JmmyW Recounts Sandusky GJ Leaks.
- Thread starter ralpieE
- Start date
Yeah, I'm just wondering if someone got to him and whoever tasked him with investigating the leaks.
is the judge a Democrat or a Republican? that will determine my level of outrage. 
Footnote from page 70 of the Moulton Report says:
"134 Subsequent efforts within OAG to determine whether anyone within law enforcement had violated their grand-jury-secrecy obligations were unsuccessful."
"134 Subsequent efforts within OAG to determine whether anyone within law enforcement had violated their grand-jury-secrecy obligations were unsuccessful."
The link below has a summary of all the leaks I noticed, as of a year ago. It's a little easier to read for non-Twitter users.
http://jmmyw.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/reviewing-the-leaks/
That footnote has some interesting wording. As I understand it, Judge Krumenacker was not part of the OAG. Would his review/investigation be considered "OAG efforts"?
http://jmmyw.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/reviewing-the-leaks/
That footnote has some interesting wording. As I understand it, Judge Krumenacker was not part of the OAG. Would his review/investigation be considered "OAG efforts"?
The read on the leaks was great thanks Jimmy. It reinvigorated my hatred for the OG BOT. How the eff did Masser not get kicked off the BOT for making those comments that it looks like PSU admins/football were involved in a cover up???
One would think he'd say he hopes they are innocent but will wait for due process to run it's course. But nope, he actually states the opposite. Nothing like having one of your own trustees sandbag you to the press. CSS should sue the crap out of him.
All Masser did after that was issue a half assed apology but the damagw was already done by what he said and it was irreversible.
Good point. I think the rumor was that rominger was the person who leaked the MS stuff.
Jmmy, in your rundown of leaks, are you sure it wasn't the list of charges that was posted on the Centre County Court website instead of the full presentment? In the article you screenshot, it only references the charges against Sandusky (filed in Centre County) and not the charges against Curley and Schultz (Dauphin). If the presentment was leaked, all charges against all three defendants would have been known at the same time. If my recollection is correct, knowledge about Sandusky's charges became known and were written about the day before the full weight of Sandusky's crimes - and the allegations against Curley and Schultz - were known.
Good catch Raffy, and good memory. You're correct. It was apparently just the charges against Sandusky that were available on Friday 11/4/2011. The GJP was on the attorney general's website as early as noon on Saturday. I think PennLive was first to report on it and provide a link (which is now dead) http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/read_the_grand_jury_presentmen.html
Philly.com had an article later on Saturday with a link to a copy on their server which is still a working link http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20111105_Read_the_Grand_Jury_presentment.html
I used to accept the explanation that a mistake was (probably) made in posting the charges on the Centre County website. That was at least plausible. The fact the GJP was freely available on Saturday on the Attorney General's website was clearly not a mistake after Friday's snafu.
I wouldn't be surprised if they planned to arrest him that Friday. But, the PSP didn't realize he was in Ohio and Ganim's source wasn't alerted that an arrest wasn't imminent. They concoct the story that the charges were posted in error rather than admit they lost track of a serial pedophile.
The Centre Co. site has the Criminal Complaint with the GJ Presentment posted with a time stamp of 11/04/2011 12:21:08 PM http://co.centre.pa.us/centreco/media/upload/SANDUSKY CRIMINAL COMPLAINT 2422 OF 2011.pdf
Scroll to the bottom to see the time stamp here: http://centrecountypa.gov/index.aspx?NID=506
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Based on my reading of the law, once a presentment has been accepted by the supervising judge, the presentment can either be released at the discretion of the prosecution. If, however, either the judge or the prosecution requests that the presentment is sealed, it cannot be released until the defendants are in custody.
In this case, I don't see anything that suggests that either the judge or the prosecution requested the presentment to be sealed, so it could be released by the prosecution at their discretion - and that was Saturday. While informally I think the AG's office probably would have rather released everything on Monday when they had planned their press conference, the release of the charges against Sandusky by Centre County on Friday afternoon (which I believe was one of Ganim's friends in the courthouse giving her a scoop) sped up the schedule. This wasn't the kind of news that typically gets buried on a Friday or on a football Saturday.
It was ordered to be sealed by Judge Ricardo Jackson on November 4, 2011(see Appendix P of the Moulton Report).
Interesting - thank you. I admit it has been quite a while since I read through the presentment aside from the oft-discussed portions. In that sealing order, it reads that the presentment should be sealed until necessary for issuance and execution of process, or until a judge gives permission either by order or direction. I wonder if the GJ judge gave permission to release the presentment when Centre County prematurely made it known that Sandusky was to be charged. If I recall correctly, the presentment was accompanied with a full, formal press release that was disseminated to most major news sources both in PA and nationally; it makes little sense to me that the presentment would be publicized so widely and clearly without proper permission. If something like that were to be leaked illegally, it would have been much quieter and more difficult to trace the source.
