Ziegler missed the obvious.
Before Myers was brought in as a witness, Sandusky was sworn in and the judge explained to him that since nobody knew what Myers was going to say, his testimony "could be harmful to your case."
So is this a chance you're willing to take, the judge asked. Sandusky told the judge his mind was made up.
"It is my decision to have Allan Myers testify," Sandusky told the judge.
Myers, a former Marine, testified that he originally got to know the former Penn State assistant football coach through his Second Mile charity.
"Did you think of Mr. Sandusky as a father figure," Alexander Lindsay, Sandusky's lawyer, asked.
"Yes, I did," Myers said.
Myers was shown a picture of himself posing with Sandusky at Myers's wedding. Lindsay asked if Myers remembered when that picture was taken.
"That I do not remember," Myers said.
Lindsay showed Myers a photo of a football camp when Myers served as a coach, and posed for a picture with some boys, along with Sandusky. Lindsay asked Myers how old he was in the photo.
"I don't remember," Myers said. "I don't even know what year that was."
"Well, were you an adult," Lindsay asked. "Do you know that?"
"I wasn't an adult," Myers said.
"Can you give us any estimate of your age," the lawyer asked.
"No," Myers said.
Myers recalled that he lived in Sandusky's home "right after I graduated high school to attend Penn State."
"And I left there because he [Sandusky] was controlling and I left," Myers said. "And that was the end that I ever lived with him."
Sandusky was controlling, Myers said, but he didn't say anything about Sandusky being abusive.
Lindsay asked Myers if he remembered being interviewed on Sept. 20, 2011, by state Trooper James Ellis and Corporal Joseph A. Letter.
"I recall being interviewed," Myers said.
Lindsay gave Myers a copy of the police report and asked if it reflected what he told the state troopers.
"Yes," Myers said, before snapping at the lawyer, "Please don't raise your voice at me."
Lindsay asked if Myers remembered telling the troopers that he and Sandusky had often worked out at the Lasch Building.
"I don't remember that interview," Myer said.
Lindsay asked Myers if he recalled telling the troopers "nothing inappropriate occurred" in the shower with Jerry, and that at "no time were you made to feel uncomfortable."
"I don't recall," Myers replied.
Lindsay asked Myers if he remembered telling the troopers that after workouts with Sandusky, he and Jerry would return to the coach's home and shower in separate facilities.
"I said it," Myers said, "But I don't remember it."
Lindsay asked Myers if he remembered an interview he gave to an investigator named Curtis Everhart who at the time was working for Joseph Amendola, Sandusky's inept trial lawyer.
Myers remembered the interview.
Lindsay asked if he remembered telling the investigator, "I am alleged Victim No. 2."
"I'm sure I did," Myers said, before adding, "I don't remember everything."
Lindsay asked Myers if he recalled telling the investigator that on the day McQueary heard "slapping sounds" and thought there was an anal rape going down in the showers, Myers said, "Jerry and I were slapping towels at each other trying to sting each other."
Myers was a month short of his 14th birthday in 2001 when the infamous shower incident occurred. The official grand jury report, however, says that Mike McQueary witnessed Sandusky raping a 10-year-old boy in the shower.
Oh well, nobody expects the prosecutors to get the details right when they're on a witch hunt to put an alleged pedophile in jail. Whether or not they have to make up the evidence themselves. And apparently, nobody expects the witnesses to remember whatever stories they told.
"I don't recall everything I told Mr. Everhart," Myers said.
Did Myers recall telling the investigator that he used to slap the walls and slide on the shower floor when he was taking a shower with Jerry?
"I can't recall everything I said in that interview back then," Myers said.
Lindsay read out loud a quote from a report that stated what Myers had supposedly told Everhart:
"The grand jury report says Coach McQueary said he observed Jerry and I engaged in sexual activity. That is not the truth and McQueary is not telling the truth. Nothing occurred that night in the shower."
"Do you recall telling him that," Lindsay asked the witness.
"Like I said, I can't recall everything I said back then," Myers said. "But if it's in there, I said it then, yes."
Lindsay asked Myers if he told the investigator that "I never saw McQueary look into the shower that night," another claim by McQueary. "I am sure" it didn't happen, Myers told the investigator.
On the witness stand, Myers wasn't sure.
"That's what I said back then," Myers said. "Once again, I can't recall what I said then."
