way.
After the Grand Jury Presentment was published on November 5, 2011, with its allegations that Mike McQueary had witnessed sodomy in a locker room shower, Myers realized that he was “Victim 2,” the boy in the shower that night, but that the sounds McQueary heard were just snapping towels or slap boxing. Myers then gave a detailed statement to Joseph Amendola’s investigator, Curtis Everhart, denying that Sandusky had ever abused him.
But within two weeks, Myers had become a client of Andrew Shubin. For months, Shubin refused to let the police interview Myers without Shubin being present, and he apparently hid Myers in a remote Pennsylvania hunting cabin to keep them from finding him.
After a February 10, 2012, hearing, Shubin verbally assaulted Anthony Sassano, an agent for the attorney general's office, outside the courthouse, cursing him roundly. “He was very vulgar, critical of me,” Sassano recalled. “Let’s call it unprofessional [language], for an attorney.”
Shubin was angry because the Attorney General’s Office wouldn’t interview Myers, who, he claimed, had stayed at Sandusky’s house “over 100 times” where he had been subjected to “both oral and anal sex.” But the police still refused to allow Shubin to be present during any interview.
Soon afterwards, Shubin relented, allowing a postal inspector named Michael Corricelli to talk to Allan Myers alone on February 28, 2012. But during the three-hour interview, Myers never said Sandusky had abused him. On March 8, Corricelli tried again, but Myers again failed to provide any stories of molestation. On March 16, Corricelli brought Myers to the police barracks for a third interview in which Anthony Sassano took part. Asked about three out-of-state trips, Myers denied any sexual contact and said that Sandusky had only tucked him into bed.
“He did not recall the first time he was abused by Sandusky,” Sassano wrote in his notes, nor did Myers recall how many times he was abused. “He indicated it is hard to talk about the Sandusky sexual abuse because Sandusky was like a father to him.” Finally, Myers said that on a trip to Erie, Pennsylvania, Sandusky put his hand inside his pants and touched his penis. Sassano tried valiantly to get more out of him, asking whether Sandusky had tried to put Myers’ hand on his own penis or whether that had been oral sex. No.
Still, Myers now estimated that there had been ten sexual abuse events and that the last one was in the shower incident that McQeary overheard. “I attempted to have Myers elaborate on the sexual contact he had with Sandusky, but he refused by saying he wasn’t ready to talk about the specifics,” Sassano wrote. Myers said that he had not given anyone, including his attorneys, such details. “This is in contrast to what Shubin told me,” Sassano noted.
On April 3, 2012, Corricelli and Sassano were schedule to meet yet again with the reluctant Allan Myers, but he didn’t show up, saying that he was “too upset” by a friend’s death.
“Corricelli indicated that Attorney Shubin advised him that Myers had related to him incidents of oral, anal, and digital penetration by Sandusky,” Sassano wrote in his report. “Shubin showed Corricelli a three page document purported to be Myers’ recollection of his sexual contact with Sandusky. Corricelli examined the document and indicated to me that he suspected the document was written by Attorney Shubin. I advised that I did not want a copy of a document that was suspected to be written by Attorney Shubin.” Sassano concluded: “At this time, I don’t anticipate further investigation concerning Allan Myers.”
That is how things stood as the Sandusky trial was about to begin. Karl Rominger wanted to call Myers to testify as a defense witness, but Amendola refused. “I was told that there was a détente and an understanding that both sides would simply not identify Victim Number 2,” Rominger later recalled. The prosecution didn’t want such a weak witness who had given a strong exculpatory statement to Curtis Everhart. Amendola didn’t want a defense witness who was now claiming to be an abuse victim. “So they decided to punt, to use an analogy,” Rominger concluded.
