You are welcome to your own opinions and I don't wish to waste any more of my time responding to them.
Jerry Sandusky files a pro se motion for a new trial and asks for evidentiary hearings
- Thread starter francofan
- Start date
Thank you for admitting that you cannot provide a single example of your propaganda that has helped Jerry toward freedom. As you yourself admit he will most likely die in prison.
After 10 years, Jerry and CSS are still convicts; Joe's reputation is still in the crapper.
And you're still an a-hole, so we've got that going for us.
Unfortunately this is true. But it is true because in this case, emotion matters more than facts. No PA judge was going to be the judge that had a hand giving Jerry a chance at freedom. It would be career suicide. Not because it is wrong in the eyes of the facts and the law. But because the uninformed, hysterical masses (such as yourself) would have a complete meltdown about it. Facts and law be damned. Quite unfortunate.
Why are you plagarizing someone else's work? We already know you're not capable of looking up trial transcripts.
Great points!Franco, I'm prepared to believe you're sincere in your crusade, but the psychological syndrome on display in your posts is called Denial. A classic symptom is looking at a mountain of evidence and grabbing a few odd straws because for whatever reason the truth is too painful to deal with.
As a devout Catholic, I saw a very similar dynamic in the case of the Church scandals. It's not uncommon: protecting the powerful at the expense of the weak in order to prevent or limit damage to the institution even as many ordinary, decent people associated with the institution prefer not to know or later deny the reality because the truth challenges their cherished beliefs and concept of who they are as human beings.
Listen, linked below is a handy little article that concisely presents some of the damning facts. The testimony of victims. The accounts of eyewitnesses. The words of Sandusky himself. I don't expect this to convince you because you need your Alternative Reality. But no unbiased person could examine this evidence and come up with any conclusion other than Jerry Sandusky is scum and should spend the rest of his life in jail.
Jerry Sandusky, the monster no one wanted to see
It is the defining tragedy of the case: Not only that Jerry Sandusky repeatedly, systematically violated children, but that he was allowed to get away with it for so long.www.cbssports.com
No plagiarizing on a message board silly. Why go to all that typing to refute you? It's already been done by @JmmyW and done quite well.
More to this.
Spanier and his law budies.
In a 16-page application for recusal , 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.
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.
You certainly should acknowledge the poster and better yet link their post, as info has changed on this topic thru the years.
What were you refuting that I posted, that the BJC isn't visible for miles at night?
I didn’t read below yet for other response but that article you linked has a bunch of unsubstantiated allegations and assertions that are not true or are otherwise misleadingFranco, I'm prepared to believe you're sincere in your crusade, but the psychological syndrome on display in your posts is called Denial. A classic symptom is looking at a mountain of evidence and grabbing a few odd straws because for whatever reason the truth is too painful to deal with.
As a devout Catholic, I saw a very similar dynamic in the case of the Church scandals. It's not uncommon: protecting the powerful at the expense of the weak in order to prevent or limit damage to the institution even as many ordinary, decent people associated with the institution prefer not to know or later deny the reality because the truth challenges their cherished beliefs and concept of who they are as human beings.
Listen, linked below is a handy little article that concisely presents some of the damning facts. The testimony of victims. The accounts of eyewitnesses. The words of Sandusky himself. I don't expect this to convince you because you need your Alternative Reality. But no unbiased person could examine this evidence and come up with any conclusion other than Jerry Sandusky is scum and should spend the rest of his life in jail.
Jerry Sandusky, the monster no one wanted to see
It is the defining tragedy of the case: Not only that Jerry Sandusky repeatedly, systematically violated children, but that he was allowed to get away with it for so long.
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That's some pretty lousy circular logic right there. Your handlers must be embarrassed.
OAG troll's favorite, JmmyW, has some very interesting opinions in post #513 of the WTBOH thread.
Here are some of the highlights:
- He believes that 2/9/2001is far more consistent with the evidence than 12/29/2000 regarding the date of the v2 incident. (I believe he is clearly wrong on the account)
- However, he doesn’t believe that MM witnessed a sexual assault, only that MM believes that a sexual assault might of happened and that MM admits he never saw an explicit sex act.
- He doesn’t believe that the Freeh report is totally factual and that it contains opinions and conclusions that are not balanced by any other possible conclusion which he acknowledges is a major fault.
- He doesn’t believe that Spanier, Curley and Schultz knowingly enabled the acts of a CSA offender. He also said that MM had to admit he didn't exactly see anything explicit.
- He doesn’t believe the identity of v2 is known only to God.
- He doesn’t believe the story that Frank Fina set up a sting operation to catch the grand jury leaker.
- He thought it was definitely possible that the OAG improperly shared information with Freeh.
- He said that Juror 0990 Laura Pauley, who had been interviewed by the Freeh Group before Sandusky's trial, seemed like she was biased against PSU leadership.
- He believes John Snedden’s federal investigation into Spanier was not flawed.
With the Benefit of Hindsight - Ziegler's new documentary podcast on scandal to start in 2021
my agenda is wanting a 19 part podcast to fairly present all sides and not ignore the many items that point to Jerry being guilty. For example these facts about Snedden's investigation are not presented by Ziglie: he didn't investigate Jerry he didn't interview Jerry he didn't interview...
bwi.forums.rivals.com
For those who are interested the back and forth of my posts with JmmyW regarding the date of the v2 incident include posts 456, 493, 512, 513, 524, 534, 546, and 558.
Here is JmmyW's complete answers in post 513..
Do you believe the date of the v2 incident to be Feb. 9, 2001?
Yes. It's far more consistent with the evidence than 12/29/2000.