Lindsay read Myers more quotes from the interview with the investigator. In the quotes, Myers:
-- denied having sex with Sandusky;
-- repeated that "McQueary did not tell the truth;"
-- repeated that "I am alleged Victim No. 2 on the grand jury report;"
-- again claimed that Sandusky "never sexually assaulted me."
"That's what I said then," Myers said. "And once again, I can't recall everything I said then."
Lindsay asked Myers if he told the truth when he spoke to the investigator.
"Yes," he said.
Allan Myers had once been Jerry Sandusky's biggest defender. He even wrote a letter to the editor of a local newspaper stating what a great guy Jerry was.
At the beginning, Myers kept saying that Mike McQueary was a liar, Jerry was a great guy, and that Jerry had never touched him inappropriately.
Then Myers hired attorney Andrew Shubin, who represented eight victims in the Penn State sex abuse scandal. Myers became Shubin's ninth victim. He flipped on Jerry, claimed he'd been abused, and collected nearly $7 million.
When asked how much he received from his settlement, Myers said," I'm not allowed to answer that question."
Lindsay asked Myers, who wasn't called as a witness during the Sandusky trial, where he was when the trial took place.
"I believe I was somewhere in central Pennsylvania," he said. "Now exactly where I was, I can't recall. I might have been working. I don't know exactly, but I was here in Pennsylvania . . . I was somewhere inside Clinton County or Clearfield County, somewhere in that little Trifecta."
Asked if he could recall being in a specific place, Myers replied, "I can't recall where I was when the trial was going on . . . I can't tell you exactly where I was, I don't remember that."
It was Lindsay's contention that Sandusky deserved a new trial because the prosecutor, Joseph McGettigan, lied to the jury when he stated that the existence of Victim No. 2, the boy in the showers, was "known only to God."
As far as Lindsay was concerned, McGettigan knew that Myers was Victim No. 2, but didn't want to call him as a witness during the Sandusky trial because he had formerly defended Jerry.
On cross examination, the prosecution had a simple script. To reiterate that when he finally got his story straight, Myers was indeed a victim of Jerry Sandusky's.
Jennifer Peterson, a lawyer representing the Commonwealth, asked Myers if he remembered speaking to to Special Agent Anthony Sassano of the state Attorney General's office.
"I remember seeing him and speaking with him," Myers replied. "I don't remember exact dates and times and how long everything was."
"And you told him the top were sexually abused by Mr. Sandusky, correct?"Peterson asked.
"I don't remember exactly what I said in the meetings," Myers said. "I know then I was more forthcoming but not all the way [forth] coming because [I was] still processing everything and dealing with it."
"Were you sexually abused?" Peterson asked.
"Yes," Myers said.
She didn't ask for any details, possibly because Myers probably forgot them.
After Myers left the witness stand, Lindsay put Sandusky up to testify as a rebuttal witness.
If Sandusky believed that Myers was going to finally tell the truth, and actually admit he was lying, Sandusky had just gotten torched
"Mr. Sandusky, did you ever sexually abuse Allan Myers in any way," Lindsay asked.
"Absolutely not," Sandusky said.
John Ziegler, a reporter who was in the courtroom when Myers testified, said he was glad that the transcript had finally been released.
"This is the only testimony of the person who is the epicenter of this whole thing," Ziegler said about Myers' central role in the Penn State scandal.
"And it's obvious to anyone who understands the case that he [Myers] wasn't telling the truth," Ziegler said. Myers' testimony was "a hundred percent consistent with a guy who had flipped for [millions] and felt bad about it, and didn't want to deal with it anymore," Ziegler said.
In contrast, when Sandusky took the stand, Ziegler said, "He was in tears, he was angry. It was righteous anger."
John Snedden, a former NCIS and FIS special agent who investigated the scandal at Penn State, said he was disturbed by Myers' evolving story.
"His initial statements are definitive and exculpatory," Snedden said. "His testimony then degrades into a wishy-washy, exceptionally foggy abyss."
"Being officially interviewed as the 'victim' of a traumatic event doesn't happen everyday," Snedden said. "And then you can't remember the specifics of that interview? Seriously?"
"It's clear why he [Myers] wasn't called by the prosecution" at the Sandusky trial, Snedden said. "His testimony is exculpatory and now serves only as an example of blatant prosecutorial manipulation."
Good point. And where the hell did they hide Myers during the Sandusky trial?
Snedden was key.
Back in 2012, at a time when nobody at Penn State was talking, Snedden showed up in Happy Valley and interviewed everybody that mattered.