Mike McQueary Takes The Stand [From Chapter 15]
Mike McQueary then took the stand to tell his latest version of the shower incident with “Victim 2” (i.e., the unnamed Allan Myers), where he heard “showers running and smacking sounds, very much skin-on-skin smacking sounds.” (Later in his testimony, he said he heard only two or three slapping sounds that lasted two or three seconds.) He had re-framed and re-examined his memory of the event “many, many, many times,” he said, and he was now certain that he had looked into the shower three separate times, for one or two secondseach, and that he saw “Coach Sandusky standing behind a boy who is propped up against the shower. The showers are running and, and he is right up against his back with his front. The boy’s hands are up on the wall.” He saw “very slow, slow, subtle movement.” After he slammed his locker, McQueary said, they separated and faced him. Surprisingly, he said that Sandusky did not have an erection. When Amendola failed to object, Judge Cleland inserted himself, obviously fearful of future appeal or post-conviction relief issues. “Wait, wait, wait, just a second,” he warned McGettigan. “I think you have to be very careful for you not to lead this witness.”A few minutes later, the judge asked both lawyers to approach the bench. “I don’t know why you’re not getting objections to this grossly leading [questioning],” he told McGettigan, who said, “I’m just trying to get through it fast.”McQueary recounted how he had met with Joe Paterno.“I made sure he knew it was sexual and that it was wrong, [but] I did not go into gross detail.” Later, he said, he met with Tim Curley, the Penn State athletic director, and Gary Schultz, a university vice president. In an email quoted during his testimony, McQueary had written, “I had discussions with the police and with the official at the university in charge of the police.” He now explained that by this he meant just one person, since Schultz oversaw the university police department. With only an hour’s warning, Joe Amendola asked Karl Rominger to conduct the cross-examination of McQueary and handed him the file. Rominger did the best he could, asking McQueary why in 2010 he had told the police that he’d looked into the showers twice but had now added a third viewing, and he questioned him about his misremembering that the shower incident occurred in 2002 rather than 2001. Rominger also noted that McQueary had told the grand jury, “I was nervous and flustered, so I just didn’t do anything to stop it.” Now he was saying that he slammed the locker, which allegedly ended the incident. Without meaning to, McQueary indirectly helped Sandusky’s case by explaining the demanding work schedule of a Penn State football coach, typically reporting to work Sunday through Tuesday at 7 a.m. and working until 10 p.m. or later. Then, Wednesday through Friday, it was 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. If Sandusky kept the same hours, it was difficult to see when he would have managed to molest all those boys, at least during preseason training and football season.
Finally, McQueary revealed that he had filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Penn State for having removed him from his football coaching job in the midst of the Sandusky scandal. “I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong to lose that job," he said.
In his brief appearance for the defense, physician Jonathan Dranov recalled the February night in 2001 that his friend and employee, John McQueary, had called to ask him around 9 p.m. to come over, because his son Mike was upset by something that had happened in a Penn State locker room.
When he came in, Mike was sitting on the couch, “visibly shaken and upset.” The younger McQueary said he had gone to the locker room to put away some new sneakers and “he heard what he described as sexual sounds.”
Dranov asked him what he meant. “Well, sexual sounds, you know what they are,” McQueary said. “No, Mike, you know, what do you mean?” But he didn’t explain. “He just seemed to get a little bit more upset. So I kind of left that.”
McQueary told him that he looked toward the shower “and a young boy looked around. He made eye contact with the boy.” Dranov asked him if the boy seemed upset or frightened, and McQueary said he did not. Then, as Dranov recalled, McQueary said that “an arm reached out and pulled the boy back.”
Was that all he saw? No, McQueary said “something about going back to his locker, and then he turned around and faced the shower room and a man came out, and it was Jerry Sandusky.” Dranov asked McQueary three times if he had actually witnessed a sexual act. “I kept saying, ‘What did you see?’ and each time he [Mike] would come back to the sounds. I kept saying, ‘But what did you see?’ “And it just seemed to make him more upset, so I back off that.”
Karl Rominger asked Dranov, “You’re a mandatory reporter?” Yes, he was, meaning that he was legally bound to report criminal sexual activity to the police. He did not do that, since he obviously didn’t conclude that it was warranted. He only told Mike McQueary to report the incident to his immediate supervisor, Joe Paterno.
As a follow-up witness, a Second Mile administrator named Henry Lesch explained that he had been in charge of the annual golf tournament, in which Mike McQueary had played in June 2001 and 2003. The implication was that this seemed strange behavior, supporting an activity in which Jerry Sandusky was a leading sponsor and participant, if McQueary had witnessed sodomy in the shower in February 2001.
One last hearing took place three months later, on November 4, 2016, when Allan Myers finally took the stand. He had evaded all subpoena attempts for the August hearings. Jerry Sandusky could hardly
recognize the overweight, bearded, sullen 29-year-old, who clearly didn’t want to be there.