I also think it's interesting that Judge Jackson signed both presentments rather than Judge Feudale, considering Judge Feudale presided over many of the other parts of the GJ.
Edit: Additionally, while reading Moulton's timeline, it references Sandusky being arrested on Saturday, November 5. That may very well qualify as a reason acceptable to the sealing order to release the presentment, as well as the statute.
Why do you keep trying to rationalize a SEALED GJP getting illegally posted?
It's quite simple, if the judge gave permission to release the presentment when CC "accidentally" made it known JS was about to get charged then there should be some paper work stating so. Where is that paperwork? As far as know it doesn't exist. The GJP was still sealed when it was somehow disseminated to the media/world which is a pretty big deal IMO.
The GJ violations were egregious enough for Judge Krumenaker to be assigned to look into them, then all we got was crickets from him, of course.
In addition to Krumenacker's investigation,
From the Pittsburgh post gazette:
"The supervising judge (feudale) of the statewide grand jury that recommended charges against Jerry Sandusky has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate leaks coming from it and two other panels.
Judge Barry F. Feudale signed the four-page order appointing attorney James M. Reeder on Feb. 8, 2013.
It gives the former lawyer from the state attorney general's office (from corbetts oag, no wonder he didn't find anything) until Aug. 8 to investigate and prosecute any illegal disclosure of information protected by the rules of grand jury secrecy, as well as any "breach of official duty or other unlawful act."
Judge Feudale issued the order, he wrote, because a preliminary investigation led him to believe a deeper probe into violations of grand jury secrecy was needed.
At the conclusion of Mr. Reeder's work, he is to submit a report to the state with recommendations on preserving grand jury secrecy, Judge Feudale wrote.
The order includes three grand juries: the 33rd Statewide Investigating Grand Jury, the 36th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury and the Dauphin County Fourth Investigating Grand Jury."
================================
This also goes to show that feudale was an absolute joke of a supervising GJ judge for all the shenanigans he allowed, especially the Baldwin mess
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Didn't Kane remove Feudale in the middle of that investigation? Do we know whether the new appointee authorized the continuance of that investigation, or did it die when Feudale was removed?
And I think it's awfully presumptuous for you to say that the presentment was illegally leaked. Based on my reading of the sealing order, the presentment could be unsealed under three conditions: (1) release was necessary to facilitate the arrest and processing of a defendant; (2) under an order by the supervising judge; and (3) under "other direction" from the supervising judge. Only scenario 2 would necessitate a formal written order from the supervising judge. Additionally, the statute reads that a sealed presentment can be released when the defendant is brought into custody - in this case, if JS was arrested prior to the presentment's release, it may have very well been completely legal without a judge's order or direction.
I'm not rationalizing anything - I'm using the evidence available to us to try and determine whether laws were broken and, if so, who was responsible. Isn't that part of the "truth" you're looking for? Or does it only count as "truth" if it criminalizes who you want it to criminalize?
I'm not sure exactly when Kane removed Feudale, however I don't see how that would effect Reeder's order or Krumenacker's investigation especially Krumenacker's since he had nothing to do with Feudale or his order to Reeder.
I'm not being presumptuous at all. What happened here clearly falls into category #2 that you outlined above and I don't know how you could possibly argue otherwise. If it was condition (1) or (3) there never would have been a need for Krumenacker or Reeder's investigations in the first place! Did you even read my above post?? They were both tasked "to investigate and prosecute any illegal disclosure of information protected by the rules of grand jury secrecy, as well as any "breach of official duty or other unlawful act.""
And then we didn't hear a single word from either of them about what their investigations concluded...hmmmm....
Judge Feudale, the supervising judge himself, issued the order to Reeder because a preliminary investigation led him to believe a deeper probe into violations of grand jury secrecy was needed. IOW it's not condition (1) or (3). If it was condition (1) or (3) there would be no need for a deeper investigation. If the supervising judge is issuing orders to find out why GJ secrecy rules were breached it's not condition (3) b/c he would know whether or not he gave "other direction".
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Raffycorn, I concur with your general assessment. First, thanks for catching my mistaken belief the GJP was released on Friday. It looks like only the charges against Sandusky were 'accidentally' included on a publicly accessible docket sheet, and the GJP was made public only after Sandusky was in custody.
My expectation would have been that the GJP would only be released after Curley and Schultz were also in custody since their transgressions were also detailed in the GJP. And just to clarify, when a GJP is sealed (as it was in this case; thanks for the Moulton reference Chris92), it is only sealed until the defendant is in custody. That was true for Sandusky but not for Curley and Schultz.