Do you believe that Mike McQueary witnessed a sexual assault in the Lasch building shower?
No. I think he believed a sex assault might have happened. But according to his own testimony, he never saw an explicit sex act. How well he conveyed that to Paterno, and then to Curley and Schultz 7-10 days later is certainly up for debate. But it's clear from all involved that he was uncomfortable with what he saw. The obvious conclusion is that he suspected child abuse, which is exactly what Courtney researched for Schultz.
Do you believe that the Freeh Report is factual?
Yes and no. It contains a lot of facts. But it also contains opinions and conclusions that are not balanced by any other possible conclusion. That's it's major fault.
Do you believe that Spanier, Curley and Schultz knowingly enabled the acts of a CSA offender?
No.
Do you believe Mike McQueary is a credible witness?
Yes. Insofar as he saw Sandusky in a shower with boy and suspected sexual abuse. I do think his level certainty in what exactly he told Curley and Schultz shifted in one direction, just as Schultz and Curley's admission about what he told them shifted in the other direction. To be clear, I think McQueary told them he suspected sex abuse. But in their meeting, I suspect Curley/Schultz pushed back to get clarity on exactly what he saw, and he had to admit he didn't exactly see anything explicit. Unfortunately, none of them said they remembered any of the questions at that meeting.
Do you believe the identity of v2 is known only to God?
No. But I suspect McGettigan believed those words when he made his closing arguments. I think AM believes he was V2. But any argument that asks if he isn't the real V2, why didn't the real V2 come forward, fails the logic test.
Do you believe that Frank Fina claiming that he set up a sting operation to catch the grand jury leaker proves that he was not the leaker?
No. That's just faulty logic. Just like my example immediately above. And just like any argument that claims that if the V1 case (or V2 case) falls apart, the entire case falls apart.
Do you believe that the OAG's and the Freeh Group's investigations were independent?
Mostly, but it's clear they shared information. And that should be no surprise at all. Freeh's first press release stated that they would share information with authorities. Now, did the OAG improperly share information with Freeh? That's definitely possible.
Do you believe that Juror 0990, Laura Pauley, who had been interviewed by the Freeh Group before Sandusky's trial was a fair, unbiased, and open-minded juror?
It seems she was biased against PSU leadership. That's probably not too surprising since she'd been on the faculty for at least 20 years at the time of the Sandusky trial. But she's an engineer, they tend to have good analytical skills, so she was probably an open-minded juror for the Sandusky trial. Just because Freeh interviewed her shouldn't have disqualified her from being a juror. But if she lied about that during voir dire, then yeah, I'd say she was biased. I did review the public transcripts during jury selection; she was never asked about being interviewed by Freeh. If she was asked, the records are either sealed or weren't made public.
Do you believe Malcolm Gladwell is biased in his view of the case?
Yes. But only because I don't think he did any detailed independent research, and just took what Ziegler handed him about the date theory.
Do you believe Mark Pendergrast does not know what he is talking about in regard to this case?
He knows a lot about the case, but just like Ziegler, he omits things that don't support his theories or outright lies about them. There's a lot of similarities between Pendergrast, Ziegler, and Freeh in that regard.
Do you believe John Snedden’s federal investigation into Spanier was flawed?
No. But any suggestion that Snedden investigated the charges against Sandusky and proved him innocent (as suggested by some in this thread, and elsewhere) is absurd.
And some bonus question you didn't ask:
What about the Barenaked Ladies concert on 2/9/2001?
This is an unpersuasive argument. The concert started at 8pm. Any traffic control on the street would have been gone shortly after the concert started. The BJC is not "right across the street" from Lasch. The most likely drive to Lasch from downtown is University Ave to Hastings. You can only see the top part of the back side of the BJC on that route. Nothing about that view would indicate a concert was going on. Take a look on google street view & see for yourself.
What about the ice hockey game on 2/9/2001?
This is another unpersuasive argument. It might make sense if it were the Icers hockey team, who were #2 in the ACHA, but they were in Ohio that night. The Ice Lions were the lower level of the two club hockey teams. They had a record of 6-12-2 and were on a five-game losing skid. It's doubtful there were many in attendance at Greenberg to watch them play. It's also doubtful anyone going to that game would have parked in the restricted parking area for the Lasch building when there was a sizable parking lot on the other side of Greenberg. Take a look on google street view & see for yourself.
Do you believe Sandusky when he says he was only warned not to shower Victim 6 after 1998?
No. It makes no sense that Officer Shreffler and Jerry Lauro would restrict to their admonition not to shower with kids to just a single boy. They both knew he had showered with multiple boys in the past. They both knew he gave naked bear hugs to two different boys (V6 and BK) in 1998. It makes no sense to only tell him not to shower with V6.
Do you recall Franco if Sandusky thought the December date was the specific date?OAG troll's favorite, JmmyW, has some very interesting opinions in post #513 of the WTBOH thread.
Here are some of the highlights:
- He believes that 2/9/2001is far more consistent with the evidence than 12/29/2000 regarding the date of the v2 incident. (I believe he is clearly wrong on the account)
- However, he doesn’t believe that MM witnessed a sexual assault, only that MM believes that a sexual assault might of happened and that MM admits he never saw an explicit sex act.
- He doesn’t believe that the Freeh report is totally factual and that it contains opinions and conclusions that are not balanced by any other possible conclusion which he acknowledges is a major fault.
- He doesn’t believe that Spanier, Curley and Schultz knowingly enabled the acts of a CSA offender. He also said that MM had to admit he didn't exactly see anything explicit.
- He doesn’t believe the identity of v2 is known only to God.