Because Snedden was on a mission of the highest importance on behalf of the federal government. Special Agent Snedden had to decide whether Graham Spanier's high-level security clearance should be renewed amid widespread public accusations of a coverup.
And what did Snedden find?
"There was no coverup," Snedden flatly declared on Ziegler's podcast. "There was no conspiracy. There was nothing to cover up."
The whole world could have already known by now about John Snedden's top secret investigation of Spanier and PSU. That's because Snedden was scheduled to be the star witness at the trial last week of former Penn State President Graham Spanier.
But at the last minute, Spanier's legal team decided that the government's case was so lame that they didn't even have to put on a defense. Spanier's defense team didn't call one witness before resting their case.
On Ziegler's podcast, "The World According To Zig," the reporter raged about that decision, calling Spanier's lawyers "a bunch of wussies" who set their client up for a fall.
Indeed, the defenseless Spanier was convicted by a Dauphin County jury on just one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child. But the jury also found Spanier not guilty on two felony counts. Yesterday, I asked Samuel W. Silver, the Philadelphia lawyer who was Spanier's lead defender, why they decided not to put Snedden on the stand.
"No, cannot share that," he responded in an email. "Sorry."
On Ziegler's podcast, Snedden, who was on the witness list for the Spanier trial, expressed his disappointment about not getting a chance to testify.
"I tried to contact the legal team the night before," Snedden said. "They were going to call me back. I subsequently got an email [saying] that they chose not to use my testimony that day."
When Snedden called Spanier's lawyers back, Snedden said on the podcast, the lawyers told him he
wasn't going to be called as a witness "not today or not ever. They indicated that they had chosen to go a minimalistic route," Snedden said.
What may have been behind the lawyers' decision, Snedden said, was some legal "intel" -- namely that jurors in the Mike McQueary libel case against Penn State, which resulted in a disasterous $12 million verdict against the university, supposedly "didn't like Spanier at all."
"The sad part is that if I were to have testified all the interviews I did would have gone in" as evidence, Snedden said. "And I certainly think the jury should have heard all of that."
So what happened with Spanier's high-level clearance which was above top-secret -- [SCI -- Sensitive Compartmented Information] -- Ziegler asked Snedden.
"It was renewed," Snedden said, after he put Spanier under oath and questioned him for eight hours.
In his analysis of what actually happened at Penn State, Snedden said, there was "some degree of political maneuvering there."
"The governor took an active role," Snedden said, referring to former Gov. Tom Corbett. "He had not previously done so," Snedden said, "until this occurred."
As the special agent wrote in his 110-page
report:
"In March 2011 [Gov.] Corbett proposed a 52 percent cut in PSU funding," Snedden wrote. "Spanier fought back," publicly declaring the governor's proposed cutback "the largest ever proposed and that it would be devastating" to Penn State.
At his trial last week, Graham Spanier didn't take the witness stand. But under oath while talking to Snedden back in 2012, Spanier had plenty to say.
"[Spanier] feels that his departure from the position as PSU president was retribution by Gov. Corbett against [Spanier] for having spoken out about the proposed PSU budget cuts," Snedden wrote.
"[Spanier] believes that the governor pressured the PSU BOT [Board of Trustees] to have [Spanier] leave. And the governor's motivation was the governor's displeasure that [Spanier] and [former Penn State football coach Joe] Paterno were more popular with the people of Pennylvania than was the governor."
As far as Snedden was concerned, a political battle between Spanier and Gov. Corbett, and unfounded accusations of a coverup, did not warrant revoking Spanier's high-level security clearance. The special agent concluded his six-month investigation of the PSU scandal by renewing the clearance and giving Spanier a ringing endorsement.
"The circumstances surrounding subject's departure from his position as PSU president do not cast doubt on subject's current reliability, trustworthiness or good judgment and do not cast doubt on his ability to properly safeguard national security information," Snedden wrote about Spanier.
At the time Snedden interviewed the key people at Penn State, former athletic director Tim Curley and former PSU VP Gary Schultz were already under indictment.
Spanier was next in the sights of prosecutors from the attorney general's office. And former FBI Director Louie Freeh was about to release his report that said there was a coverup at Penn State masterminded by Spanier, Curley and Schultz, with an assist from Joe Paterno.
Snedden, however, wasn't buying into Freeh's conspiracy theory that reigns today in the mainstream media, the court of public opinion, and in the minds of
jurors in the Spanier case.