So, did the OAG screw up when they released the GJP on Saturday, or did the judge release the seal after Sandusky was in custody? I think this is an important question, especially when the OAG was itself critical of the information leak on Friday and also said "there was nothing released prematurely by our office or by the state police prior to Sandusky being taken into custody."
-----
PA Grand Jury Law regarding sealed presentments
http://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/CT/HTM/42/00.045..HTM
CHAPTER 45. JURIES AND JURORS
SUBCHAPTER D. INVESTIGATING GRAND JURIES
§ 4551. Investigating grand jury presentments.
(b) Sealed presentment.--The supervising judge to whom a presentment is submitted may, on his own motion or at the request of the Commonwealth, direct that the presentment be kept secret until the defendant is in custody or has been released pending trial. In directing that the presentment be kept secret, the supervising judge shall enter an order requiring that the presentment be sealed and that no person shall disclose a return of the presentment except when necessary for issuance and execution of process.
----- The GJP was sealed
The Moulton report Appendix P has a copy of the GJP sealing order on 11/4/2011 (page 273 of 339). It also includes the GJP that found Curley & Schultz failed to report and committed perjury (page 286 of 339). And it also includes the recommendation of charges against Sandusky, Curley, and Schultz (page 298 of 339).
http://filesource.abacast.com/commo...EPORT_to_AG_ON_THE_SANDUSKY_INVESTIGATION.pdf
----- The GJP was public on Saturday after Sandusky was in custody, but before Curley & Schultz were in custody, 2 days later on Monday. The happened even though the OAG noted the 'accidental' release of charging documents on the prior Friday.
11/4/2011, 2:26pm, Charges filed (publicly) in Centre County Court
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/former_penn_state_coach_jerry.html
11/4/2011, 5:13pm, Charging documents made public (link in story)
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/charges_against_sandusky_remov.html
Charging documents from PennLive (3 pages from docket sheet): http://media.pennlive.com/midstate_impact/other/sandusky charges.pdf
From the article: "The early afternoon posting was likely an accident, and the charges are expected to be refiled Monday morning. Several attempts to reach the state Attorney General's Office, which has been investigating Sandusky for nearly three years, have been unsuccessful."
11/5/2011, 11:01am, First mention (I think) that Curley & Schultz will be charged
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/sandusky_investigation_sources.html
The article include a now-dead link to a press release on the Attorney General's website. The article concludes with a quote from Linda Kelly's press release: "The failure of top university officials to act on reports of Sandusky's alleged sexual misconduct, even after it was reported to them in graphic detail by an eyewitness, allowed a predator to walk free for years - continuing to target new victims."
11/5/2011, 12:04pm, the Grand Jury Presentment is made public
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/read_the_grand_jury_presentmen.html
The article includes a now-dead link to the GJP on the Attorney General's website. Copies of the GJP were copied and made public by other media outlets which are still available from those articles, also dated Saturday 11/5/2011.
11/5/2011, 2:13pm, Attorney General promises to investigate Friday's leak
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/ag_to_investigate_early_releas.html
From the article, quoting Nils Fredeiksen: "If information was released prematurely by other sources, that will be investigated, but there was nothing released prematurely by our office or by the state police prior to Sandusky being taken into custody."
Also from the article: "Attorney General Linda Kelly will be holding a press conference Monday at 1 p.m., and Athletic Director Tim Curley and top executive Gary Schultz will be arraigned at 2 p.m. at a Harrisburg district judge's office. They are charged with perjury and failure to report a crime related to Sandusky's 40 child sex crime charges."
11/7/2011, 2:01pm, Linda Kelly held press conference today announcing arrests
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/who_is_linda_kelly_new_pennsyl.html
11/7/2011, 2:36pm, Curley & Schultz surrender for arraignment on charges
http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/breaking-news/index.ssf/2011/11/penn_state_athletic_director_t.html
Raffycorn, I concur with your general assessment. First, thanks for catching my mistaken belief the GJP was released on Friday. It looks like only the charges against Sandusky were 'accidentally' included on a publicly accessible docket sheet, and the GJP was made public only after Sandusky was in custody.
My expectation would have been that the GJP would only be released after Curley and Schultz were also in custody since their transgressions were also detailed in the GJP. And just to clarify, when a GJP is sealed (as it was in this case; thanks for the Moulton reference Chris92), it is only sealed until the defendant is in custody. That was true for Sandusky but not for Curley and Schultz.
So, did the OAG screw up when they released the GJP on Saturday, or did the judge release the seal after Sandusky was in custody? I think this is an important question, especially when the OAG was itself critical of the information leak on Friday and also said "there was nothing released prematurely by our office or by the state police prior to Sandusky being taken into custody."