- He doesn’t believe the story that Frank Fina set up a sting operation to catch the grand jury leaker.
- He thought it was definitely possible that the OAG improperly shared information with Freeh.
- He said that Juror 0990 Laura Pauley, who had been interviewed by the Freeh Group before Sandusky's trial, seemed like she was biased against PSU leadership.
- He believes John Snedden’s federal investigation into Spanier was not flawed.
With the Benefit of Hindsight - Ziegler's new documentary podcast on scandal to start in 2021
my agenda is wanting a 19 part podcast to fairly present all sides and not ignore the many items that point to Jerry being guilty. For example these facts about Snedden's investigation are not presented by Ziglie: he didn't investigate Jerry he didn't interview Jerry he didn't interview...
For those who are interested the back and forth of my posts with JmmyW regarding the date of the v2 incident include posts 456, 493, 512, 513, 524, 534, 546, and 558.
Here is JmmyW's complete answers in post 513..
Do you believe the date of the v2 incident to be Feb. 9, 2001?
Yes. It's far more consistent with the evidence than 12/29/2000.
Do you believe that Mike McQueary witnessed a sexual assault in the Lasch building shower?
No. I think he believed a sex assault might have happened. But according to his own testimony, he never saw an explicit sex act. How well he conveyed that to Paterno, and then to Curley and Schultz 7-10 days later is certainly up for debate. But it's clear from all involved that he was uncomfortable with what he saw. The obvious conclusion is that he suspected child abuse, which is exactly what Courtney researched for Schultz.
Do you believe that the Freeh Report is factual?
Yes and no. It contains a lot of facts. But it also contains opinions and conclusions that are not balanced by any other possible conclusion. That's it's major fault.
Do you believe that Spanier, Curley and Schultz knowingly enabled the acts of a CSA offender?
No.
Do you believe Mike McQueary is a credible witness?
Yes. Insofar as he saw Sandusky in a shower with boy and suspected sexual abuse. I do think his level certainty in what exactly he told Curley and Schultz shifted in one direction, just as Schultz and Curley's admission about what he told them shifted in the other direction. To be clear, I think McQueary told them he suspected sex abuse. But in their meeting, I suspect Curley/Schultz pushed back to get clarity on exactly what he saw, and he had to admit he didn't exactly see anything explicit. Unfortunately, none of them said they remembered any of the questions at that meeting.
Do you believe the identity of v2 is known only to God?
No. But I suspect McGettigan believed those words when he made his closing arguments. I think AM believes he was V2. But any argument that asks if he isn't the real V2, why didn't the real V2 come forward, fails the logic test.
Do you believe that Frank Fina claiming that he set up a sting operation to catch the grand jury leaker proves that he was not the leaker?
No. That's just faulty logic. Just like my example immediately above. And just like any argument that claims that if the V1 case (or V2 case) falls apart, the entire case falls apart.
Do you believe that the OAG's and the Freeh Group's investigations were independent?
Mostly, but it's clear they shared information. And that should be no surprise at all. Freeh's first press release stated that they would share information with authorities. Now, did the OAG improperly share information with Freeh? That's definitely possible.
Do you believe that Juror 0990, Laura Pauley, who had been interviewed by the Freeh Group before Sandusky's trial was a fair, unbiased, and open-minded juror?
It seems she was biased against PSU leadership. That's probably not too surprising since she'd been on the faculty for at least 20 years at the time of the Sandusky trial. But she's an engineer, they tend to have good analytical skills, so she was probably an open-minded juror for the Sandusky trial. Just because Freeh interviewed her shouldn't have disqualified her from being a juror. But if she lied about that during voir dire, then yeah, I'd say she was biased. I did review the public transcripts during jury selection; she was never asked about being interviewed by Freeh. If she was asked, the records are either sealed or weren't made public.
Do you believe Malcolm Gladwell is biased in his view of the case?
Yes. But only because I don't think he did any detailed independent research, and just took what Ziegler handed him about the date theory.
Do you believe Mark Pendergrast does not know what he is talking about in regard to this case?
He knows a lot about the case, but just like Ziegler, he omits things that don't support his theories or outright lies about them. There's a lot of similarities between Pendergrast, Ziegler, and Freeh in that regard.
Do you believe John Snedden’s federal investigation into Spanier was flawed?
No. But any suggestion that Snedden investigated the charges against Sandusky and proved him innocent (as suggested by some in this thread, and elsewhere) is absurd.
And some bonus question you didn't ask:
What about the Barenaked Ladies concert on 2/9/2001?
This is an unpersuasive argument. The concert started at 8pm. Any traffic control on the street would have been gone shortly after the concert started. The BJC is not "right across the street" from Lasch. The most likely drive to Lasch from downtown is University Ave to Hastings. You can only see the top part of the back side of the BJC on that route. Nothing about that view would indicate a concert was going on. Take a look on google street view & see for yourself.
What about the ice hockey game on 2/9/2001?
This is another unpersuasive argument. It might make sense if it were the Icers hockey team, who were #2 in the ACHA, but they were in Ohio that night. The Ice Lions were the lower level of the two club hockey teams. They had a record of 6-12-2 and were on a five-game losing skid. It's doubtful there were many in attendance at Greenberg to watch them play. It's also doubtful anyone going to that game would have parked in the restricted parking area for the Lasch building when there was a sizable parking lot on the other side of Greenberg. Take a look on google street view & see for yourself.
Do you believe Sandusky when he says he was only warned not to shower Victim 6 after 1998?