He wouldn’t use Sandusky’s name, referring to him as “your client” in response to Al Lindsay’s questions. Yes, he had gone to the Second Mile camps for a couple of years “until your client hand-picked me,” he said. He admitted, however, that he had regarded Sandusky as a father figure and that he had lived with the Sandusky’s the summer of 2005, before he attended Penn State. “I left because he was controlling,” Myers said.
Lindsay had him read the notes of his September 2011 police interview, in which he said that Sandusky never made him uncomfortable and had not abused him, and that he didn’t believe any of the allegations.
“That would reflect what I said then,” Myers said, “not what I would say now.” That would become his refrain during his testimony, which appeared to be well-rehearsed, along with “I don’t recall.”
Yes, he had told Curtis Everhart that “Jerry never violated me while I was at his home or anywhere else….I felt very safe and at ease at his home, whether alone with Jerry or with others present.” Yes, he had denied any anal or oral intercourse or any abuse at all. “That’s what I said then," he said.
Yes, Shubin was Myers’ lawyer for his DUI charge, and then he represented him as a claimed Sandusky victim, and yes, he had received a settlement from Penn State. And yes, he said, he was Victim 2.
During her cross-examination, Jennifer Peterson asked Myers, “And you told him [Anthony Sassano] that you were sexually abused by Mr. Sandusky, right?” Surprisingly, he didn’t agree. “I don’t remember exactly what I said in the meetings. I know then I was more forthcoming, but not all the way coming, because still processing everything and dealing with it.” It sounded as if he might have been in repressed memory therapy.
Peterson asked again, “Were you sexually abused?” This time he answered, “Yes,” although he didn’t actually say that it was Sandusky who had abused him. And there the matter was left.
* * *
Meanwhile, several Sandusky-related legal decisions came down, all of them relying on the truth of the abuse narrative.
Three weeks before Cleland’s recusal, Mike McQueary won his whistleblower lawsuit against Penn State, with the jury awarding the former Penn State coach $7.3 million.
At the end of November 2016, Judge Thomas Gavin ruled that that amount wasn’t enough, so he added another $5 million. In doing so, he cited prosecutor Jonelle Eshbach’s testimony during the trial that McQueary had been a terrific grand jury witness: “He was rock solid in his testimony as to what he had seen,” Eshbach said. “He was very articulate. His memory was excellent.”
Eshbach, the author of the notorious Grand Jury Presentment, was correct that McQueary had been articulate, but his “rock solid” testimony had morphed from what he told his father and Jonathon Dranov in February 2001 – that he heard sounds but witnessed no sexual abuse – to his grand jury testimony ten years later.
And he kept modifying his story and memory after that. Nonetheless, the judge ruled that McQueary had suffered “humiliation” when Graham Spanier publicly supported Curley and Schultz, which by implication impugned the assistant coach. Gavin later added another $1.7 million to pay for McQueary’s lawyers’ fees.
The Fallout [From Chapter 23]
Former federal investigator John Snedden, who interviewed many players in the Penn State drama soon after the trial, concluded that there was no cover-up because there was nothing to cover up. Mike McQueary had only heard slapping sounds in the shower. If McQueary really thought he was witnessing a sexual assault on a child, Snedden said, wouldn't he have intervened to stop a "wet, defenseless naked 57-year-old guy in the shower?"
Snedden’s boss told him, as a rookie agent, that the first question to ask in an investigation is, “Where is the crime?” In this case, there didn’t appear to be one. "I've never had a rape case successfully prosecuted based only on sounds, and without credible victims and witnesses.”
* * *
In 2016, psychologist Julia Shaw published The Memory Illusion, a summary of her own and others’ work. “[My colleagues and] I have convinced people they have committed crimes that never occurred, suffered from a physical injury they never had, or were attacked by a dog when no such attack ever took place,” she wrote.
The Memory Hackers (2016), a Nova public television program, featured one of Shaw’s subjects recalling an illusory crime in three sessions. In that study, over 70 percent of her subjects developed false memories.
“What could have been turns into what would have been turns into what was,” the experimental psychologist explained. Her conclusion? “Any event, no matter how important, emotional or traumatic it may seem, can be…misremembered, or even be entirely fictitious…. All of us can come to confidently and vividly remember entire events that never actually took place.”