-----
PA Grand Jury Law regarding sealed presentments
http://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/CT/HTM/42/00.045..HTM
CHAPTER 45. JURIES AND JURORS
SUBCHAPTER D. INVESTIGATING GRAND JURIES
§ 4551. Investigating grand jury presentments.
(b) Sealed presentment.--The supervising judge to whom a presentment is submitted may, on his own motion or at the request of the Commonwealth, direct that the presentment be kept secret until the defendant is in custody or has been released pending trial. In directing that the presentment be kept secret, the supervising judge shall enter an order requiring that the presentment be sealed and that no person shall disclose a return of the presentment except when necessary for issuance and execution of process.
----- The GJP was sealed
The Moulton report Appendix P has a copy of the GJP sealing order on 11/4/2011 (page 273 of 339). It also includes the GJP that found Curley & Schultz failed to report and committed perjury (page 286 of 339). And it also includes the recommendation of charges against Sandusky, Curley, and Schultz (page 298 of 339).
http://filesource.abacast.com/commo...EPORT_to_AG_ON_THE_SANDUSKY_INVESTIGATION.pdf
----- The GJP was public on Saturday after Sandusky was in custody, but before Curley & Schultz were in custody, 2 days later on Monday. The happened even though the OAG noted the 'accidental' release of charging documents on the prior Friday.
11/4/2011, 2:26pm, Charges filed (publicly) in Centre County Court
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/former_penn_state_coach_jerry.html
11/4/2011, 5:13pm, Charging documents made public (link in story)
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/charges_against_sandusky_remov.html
Charging documents from PennLive (3 pages from docket sheet): http://media.pennlive.com/midstate_impact/other/sandusky charges.pdf
From the article: "The early afternoon posting was likely an accident, and the charges are expected to be refiled Monday morning. Several attempts to reach the state Attorney General's Office, which has been investigating Sandusky for nearly three years, have been unsuccessful."
11/5/2011, 11:01am, First mention (I think) that Curley & Schultz will be charged
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/sandusky_investigation_sources.html
The article include a now-dead link to a press release on the Attorney General's website. The article concludes with a quote from Linda Kelly's press release: "The failure of top university officials to act on reports of Sandusky's alleged sexual misconduct, even after it was reported to them in graphic detail by an eyewitness, allowed a predator to walk free for years - continuing to target new victims."
11/5/2011, 12:04pm, the Grand Jury Presentment is made public
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/read_the_grand_jury_presentmen.html
The article includes a now-dead link to the GJP on the Attorney General's website. Copies of the GJP were copied and made public by other media outlets which are still available from those articles, also dated Saturday 11/5/2011.
11/5/2011, 2:13pm, Attorney General promises to investigate Friday's leak
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/ag_to_investigate_early_releas.html
From the article, quoting Nils Fredeiksen: "If information was released prematurely by other sources, that will be investigated, but there was nothing released prematurely by our office or by the state police prior to Sandusky being taken into custody."
Also from the article: "Attorney General Linda Kelly will be holding a press conference Monday at 1 p.m., and Athletic Director Tim Curley and top executive Gary Schultz will be arraigned at 2 p.m. at a Harrisburg district judge's office. They are charged with perjury and failure to report a crime related to Sandusky's 40 child sex crime charges."
11/7/2011, 2:01pm, Linda Kelly held press conference today announcing arrests
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/who_is_linda_kelly_new_pennsyl.html
11/7/2011, 2:36pm, Curley & Schultz surrender for arraignment on charges
http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/breaking-news/index.ssf/2011/11/penn_state_athletic_director_t.html
I agree, jmmy. Whether the GJ judge released the seal when Jerry was in custody is an important question. I suspect that he did, considering the leak by Centre County the day before caused a flurry of activity both on the part of Sandusky's counsel and in the national media. I suspect that the AG's office would have rather done everything on Monday to capitalize on the weekly news cycle, but when the charges were posted on CC's site on Friday the plans changed - letting the situation fester for a whole weekend without any clarification over why Sandusky was arrested or that charges were pending wouldn't have been wise on their part. I also doubt that they would have made such a public statement without ensuring that they wouldn't be liable for leaking materials down the road. I also suspect that the leaking investigations were related to who told Ganim details in March, how the charges were posted early, who gave the redacted 1998 police report to the news media, and who gave the Matt Sandusky tape to the news media. While you raise an interesting distinction regarding whether "defendant" means just one defendant or all three, I'm admittedly not well-enough versed in the case law to determine where the courts fall, and I imagine case law (if it exists) is sparse.
It was quite apparent Kelly had intent with the pictures of C,S & S like they were already guilty. This was orchestrated between the OAG, the BoT and Freeh. The Big Ten and NCAA were also involved.
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