No. It makes no sense that Officer Shreffler and Jerry Lauro would restrict to their admonition not to shower with kids to just a single boy. They both knew he had showered with multiple boys in the past. They both knew he gave naked bear hugs to two different boys (V6 and BK) in 1998. It makes no sense to only tell him not to shower with V6.
Not initially. Sandusky absolutely knew the March 1, 2002 date was wrong. At the time of Ziegler's prison interview Jerry also knew something was wrong with the Feb. 9, 2001 date. It took another couple of years before Zig was able to establish the Dec. 29,2000 date. I believe Zig was in touch with Jerry and it was a collaboration. The keys to establishing the Dec 2000 date was the date of Jerry's telephone conversation with his college roommate, Tom Federick during the time Jerry was in consideration for the UVA head football coach job and the date of Jerry's book signing in Washington PA where Alan Myers was traveling with him.
Remember, it was the Freeh Report that the NCAA relied upon in 2012 to impose draconian sanctions on Penn State, including a $60 million fine, a bowl game ban that lasted two years, the loss of 170 athletic scholarships and the elimination of 111 of Joe Paterno's wins, although the wins were subsequently restored.
On Friday, a group of 11 trustees called on the full 38-member board to release the full 200-page critique of the 267-page Freeh Report, formally renounce Freeh's findings, and try to recoup some of the $8.3 million that the university paid Freeh.
"I want to put the document in your hands so you can read it yourself, but I can't do that today," said Alice Pope, a trustee and St. John's University professor about the internal review of the source materials for the Freeh report.
But the materials that Pope and six other trustees had to sue the university to obtain are still under seal according to a 2015 court order. And the university's lawyers have recently advised the 11 minority trustees that the report they worked on for more than two years remains privileged and confidential, and out of reach of the public.
So yesterday, Pope called on the full board to release the 200-page report as early as their next meeting, on July 20th. But chances are slim and none that the board's chairman, Mark Dambly, and other majority board members will ever willingly open Pandora's box. They don't want to reveal to the public the facts that the university has spent millions of dollars in legal fees to keep buried for the past six years. Facts that will present further evidence of just how badly the trustees, Louie Freeh, and the attorney general's office thoroughly botched the Penn State investigation in a rush to judgment. Not to mention the media.
The full board of trustees, Pope noted yesterday, never voted to formally adopt the findings of the Freeh Report, which found that Penn State officials had covered up the sex crimes of Jerry Sandusky.
"Rather, the board adopted a don't act, don't look and don't tell policy" Pope said that amounted to a "tacit acceptance of the Freeh Report." A report that Pope said has resulted in "profound reputational harm to our university along with $300 million in costs so far."
In addition to the $60 million in fines, the university's board of trustees has -- while doing little or no investigating -- paid out a minimum of $118 million to 36 alleged victims of sex abuse, in addition to spending more than $80 million in legal fees, and $50 million to institute new reforms aimed at preventing future abuse.
That internal 200-page report and the materials it draws upon may still be privileged and confidential. But Big Trial has obtained a seven-page "Executive Summary of Findings" of that internal review dated Jan. 8, 2017, plus an attached 25-page synopsis of evidence gleaned from those confidential files still under court seal.
According to the executive summary, "Louis Freeh and his team disregarded the preponderance of the evidence" in concluding there was a cover up at Penn State of Jerry Sandusky's crimes.
There's more: "Louis Freeh and his team knowingly provided a false conclusion in stating that the alleged coverup was motivated by a desire to protect the football program and a false culture that overvalued football and athletics," the executive summary states.
In the executive summary, the trustees faulted Freeh and his investigators for their "willingness . . . to be led by media narratives," as well as "an over reliance on unreliable sources," such as former Penn State Counsel Cynthia Baldwin.
Freeh, the executive summary states, also relied on "deeply flawed" procedures for interviewing witnesses. The interviews conducted by Freeh's investigators weren't done under oath, or subpoenas, and they weren't tape-recorded, the executive summary states. Those faulty methods led to "biased reporting of interview data" and "inaccurate summaries" of witness testimony.
At yesterday's press conference, Pope said the 11 trustees wanted to know the degree of cooperation Freeh's team had with the NCAA and the state attorney general's office during their investigations. According to statecollege.com, state Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman has previously stated that the coordination between Freeh and the NCAA during the Penn State investigation was at best inappropriate, and at worst "two parties working together to get a predetermined outcome."
In the executive summary, the trustees cited "interference in Louis Freeh's investigation by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, wherein information gathered in the criminal investigations of Penn State officials was improperly (and perhaps illegally) shared with Louis Freeh and his team."
This is a subject Big Trial will explore in a subsequent blog post. But earlier this year, I wrote to Louis Freeh, and asked if he and his team was authorized to have access to grand jury secrets in Pennsylvania. He declined comment.
At yesterday's board meeting, Pope addressed this topic, saying, "additional information has emerged in the public domain indicates cooperation between the PA Office of Attorney General and Freeh. We believed it was important to understand the degree of cooperation between the Freeh investigation and the Office of Attorney General."
Yesterday, Freeh issued a statement that ripped the minority trustees. "Since 2015," he wrote, "these misguided alumni have been fighting a rear-guard action to turn the clocks back and to resist the positive changes which the PSU students and faculty have fully embraced." He concluded that despite consistent criticism of his report by the minority trustees, in the last six years, they have produced "no report, no facts, news and no credible evidence" that have damaged the credibility of his investigation.
But in the executive summary, the trustees blasted Freeh for having an alleged conflict of interest with the NCAA, and they cited some credible evidence to prove it.
"Louis Freeh's conflict of interest in pursuing future investigative assignments with the NCAA during his contracted period of working for Penn State," the executive summary states, "provided motivation for forming conclusions consistent with the NCAA's goals to enhance their own reputation by being tough on Penn State."