"I did not find any indication of any coverup," Snedden told Ziegler on the podcast. He added that he did not find "any indication of any conspiracy, or anything to cover up."
Snedden also said that Cynthia Baldwin, Penn State's former general counsel, "provided information to me inconsistent to what she provided to the state." Baldwin told Snedden that "Gov. Corbett was very unhappy" with Spanier because he "took the lead in fighting the governor's proposed budget cuts to PSU."
That, of course, was before the prosecutors turned Baldwin into a cooperating witness. The attorney-client privilege went out the window. And Baldwin began testifying against Spanier, Curley and Schultz.
But as far as Snedden was concerned, "Dr. Spanier was very forthcoming, he wanted to get everything out," Snedden said.
"Isn't possible that he just duped you," Ziegler asked.
"No," Snedden deadpanned. "I can pretty well determine which way we're going on an interview." Even though he was a Penn State alumni, Snedden said, his mission was to find the truth.
"I am a Navy veteran," Snedden said. "You're talking about a potential risk to national security" if Spanier was deemed untrustworthy. Instead, "He was very forthcoming," Snedden said of Spanier. "He answered every question."
On the podcast, Ziegler asked Snedden if he turned up any evidence during his investigation that Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile.
"It was not sexual," Snedden said about what Mike McQueary allegedly heard and saw in the Penn State showers, before the prosecutors got through hyping the story, with the full cooperation of the media. "It was not sexual," Snedden insisted. "Nothing at all relative to a sexual circumstance. Nothing."
About PSU's top administrators, Snedden said, "They had no information that would make a person believe" that Sandusky was a pedophile.
"Gary Schultz was pretty clear as to what he was told and what he wasn't told," Snedden said. "What he was told was nothing was of a sexual nature."
As for Joe Paterno, Snedden said, "His involvement was very minimal in passing it [McQueary's account of the shower incident] to the people he reported to," meaning Schultz and Curley.
Spanier, 68, who was born in Cape Town, South Africa, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1955. When Snedden interviewed Spanier, he couldn't recall the exact date that he was approached by Curley and Schultz with the news about the shower incident supposedly witnessed by McQueary.
It was "approximately in the early 2000 decade," Snedden wrote, when Spanier recalled being approached by Schultz and Curley in between university meetings. The two PSU administrators told Spanier they wanted to give him a "head's up" about a report they had received from Joe Paterno.
"A staff member," Snedden wrote, "had seen Jerry Sandusky in the locker room after a work out showering with one of his Second Mile kids. [Spanier] knew at the time that Jerry Sandusky was very involved with the Second Mile charity," Snedden wrote. "And, at that time, [Spanier] believed that it only involved high school kids. [Spanier] has since learned that the charity involves younger disadvantaged children."
Because it was Spanier's "understanding at that time that the charity only involved high school kids it did not send off any alarms," Snedden wrote. Then the prosecutors and their friends in the media went to work.
"Curley and Schultz said that the person who had given the report was not sure what he had seen but that they were concerned about the situation with the kid in the shower," Snedden wrote.
Curley and Schultz told Spanier that the person who had given the report "was not sure what he saw because it was around the corner and that what he has reported was described as "horse play" or "horsing around." In his report, Snedden said that Spanier "assumed the terminology of horse play or horsing around came from Joe Paterno."
"They all agreed that Curley would talk to Jerry Sandusky, tell him not to bring kids into the locker room facilities," Snedden wrote. "And Curley was to tell the Second Mile management that it was not good for any of the Second Mile kids to come to the athletic locker room facilities, and that they should suspend that practice."
Spanier, Snedden wrote, never was told "who the person was who made the report. But "nothing was described as a sexual or criminal in any way," Snedden wrote.
The initial conversation between Spanier, Curley and Schultz about the Sandusky shower incident lasted 10 minutes, Snedden wrote. A few days later, Curley told Spanier "in person that the discussion had taken place and that everything went well."
"The issue never came up again with Curley, Schultz, Paterno, Sandusky, or anyone," Snedden wrote. "It did not appear very significant to anyone at the time."
Gary Schultz corroborated Spanier's account. Schultz told Snedden that back in February 2001, Tim Curley told him "something to the effect that Jerry Sandusky had been in the shower with a kid horsing around and wrestling. And Mike McQueary or a graduate assistant walked in and observed it. And McQueary or the graduate assistant was concerned."
Schultz believed the source of Curley's information was Joe Paterno, and that the conduct involved was horseplay.