Experimental psychologist Frederic Bartlett made similar observations in his classic 1932 text, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. Our memories, he noted, “live with our interests and with them they change.” We tend to incorporate details of what really happened, along with other inserted elements, perhaps from a movie we saw or a book we read, or a story someone else told us. This kind of “source amnesia” is amazingly common. In fact, many of us are sure something happened to us, when it was our sibling who actually experienced it.
That is how Mike McQueary’s memory of the infamous 2001 shower changed. The night of the shower, he said he had heard slapping sounds but had not seen anything incriminating. Ten years later, his retrospective bias led him to have questionable memories of seeing Sandusky moving his hips behind a boy in the shower. With rehearsal, his new memories were solidified, and he became quite confident in them. That phenomenon, called “the illusion of confidence” by The Invisible Gorilla authors, is not unusual, either.
There may have been other factors influencing McQueary's recollections of that infamous shower incident.
When he was first contacted by police, Mike McQueary, at that time a married man, apparently sent a “sexting” photo of his own penis to a female Penn State student in April 2010. He may have thought that was why the police wanted to talk to him, and why he didn’t want to meet with them in his home.
ESPN journalist Don Van Natta, Jr, initially intended to include this information in a feature article about McQueary, but it was cut from the published piece.
In 2017 McQueary, now divorced, texted another photo of his erect penis to a woman. Investigator John Ziegler obtained the text messages and photo and published them at framingpaterno.com.
None of the garbage you post, and it is garbage is anything that changes what happened. It's all conjecture written by people who did not have the same level of access that he had.
Oh, I've brought that up before. They just revert to the "Well, they found him guilty so it doesn't matter" card.@PSU2UNC You should be jamming this up BnB's butt.
Jury foreman calls guilty verdict against Spanier a 'mistake'
Jury foreman calls guilty verdict against Spanier a 'mistake'
Which is almost as ridiculous as their "well....they must be guilty because the jury found them guilty"
You realize you are arguing with a bot here, right? And not "JoeBot" (ridiculous term) but an actual AI account. I think some student wrote the code as a project and just left it here.
Also, LOL at your super secret detective friend. Sure, buddy. Do you also have a girlfriend from camp who lives in Toronto? LOL.
Everything you believe in is deluded bs. What I'm telling you is the truth. You will carry on your sad, pathetic one man show for years is my guess. And down the road maybe one day you'll realize all the time you wasted , but probably not.
At least I'm not wasting my time writing to Jerot.... 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣
You made up background is the type of lie that a person who lives in mommies basement would tell.
Yet you do so that argument makes no sense
You have not.
As much as you have to show you are telling the truth about your background.
Won't get you put in for two months Rooster. Plus, anyone who calls Reckless Driving a "traffic ticket" is an imbecile. But then with you I repeat myself.
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You left out this key quote from that jury foreman: "They did that," Black said of Spanier, Curley and Schultz. "They were more interested in protecting the brand than in protecting the children."@PSU2UNC You should be jamming this up BnB's butt.
Jury foreman calls guilty verdict against Spanier a 'mistake'
Jury foreman calls guilty verdict against Spanier a 'mistake'
Jam THAT UP YOUR BUTT
No, we bring this quote up by that foreman: "They did that," Black said of Spanier, Curley and Schultz. "They were more interested in protecting the brand than in protecting the children."
No they were found guilty because THEY ARE guilty. Pretty simple really.
No they aren't
Poor analogy.
No it does not
CSS and Joe made it about protecting the brand of the university. Which was football
Not really. They straightened up their act and the sanctions were eased. Plus, the B1G sucks.
That is a square circle. You can't have sanctions without infractions. This is bad logic to say otherwise. Even for you.
No, your wasting your time defending a pedophile and his enablers.
It completely relevant to the case, unlike the fantasies bandied about here.
What a jury does is prove or disproves the prosecutions case. Until a possible appeal in a guilty verdict of course.
It's a fact, guilty or not guilty . They call it a decision .
Nothing has "come out" as you say. We have a lot of spin, nothing else . The evidence they have , the totality of it, paints a very clear picture that they covered it up.
Since you're an engineer I'll explain it to you slowly, you guys need directions to make toast. You know, first plug in the toaster. Then take the bread out of the bag...
I'm friends with a detective on the case. He is certain of their actions . And he knows more than any of these others making silly claims such as Snedden. Who never interviewed certain people and who did not have access to all the state's materials .