In a criminal manner, such as the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia investigation, the NCAA lacked legal standing. But the NCAA justified its intervention in the case by finding that a lack of institutional control on the part of Penn State enabled the Jerry Sandusky sex scandal.
In their synopsis of evidence, the trustees relied on internal Freeh Group emails that showed that while Freeh was finishing up his investigation of Penn State, he was angling for his group to become the "go to investigators" for the NCAA.
On July 7, 2012, a week before the release of the Freeh Report on Penn State, Omar McNeill, a senior investigator for Freeh, wrote to Freeh and a partner of Freeh's. "This has opened up an opportunity to have the dialogue with [NCAA President Mark] Emmert about possibly being the go to internal investigator for the NCAA," McNeill wrote. "It appears we have Emmert's attention now."
In response, Freeh wrote back, "Let's try to meet with him and make a deal -- a very good cost contract to be the NCAA's 'go to investigators' -- we can even craft a big discounted rate given the unique importance of such a client. Most likely he will agree to a meeting -- if he does not ask for one first."
A spokesman for Freeh did not respond to a request for comment.
At yesterday's board meeting, Pope said the "NCAA knew that their own rules prevented them from punishing Penn State," but that the "NCAA decided to punish Penn State anyway in order to enhance its own reputation." She added that documents made public to date show that the "NCAA was closely involved with the Freeh investigation."
"We believed it was important to understand the degree of cooperation between the Freeh investigation and the NCAA."
At yesterday's press conference, Pope also raised the issue of a separate but concurrent federal investigation conducted on the Penn State campus in 2012 by Special Agent John Snedden. The federal investigation, made public last year, but completely ignored by the mainstream media, reached the opposite conclusion that Freeh and the attorney general did, that there was no official cover up at Penn State.
Pope stated she wanted to know more about the discrepancies between the parallel investigations that led to polar opposite conclusions.
Back in 2012, Snedden, a former NCIS special agent working as a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services [FIS], was assigned to determine whether Spanier deserved to have a high-level national security clearance renewed. During his investigation, Snedden placed Spanier under oath and questioned him for eight hours. Snedden also interviewed many other witnesses on the Penn State campus, including Cynthia Baldwin, who told him that Spanier was a "man of integrity."
About six months after Baldwin told Snedden this, she flipped, and appeared in a secret grand jury proceeding to not only testify against Spanier, but also against former Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley, and former Penn State Vice President Gary Schultz.
Baldwin, who had previously represented Spanier, Curley and Schultz before the grand jury, testified last month before the disciplinary board of the state Supreme Court, where she has been brought up on misconduct charges for allegedly violating the attorney-client privilege.
After his investigation, Special Agent Snedden concluded in a 110-page report that Spanier had done nothing wrong, and that there was no coverup at Penn State.
That's because, according to Snedden, Mike McQueary, the alleged whistleblower in the case, was an unreliable witness who told many different conflicting stories about an alleged incident in the Penn State showers where McQueary saw Jerry Sandusky with a naked 10-year-old boy. "Which story do you believe?" Snedden told Big Trial last year.
In his grand jury testimony, McQueary said his observations of Sandusky were based on one or two "glances" in the shower that lasted only "one or two seconds," glances relating to an incident at least eight years previous. But in the hands of the attorney general's fiction writers, those glances of "one or two seconds" became an anal rape of a child, as conclusively witnessed by McQueary.
That, my friends, is what we call prosecutorial misconduct of the intentional kind, the kind that springs convicted murderers out of a Death Row jail cell. And it's a scandal that for six years, the attorney general's office has refused to address, a scandal that the mainstream media has failed to hold the AG accountable for.
On March 1, 2002, according to the 2011 grand jury presentment, [McQueary] walked into the locker room in the Lasch Building at State College and heard “rhythmic, slapping sounds.” Glancing into a mirror, he “looked into the shower . . . [and] saw a naked boy, Victim No. 2, whose age he estimated to be 10 years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Jerry Sandusky.”
"The graduate assistant went to his office and called his father, reporting to him what he had seen. The graduate assistant and his father decided that the graduate assistant had to promptly report what he had seen to Coach Joe Paterno . . . The next morning, a Saturday, the graduate assistant telephoned Paterno and went to Paterno's home, where he reported what he had seen."
But the alleged victim of the shower rape has never came forward, despite an avalanche of publicity, and, according to the prosecutors, his identity was known "only to God." But McQueary knew the prosecutors weren't telling the truth. Days, after the presentment, McQueary wrote in an email to the attorney general's office that they had "slightly twisted his words" and, "I cannot say 1000 percent sure that it was sodomy. I did not see insertion."
On top of that, all the witnesses that the grand jury presentment claimed that McQueary had reported to them "what he had seen," the alleged anal rape of a 10-year-old boy [plus another witness cited by McQueary, a doctor who was a longtime family friend] have all repeatedly denied in court that McQueary ever told them that he witnessed an anal rape.
"I've never had a rape case successfully prosecuted based only on sounds, and without credible victims and witnesses," Snedden told Big Trial. As for the Freeh Report, Snedden described it as "an embarrassment to law enforcement."
Snedden also told Big Trial that the real cause behind the Penn State scandal was "a political hit job" engineered by former attorney general and Gov. Tom Corbett, who had it in for Spanier, after they feuded over drastic budget cuts proposed by the governor at Penn State. Corbett has previously denied the charges.
At the same time Snedden was investigating Penn State, former FBI Director Louis Freeh was writing his report on the Penn State scandal, a report commissioned by the university, at a staggering cost of $8.3 million.