"McQueary did not say anything of a sexual nature took place," Snedden wrote after interviewing Schultz. "McQueary did not say anything indicative of an incident of a serious sexual nature."
While Snedden was investigating Spanier, Louie Freeh was writing his overpriced $8.3 million report where he came to the opposite conclusion that Snedden did, that there was a coverup at Penn State. Only Louie Freeh didn't talk to Curley, Schultz, Paterno, McQueary or Sandusky. Freeh only talked to Spanier relatively briefly, at the end of his investigation, when he had presumably already come to his conclusions.
Ironically, one of the things Spanier told Freeh was that Snedden was also investigating what happened at Penn State. But that didn't seem to effect the conclusions of the Louie Freeh report, Snedden said. He wondered why.
He also wondered why his report had no effect on the attorney general's office, which had already indicted Curley and Schultz, and was planning to indict Spanier.
"I certainly think that if the powers that be . . . knew what was in his report, Snedden said, "They would certainly have to take a hard look at what they were doing."
Freeh and the AG, Snedden said, should have wanted to know "who was interviewed [by Sneddedn] and what did they say. I mean this is kind of pertinent to what we're doing," Snedden said of the investigations conducted by Freeh and the AG.
"If your goal in any investigation is to determine the facts of the case period, the circumstance should have been hey, we'll be happy to obtain any and all facts," Snedden said.
Snedden said he understood, however, why Freeh was uninterested in his report.
"It doesn't fit the narrative that he's [Louie Freeh] going for," Snedden said.
Freeh was on a tight deadline, Ziegler reminded Snedden. Freeh had to get his report out at a highly-anticipated press conference. And the Freeh report had to come out before the start of the football season. So the NCAA could drop the hammer on Penn State.
"He [Freeh] doesn't have time to read a hundred page report," Snedden said. He agreed with Ziegler that the whole disclosure of the Freeh report was "orchestrated" to come out right before the football season started.
It may have been good timing for the news media and the NCAA, Snedden said about the release of the Louie Freeh report. But it didn't make much sense from an investigator's point of view.
"I just don't understand why," Snedden told Ziegler, "why would you ignore more evidence. Either side that it lands on, why would you ignore it?"
Good question.
Snedden was aghast about the cost of the Louie Freeh report. His six-month federal investigation, Snedden said, "probably cost the federal government and the taxpayers $50,000 at the most. And he [Freeh] spent $8.3 million," Snedden said. "Unbelievable."
In a statement released March 24th, Freeh hailed the conviction of Spanier as having confirmed and verified "all the findings and facts" of the Freeh report. On Ziegler's podcast, however, Snedden was dismissive of Freeh's statement.
"It's like a preemptive strike to divert people's attention from the actual conviction for a misdemeanor," Snedden said about Freeh. Along with the fact that he jury found "no cover up no conspiracy," Snedden said.
"In a rational world Louie Freeh is completely discredited," Ziegler said. "The Freeh report is a joke." On the podcast, Ziegler ripped the "mainstream media morons" who said that the jury verdict vindicated Freeh.
"Which is horrendous," Snedden added.
Ziegler asked Snedden if he had any doubt that an innocent man was convicted last week.
"That's what I believe, one hundred percent," Snedden said about the "insane jury verdict."
About the Penn State scandal, Snedden said, "I've got to say it needs to be examined thoroughly and it needs to be examined by a competent law enforcement authority." And that's a law enforcement authority that "doesn't have any political connections with anybody on the boards of trustees when this thing hit the fan."
As for Snedden, he left the Penn State campus thinking, "Where is the crime?"
"This case has been all about emotion," Ziegler said. "It was never about facts."
"Exactly," Snedden said.
As someone who has spent the past five years investigating the "Billy Doe" case, I can testify that when the subject is sex abuse, and the media is involved, the next stop is the Twilight Zone. Where hysteria reigns, and logic and common sense go out the window.
Earlier in the podcast, Ziegler talked about the "dog and pony show" put on by the prosecution at the Spanier trial. It's a good example of what happens once you've entered the Twilight Zone.
At the Spanier trial, the 28-year-old known as Victim No. 5 was sworn in as a witness in the judge's chambers. When the jury came out, they were surprised to see Victim No. 5 already seated on the witness stand.
As extra sheriff's deputies patrolled the courtroom, the judge announced to the jury that the next witness would be referred to as "John Doe."