He wrote an op Ed essentially, low on facts high on speculation. It's laughable that people like you buy into it.
Yet another guy on the internet who claims he has “insider” information that refutes John Ziegler, John Snedden, Ralph Cipriano, etc. But refuses to share exactly what that information is.
Or maybe his buddy was one of the detectives who perjured himself with regard to being asked about how they coaxed “Victim 4” into giving them the words they wanted to hear?
Yeah , refuting a bunch of conspiracy theorists who had no access to anything other than published materials.
You guys act like there weren't any trials . Pathetic.
Get back to me when somehow, somewhere your nonsense gains major media traction. It won't .
Yeah, the state had a keen interest in not letting all of the evidence against CSS become public. They really wanted to keep the good stuff under wraps.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Show me any perjury charges against any investigators? I'll wait . Forever.
You have a poor understanding how things work. It's why s detain amount of victims testify . There's no need to introduce every piece of material in a trial. However both the state and the defense both have everything.
So if these guys are so innocent why aren't they demanding the truth come out to clear their name? If joe had no knowledge why aren't certain folk speaking out on this matter publicly? Why isn't Ganter or Bradley doing the interview circuit? You'd think it would be a slam dunk , don't you ? Why isn't Jay or Scott writing some tell all book?
That would be a great way to get the truth out there.
Because in this case, the truth doesn't matter. The narrative is set. No one wants to admit they were wrong. And all everyone wants to do is to win the competition for who hates child molestation the most. Whether it happened, or not.
I firmly believe that every trial and settlement "victim" in this case could hold a televised press conference where they all confess that they were lying, and people would STILL think Jerry, Tim, Graham, Gary, and Joe were guilty.
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That's not accurate. Because they did what they're accused of doing. That's your answer. You're right about the narrative being set, it's set because it's true.
This is like a little dream world for fan boys , an echo chamber where they can pretend it never happened. But it did unfortunately.
All they had to do was play it straight in 98. The Chambers / Seasock thing made it impossible to spin 02. So they slow played it all.
Investigative journalist Ralph Cipriano of bigtrial blog has another excellent blog post on how John Barr and ESPN blew it big time and completely missed the part in their E60 "documentary" on Joe Paterno. Imho Ralph has been the journalist who has done the best job in unraveling the fiasco including over 60 comprehensive, hard hitting articles on the Penn State Sex Abuse Scandal that describe the shenanigans that have occurred and those responsible for this travesty of justice.
www.bigtrial.net
Woke Disney's Toy Department Serves Up Sentimental Hogwash
By Ralph Cipriano for BigTrial.net In serving up "The Paterno Legacy," ESPN, the official toy department of the woke Walt Disney Company, ha...
You choose to believe the prosecutors and investigators, most of who were all sanctioned following the events of this case for various wrongdoings, including losing their law licenses. I will choose to believe Joe, Gary, Tim, and Graham, all people with impeccable reputations as men with life long histories of doing the right thing. I think I like my chances of being right.
Constitutionally, they are. And in our legal system, it's (unlike, for example, the French) innocent until proven guilty. Not proven guilty--by our legal standards-- is "innocent".
But that's the way it used to be. These days folks act as it you are guilty once any accusation is made and want to skip over the trial and go right to sentencing.
And I am speaking generally here and not about this case in specific.
Thank you for recognizing the difference and distinction between what is a factual piece of data, and what is an opinion (or a decision to use your words).
There still is no factual data that Sandusky abused any child.
It is a fact that a jury 'decided' that they believed the accusers stories (as outlandish and absurd as many seem to be). That is an opinion.
For those who are interested, here is a replay of yesterday's Search Warrant podcast that is carried live on KGRA radio from 3-4 pm EDT every Wednesday. Search Warrant has devoted the entire hour of the last 3 shows to the Penn State fiasco and look to discuss it on a regular basis going forward. The show is moderated by veteran NCIS special agent John Snedden and the regular guests for the Penn State discussions include investigative journalist Ralph Cipriano and coach Dick Anderson. The theme of yesterdays's show was an autopsy of ESPN's E60 "documentary" on the legacy of Joe Paterno and yesterday's special guest was Dottie Sandusky. Graham Spanier who was on last week couldn't make it due to a last minute family emergency, but will be back in 2 weeks.
You are free to ignore. If you truly believe it is useless drivel, why do you respond?