Freeh concluded that there had been a cover up. His report found a “striking lack of empathy for child abuse victims by the most senior leaders of the university,” which included Spanier, who had repeatedly been severely beaten by his father as a child, requiring several operations as an adult. Freeh also found that Spanier, Paterno, along with Schultz, the former Penn State vice president and Curley, the school’s ex-athletic director, “repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse from the authorities.”
But critics such as the minority trustees have noted that the ex-FBI director reached his sweeping conclusions without his investigators ever talking to Paterno, Schultz, Curley, McQueary or Sandusky. Freeh only talked to Spanier briefly, at the end of his investigation. And confidential records viewed by the trustees show that Freeh’s own people disagreed with his conclusions.
According to those records, Freeh's own staff reviewed a May 21, 2012 draft of the Freeh Report, which was subsequently turned over to Penn State officials. The lead paragraph of the draft said, “At the time of the alleged sexual assaults by Jerry Sandusky, there was a culture and environment in the Penn State Athletic Department that led staff members to fail to identify or act on observed inappropriate conduct by Sandusky.”
The draft report talked about an environment of fear that affected even a janitor who supposedly saw Sandusky assaulting a boy in the showers in 2002: “There existed an environment within the athletic department that led an employee to determine that the perceived threat of losing his job outweighed the necessity of reporting the violent crime of a child.”
Over that paragraph in the draft report, a handwritten note said, “NO EVIDENCE AT ALL!” Freeh, however, in his final version of his report, included that charge about the janitor who allegedly saw Sandusky assault another boy in the showers but was so fearful he didn’t report it.
But when the state police interviewed that janitor, Jim Calhoun, he stated three times that it wasn’t Sandusky he had seen sexually abusing a boy. [The state police didn’t ask Calhoun who was the alleged assailant.] At Sandusky’s trial, however, the jury convicted the ex-coach of that crime, in part because his defense lawyer never told the jury about the janitor’s interview with the state police.
In a written statement, Freeh confirmed that the person who wrote “NO EVIDENCE AT ALL!” was one of his guys.
"Throughout the review at the Pennsylvania State University, members of the Freeh team were encouraged to speak freely and to challenge any factual assertions that they believed are not supported," Freeh wrote on Jan. 10, 2018.
"Indeed the factual assertions of the report were tested and vetted over a period of many months and, as new evidence was uncovered, some of the factual assertions and conclusions evolved," he wrote. "Our staff debated, refined and reformed our views even in the final hours before the report's release."
In another handwritten note on the draft of the report, somebody wrote that there was "no evidence" to support Freeh's contention that a flawed football culture was to blame for the Sandusky sex scandal.
"Freeh knew the evidence did not support this," the executive summary says. But in his final report, Freeh wrote about "A culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community."
While Freeh concluded there was a coverup at Penn State, his investigators weren’t so sure, according to records cited by the trustees in their executive summary.
On March 7, 2012, in a conference call, Kathleen McChesney, a former FBI agent who was one of Freeh’s senior investigators, noted that they had found “no smoking gun to indicate [a] cover-up.”
In a written statement to this reporter, Freeh claimed that shortly after McChesney made that observation, his investigators found “the critical ‘smoking gun’ evidence” in a 2001 “email trove among Schultz, Curley and Spanier.”
In that email chain, conducted over Penn State’s own computer system, the administrators discussed confronting Sandusky about his habit of showering with children at Penn State facilities, and telling him to stop, rather than report him to officials at The Second Mile, as well as the state Department of Public Welfare.
In the email chain, Curley described the strategy as a “more humane approach” that included an offer to provide Sandusky with counseling. Spanier agreed, but wrote, “The only downside for us if the message isn’t ‘heard’ and acted upon [by Sandusky] and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it.”
Curley subsequently told Sandusky to stop bringing children into Penn State facilities, and informed officials at The Second Mile about the 2002 shower incident witnessed by McQueary, an incident that the prosecutors subsequently decided really happened in 2001. But Penn State didn’t inform the state Department of Public Welfare about Sandusky, which Freeh claimed was the smoking gun.
By definition, however, a cover-up needs a crime to hide. And Penn State’s administrators have repeatedly testified that when McQueary told them about the 2001 or 2002 shower incident, he described it as horseplay.
Also, an earlier 1998 shower incident involving Sandusky and another boy, referred to by Freeh, was also investigated by multiple authorities, who found no crime, nor any evidence of sex abuse.
Freeh, however, claimed that a trio of college administrators should have caught an alleged serial pedophile who, in that 1998 shower incident, had already been cleared by the Penn State police, the Centre County District Attorney, as well as a psychologist and an investigator from Centre County’s Department of Children and Youth Services. To buy into the conclusions of the Freeh Report, you’d also have to believe that Penn State’s top officials were dumb enough to plot a cover up on the university’s own computers.
In their executive report, the trustees refer to the allegations of a cover up as "unfounded." Freeh, however, maintained that in the six years since he issued his report, its findings have been repeatedly validated in court.
"The Freeh team's investigative interviews and fact-finding were not biased and no outcome was ever predetermined," Freeh wrote. "Their only mandate, to which they adhered, was to follow the evidenced wherever it led. The final report I issued is a reflection of this mandate."
"The accuracy and sustainability of the report is further evidenced by the criminal convictions of Spanier, Schultz, Curley," Freeh wrote. Other developments that verified the conclusions of his report, Freeh wrote, include "voluntary dismissals by the Paterno Family of their suit against the NCAA, Spanier's dismissal of his defamation suit against Freeh, the jury and court findings in the McQueary defamation and whistleblower cases, and the U.S. Department of Education's five-year investigation resulting in a record fine against Penn State."