I was in the courtroom that day, and I thought the hoopla over Victim No. 5's appearance was bizarre and prejudicial to the case. In several sex abuse trials that I have covered in Philadelphia, the victim's real name was always used in court, starting from the moment when he or she was sworn in in the courtroom as a witness.
The judges and the prosecutors could always count on the media to censor itself, by not printing the real names of alleged victims out of some misguided social justice policy that borders on lunacy. At the exact same time they're hanging the defendants out to dry.
Talk about rigging a contest by what's supposed to be an impartial media.
At the Spanier trial, the prosecutor proceeded to place a box of Kleenex next to the witness stand. John Doe seemed composed until the prosecutor asked if he had ever been sexually abused. Right on cue, the witness started whimpering.
"Yes," he said.
By whom, the prosecutor asked.
By Jerry Sandusky, John Doe said, continuing to whimper.
The actual details of the alleged sex abuse were never explained. The jury could have left the courtroom believing that Victim No. 5 had been sexually assaulted or raped.
But the sexual abuse Victim No. 5 was allegedly subjected to was that Sandusky allegedly soaped the boy up in the shower and may have touched his penis.
For that alleged abuse, Victim No. 5 collected $8 million.
I kid you not.
There was also much confusion over the date of the abuse.
First, John Doe said that the abuse took place when he was 10 years old, back in 1998. Then, the victim changed his story to say he was abused the first time he met Sandusky, back when he was 12 or 13 years old, in 2000 or 2001, but definitely before 9/11, because he could never forget 9/11. Next, the victim said that he was abused after 9/11, when he would have been 14.
At the Spanier trial, the prosecution used "John Doe" or Victim No. 5 for one main purpose: to prove to the jury that he had been abused
after the infamous Mike McQueary shower incident of February, 2001. To show the jury that more victims were abused after Spanier, Curley and Schultz had decided to initiate their alleged coverup following the February 2001 shower incident.
But there was only one problem. To prove John Doe had a relationship with Sandusky, the prosecution introduced as an exhibit a photo taken of the victim with Sandusky.
Keep in mind it was John Doe/Victim No. 5's previous testimony that Sandusky abused him at their first meeting. The only problem, as Ziegler disclosed on his podcast, was the photo of Victim No. 5 was taken from a book, "Touched, The Jerry Sandusky Story," by Jerry Sandusky. And according to Amazon, that book was published on Nov. 17, 2000.
Three months
before the alleged shower incident witnessed by Mike McQueary. Meaning that in a real world where facts matter, John Doe/Victim No. 5 was totally irrelevant to the case.
It was the kind of thing that a defense lawyer would typically jump on during cross-examination, confusion over the date of the abuse. Excuse me, Mr. Doe, we all know you have suffered terribly, but when did the abuse happen? Was it in 1998, or was it 2000, or 2001 or even 2002? And hey, what's the deal with that photo?
But the Spanier trial was conducted in the Twilight Zone. Spanier's lawyers chose not to ask a single question of John Doe. As Samuel W. Silver explained why to the jury in his closing statement: he did not want to add to the suffering of a sainted victim of sex abuse by subjecting him to cross-examination. Like you would have done with any normal human being when the freedom of your client was at stake.
That left Spanier in the Twilight Zone, where he was convicted by a jury on one count of endangering the welfare of a child.
To add to the curious nature of the conviction, the statute of limitations for endangering the welfare of a child is two years. But the incident that Spanier, Schultz and Curley were accused of covering up, the infamous Mike McQueary shower incident, happened back in 2001.
At the Spanier trial, the prosecution was only able to try the defendant on a charge that had long ago expired by throwing in a conspiracy charge. In theory, that meant that the defendant and his co-conspirators could still be prosecuted, because they'd allegedly been engaging in a pattern of illegal conduct over sixteen years -- the coverup that never happened --- which kept the original child endangerment charge on artificial respiration until the jury could decide the issue.
But the jury found Spanier not guilty on the conspiracy charge. And they also found Spanier not guilty of engaging in a continuing course of [criminal] conduct.
That means that Spanier was convicted on a single misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child, dating back to 2001. A crime that the statute of limitations had long ago expired on.
On this issue, Silver was willing to express an opinion.
"We certainly will be pursuing the statute of limitations as one of our post-trial issues," he wrote in an email.
Meanwhile, Graham Spanier remains a prisoner in the Twilight Zone. And until there's a credible investigation of what really happened, all of Penn State nation remains trapped in there with him.