At yesterday's board of trustees meeting, however, trustee Pope, cited public criticisms of the Freeh Report that included:
-- "On a foundation of scant evidence, the [Freeh] report adds layers of conjecture and supposition to create a portrait of fault, complicity and malfeasance that could well be at odds with the truth . . . [As] scientists and scholars, we can say with conviction that the Freeh Report fails on hits own merits as the indictment of the university that some have taken it to be. Evidence that would compel such an indictment is simply not there." -- A group of 30 past chairs of the Penn State faculty.
-- "The Freeh Report was not useful and created an 'absurd' and 'unwarranted' portrait of the University. There's no doubt in my mind, Freeh steered everything as if he were a prosecutor trying to convince a court to take the case." -- Penn State President Eric Barron.
-- "On Nov. 9th, 2011, I and my fellow Trustees, voted to fire Joe Paterno in a hastily called meeting. We had little advance notice or opportunity to discuss and consider the complex issues we faced. After 61 years of exemplary service, Coach Paterno was given no chance to respond. That was a mistake. I will always regret that my name is attached to that rush to injustice."
"Hiring Louis Freeh and the tacit acceptance of his questionable conclusions, without review, along with his broad criticism of our Penn State culture was yet another mistake. . . Those who believe we can move on without due process for all who have been damaged by unsupported accusations are not acting in Penn State's best interest . . . We have the opportunity to move forward united inner commitment to truth. I urge all who love Penn State's name to fight on." -- Resignation speech of former 18-year trustee Alvin Clemens.
-- "Louis Freeh . . . assigned motivations to people, including Paterno, which at best were unknowable, and at worst might have been irresponsible." -- reporter Bob Costas.
-- "Clearly the more we dig into this, the more troubling it gets. There clearly is a significant amount of communication between Freeh and the NCAA that goes way beyond merely providing information. I'd call int coordination . . . Cleary, Freeh was way past his mandate. He was the enforcement person for the NCAA. That's what it looks like. I don't know how you can look at it any other way. It's almost like the NCAA hired him to do their enforcement investigation on Penn State. At a minimum, it is inappropriate. At a maximum, these were two parties working together to get an outcome that was predetermined."-- State Senate majority leader Jake Corman.
In summation, Pope said, "Some have said that the university's interests are best served by putting this unfortunate chapter behind us. We think differently. We believe that the only way to move forward is from a solid foundation based on an honest appraisal of our history. How can we create effective solutions if we might be working with a fundamental misunderstanding of the problems involved?"
"Our review, which took nearly two and a half years to complete, was a serious and thorough effort," Pope said. "We look forward with sharing the results of our analysis of the Freeh Report's source material without colleagues on the board at our meeting in July."
I did that. I told you who said it.
@JmmyW did and that picture for that particular event TODAY in unpersuasive may not be what was there in 2001 on that night. Your assertion is flawed.
Circular? Really? ALL the defendants prosecuted and jailed (or disgraced and fired by PSU) by the state of PA were either top leaders at Penn State University and/or iconic coaches at that university? How could that not be a PSU scandal?
Do you believe @JmmyW works for the OAG? Interesting. Conspiracy?
He gives very good evidence to show that
And he told the OAG he thought he was seeing anal sodomy. I think most believe that he was grooming the boy which is illegal.
Freeh has opinions but they are reasonable given the evidence he found.
Does he think CSS were justified in doing nothing?
Better read up on the GJ laws some more. I don't think they did.
But she was in the Sandusky trial not that of CSS where Voir Dire would have surely excused her as a juror for SPANIER but not Sandusky.
But he also questioned you and @PSU2UNC to show the page in the report where Snedden said Sandusky was innocent. You have not answered his question to date.
Read my bolds below.
With the Benefit of Hindsight - Ziegler's new documentary podcast on scandal to start in 2021
my agenda is wanting a 19 part podcast to fairly present all sides and not ignore the many items that point to Jerry being guilty. For example these facts about Snedden's investigation are not presented by Ziglie: he didn't investigate Jerry he didn't interview Jerry he didn't interview...
For those who are interested the back and forth of my posts with JmmyW regarding the date of the v2 incident include posts 456, 493, 512, 513, 524, 534, 546, and 558.
Here is JmmyW's complete answers in post 513..
Do you believe the date of the v2 incident to be Feb. 9, 2001?
Yes. It's far more consistent with the evidence than 12/29/2000.
Do you believe that Mike McQueary witnessed a sexual assault in the Lasch building shower?
No. I think he believed a sex assault might have happened. But according to his own testimony, he never saw an explicit sex act. How well he conveyed that to Paterno, and then to Curley and Schultz 7-10 days later is certainly up for debate. But it's clear from all involved that he was uncomfortable with what he saw. The obvious conclusion is that he suspected child abuse, which is exactly what Courtney researched for Schultz.
Do you believe that the Freeh Report is factual?
Yes and no. It contains a lot of facts. But it also contains opinions and conclusions that are not balanced by any other possible conclusion. That's it's major fault.
Do you believe that Spanier, Curley and Schultz knowingly enabled the acts of a CSA offender?
No.
Do you believe Mike McQueary is a credible witness?
Yes. Insofar as he saw Sandusky in a shower with boy and suspected sexual abuse. I do think his level certainty in what exactly he told Curley and Schultz shifted in one direction, just as Schultz and Curley's admission about what he told them shifted in the other direction. To be clear, I think McQueary told them he suspected sex abuse. But in their meeting, I suspect Curley/Schultz pushed back to get clarity on exactly what he saw, and he had to admit he didn't exactly see anything explicit. Unfortunately, none of them said they remembered any of the questions at that meeting.
Do you believe the identity of v2 is known only to God?
No. But I suspect McGettigan believed those words when he made his closing arguments. I think AM believes he was V2. But any argument that asks if he isn't the real V2, why didn't the real V2 come forward, fails the logic test.
Do you believe that Frank Fina claiming that he set up a sting operation to catch the grand jury leaker proves that he was not the leaker?
No. That's just faulty logic. Just like my example immediately above. And just like any argument that claims that if the V1 case (or V2 case) falls apart, the entire case falls apart.
Do you believe that the OAG's and the Freeh Group's investigations were independent?
Mostly, but it's clear they shared information. And that should be no surprise at all. Freeh's first press release stated that they would share information with authorities. Now, did the OAG improperly share information with Freeh? That's definitely possible.
Do you believe that Juror 0990, Laura Pauley, who had been interviewed by the Freeh Group before Sandusky's trial was a fair, unbiased, and open-minded juror?
It seems she was biased against PSU leadership. That's probably not too surprising since she'd been on the faculty for at least 20 years at the time of the Sandusky trial. But she's an engineer, they tend to have good analytical skills, so she was probably an open-minded juror for the Sandusky trial. Just because Freeh interviewed her shouldn't have disqualified her from being a juror. But if she lied about that during voir dire, then yeah, I'd say she was biased. I did review the public transcripts during jury selection; she was never asked about being interviewed by Freeh. If she was asked, the records are either sealed or weren't made public.
Do you believe Malcolm Gladwell is biased in his view of the case?
Yes. But only because I don't think he did any detailed independent research, and just took what Ziegler handed him about the date theory.
Do you believe Mark Pendergrast does not know what he is talking about in regard to this case?
He knows a lot about the case, but just like Ziegler, he omits things that don't support his theories or outright lies about them. There's a lot of similarities between Pendergrast, Ziegler, and Freeh in that regard.
Do you believe John Snedden’s federal investigation into Spanier was flawed?
No. But any suggestion that Snedden investigated the charges against Sandusky and proved him innocent (as suggested by some in this thread, and elsewhere) is absurd.
And some bonus question you didn't ask:
What about the Barenaked Ladies concert on 2/9/2001?
This is an unpersuasive argument. The concert started at 8pm. Any traffic control on the street would have been gone shortly after the concert started. The BJC is not "right across the street" from Lasch. The most likely drive to Lasch from downtown is University Ave to Hastings. You can only see the top part of the back side of the BJC on that route. Nothing about that view would indicate a concert was going on. Take a look on google street view & see for yourself.
What about the ice hockey game on 2/9/2001?
This is another unpersuasive argument. It might make sense if it were the Icers hockey team, who were #2 in the ACHA, but they were in Ohio that night. The Ice Lions were the lower level of the two club hockey teams. They had a record of 6-12-2 and were on a five-game losing skid. It's doubtful there were many in attendance at Greenberg to watch them play. It's also doubtful anyone going to that game would have parked in the restricted parking area for the Lasch building when there was a sizable parking lot on the other side of Greenberg. Take a look on google street view & see for yourself.
Do you believe Sandusky when he says he was only warned not to shower Victim 6 after 1998?
No. It makes no sense that Officer Shreffler and Jerry Lauro would restrict to their admonition not to shower with kids to just a single boy. They both knew he had showered with multiple boys in the past. They both knew he gave naked bear hugs to two different boys (V6 and BK) in 1998. It makes no sense to only tell him not to shower with V6.
LOL....I'm busy saving the world for a few weeks and you obviously missed me. What a joke you are....
Saving the world? 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 I know its tough when they change your shifts. Working nights now? LOL
Just traveling to other parts of the country to work with other researchers on important topics that have implications for global health. Not really shift work.
Happy to prove it. Just tell me what you want to see that will shut you up that doesn't involve PII. I feel like this is a very simple request.
I won't need proof that you clean a mean bathroom. I'll take your word on that for sure. LOL I've told you what I will accept. Until then you are a liar.
That fool hasn't shut up in 10 years. Same old Penn Live crap.
Prove it or STFU. I've given you proof of who I am. You have given me zero proof that I am a liar other than you have a "gut feeling" that I am. This is the same kind of sick argument that fuels the "Stop the Steal" nonsense, and is common among anti-vaxxers. You have zero data to support your point but you "just know in your heart it must be true."
You are a sick person who is emblematic of a lot of the major problems this country is facing right now.
Wackhole himself is the proven liar.
My advice is to ignore his shtick. You could offer DNA evidence and you’d still be accused of somehow faking everything. You will never get a narcissist to admit they are wrong.
Prove the claim you've made. You have not so far and until you do you are a liar. You are a sick person who defends pedophiles and their enablers because you worship the icon and the institution.
You are emblematic of the "old sick" way of thinking that blames the victims of sexual abuse like Epstein, Weinstein, The Southern Baptist Convention and Cosby. You are hurting the cause of stopping CSA by calling the victims liars but few are listening to your drivel thank goodness.
You are a liar
He can't
I've told him what I will accept. Try to keep up.
And that's why you never have admitted such.
Prove that the evidence I provided is fake.
I provided evidence. If I provided it in court, the burden would be on the opposition to prove it was fake, not for me to prove it was real. Prove it is fake. You cannot (because it is real).
I'm not blaming victims, I'm calling out liars.
Guilty
guilty
Never heard of them.
guilty, although probably not of as many charges as people think.
Again, I'm not calling victims liars; I'm calling liars liars.
