Ray on Spanier's opening statement
- Thread starter ChiTownLion
- Start date
Paraphrasing: "Other people failed, so please ignore my client's failure."
It actually paraphrases to. They failed and actually had a legal duty to report. I just made an ethical failure.
Paraphrasing: "MichNitt is an idiot, who can't find his way home"
Disappointed not to see Lauro and especially Miller on the witness list.
"The University Park police and State College police departments were involved in determining if there was sufficient evidence of criminal acts by Sandusky with regard to the 1998 incident.
Those individuals did not find sufficient evidence for then Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar to file charges."
Schreffler did believe he had sufficient evidence for charges. Gricar shot down each one of his points. When his reasoning becomes public I think it will be clear who failed here.
"The University Park police and State College police departments were involved in determining if there was sufficient evidence of criminal acts by Sandusky with regard to the 1998 incident.
Those individuals did not find sufficient evidence for then Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar to file charges."
Schreffler did believe he had sufficient evidence for charges. Gricar shot down each one of his points. When his reasoning becomes public I think it will be clear who failed here.
Interesting. Is this a hypothesis, or do you have this info?
Last edited:
Schreffler stated he believed there should be charges filed in his Sandusky testimony. He said Gricar didn't agree...but he didn't elaborate then about his reasons. He told Bill Moushey (or someone else did) for the book Game Over...and the reasons/excuses listed are all bogus. I hope that Schreffler will elaborate on this himself in his testimony for this trial but I can't say for sure.
There is no question in my mind, however, that Gricar never intended to prosecute. I was hoping that would be made clear this week. Given the limited witness list I doubt it but we'll see.
PSU Failure based upon what???? A client who had no legal OR MORAL responsibilities to take action on an event without 1st hand knowledge of abuse?? A moral responsibility to guess at a "sighting" where every single person - and there were many - who was told by MM what he saw said that no police involvement or further legal action was warranted.
Overly simplified statements which contain unvetted labels designed to emotionalize public responses is what this entire "case" is based on. Your statements that on the surface SEEM reasonable is not based upon the DETAILS on what was known in 2001 which makes it just an other illusion designed to trick you into accepting a fundamentally false statement. There was no "failure" by PSU in 2001. PERIOD. They had no legal or moral responsibility for a former employee of TSM UNLESS real evidence of criminal action was reported. Speculation and re-evaluation 10+ years later on what happened is not reasonable evidence of a 2001 crime!
You know that what you have stated is totally wrong...unless you changed who you mean by "client" - I agree that if your client is PA agencies and/or TSM your otherwise statement is true
PSU Failure based upon what???? A client who had no legal OR MORAL responsibilities to take action on an event without 1st hand knowledge of abuse?? A moral responsibility to guess at a "sighting" where every single person - and there were many - who was told by MM what he saw said that no police involvement or further legal action was warranted.
Overly simplified statements which contain unvetted labels designed to emotionalize public responses is what this entire "case" is based on. Your statements that on the surface SEEM reasonable is not based upon the DETAILS on what was known in 2001 which makes it just an other illusion designed to trick you into accepting a fundamentally false statement. There was no "failure" by PSU in 2001. PERIOD. They had no legal or moral responsibility for a former employee of TSM UNLESS real evidence of criminal action was reported. Speculation and re-evaluation 10+ years later on what happened is not reasonable evidence of a 2001 crime!
You know that what you have stated is totally wrong...unless you changed who you mean by "client" - I agree that if your client is PA agencies and/or TSM your otherwise statement is true
The OP's statement is exactly why people like Roxine are so dangerous. They advocate that every person (no matter how peripheral to the situation) has the same duty of care and should be held accountable for "failure."
Wouldn't Karen Arnold know the reasoning? I always thought it was dropped by the DA bc they didn't have enough evidence to prove JS' intent with these showers was sexual, beyond a reasonable doubt. Which would be hard to do since the kid himself said he saw no arousal etc.
Also I'm pretty sure Karen said that DPW brought in seasock to do the second evaluation against her wishes and the wishes of shreffler.
Someone really needs to get Arnold on the stand and get to the bottom of this.
of course, Schreffler didn't publicly state this until several lives had been ruined by the press....so it is possible he was covering his backend. I'd like to see the documentation before I believed him. In reviewing 1998, I didn't see anything JS did that broke the law. Inappropriate, yes. Against the law, no.
Arnold said Gricar never told her why he didn't charge. In fact, he dropped her from the investigation even though she got the referral from Schreffler and was the office child abuse expert. So on a case where it's considered a "close call" the person who knows the most about these cases is left out.
Seasock was brought in against her and Schrefflers wishes. But not against Gricars.
THANKS, I READ THE ARTICLE EARLIER THIS MORNING. I ENJOYED IT.
That would depend on whatever happened after Jerry picked up the victim in the shower to wash his hair - the victim testifed that he had "blacked out" anything that happened after Jerry picked him up.
Again, you've got to go to court with evidence. If the victim "blacked out" nobody knows what happened.
When, in fact, it is impossible for all of us on earth to be professional psychologists with expertise in this narrow area. Specialists are there to help the general population not deceive them...
The big never answered question will be why was the Gicar investigative team reshuffled and who were the new appointees of Gicar beholden to? Think Centre County..
I agree with you - I'm more discussing whether or not the reality of what Jerry did in 1998 was a crime, rather than whether or not they would have been able to convince a jury of it. I think it's more likely than not that Jerry did, in fact, commit a number of crimes in 1998, but I also recognize that it would have been an uphill battle to convict with the evidence that we know at this point publicly.
Yes and no. I think it was a play on words. Not a Penn STATE problem but a STATE of PA problem. And, also, it is a state. One of the 50 states in the United States of America.
True. But I'd be nervous about a jury's ability to make the distinction in this instance.
Exactly, which is why prosecutors won't proceed if they can't make the charges stick in a court of law, PA courts notwithstanding.
The disturbing part of this, regardless of how criminal this specific act was, is the fact that Gricar knew Jerry was around boys all the time, both with Second Mile and at home. There was a second boy...that second boy *may* have alerted them to yet other boys...yet Gricar shut it down instead of pursuing it. When investigators got the 1998 police report in 2011 it blew the case open. Victim 6 and his mom told them about a number of other potential victims. Gricar had all of that available to him and passed. And he made the decision to pass quickly.
$230M question: Why isn't the investigation pursuing this disturbing fact and instead trying to blame Penn State and CSS iwht the second coming of the Salem Witch Trials? I would agree with you that the spark and the source of any and all liability after Mr Sandusky is (figuratively) light years beyond CSS and the Penn State football program.
I don't think he "shut it down." He executed two "sting" operations where the kid and his mom tried to trap JS into saying something incriminating. TSM was told....and they should have put together processes to document activities. Again, back to TSM skating on this entire issue.
I'm hoping we get at least a little clarity in the coming days.
We may learn more about those stings...maybe even today. There are troubling aspects.
And Gricar had to keep the case open until he got Seasock's report, which didn't happen until May 21.
Agreed. The Gricar thing is actually a microcosm of Curley and Schultz: they decided that there is a lot of smoke and no fire...so they report it to TSM, who does a lot of nothing.
Me too. But, we all have been saying that for every trial. It never happens and it probably never will That specific question should have been asked at Sandusky's trial. That specific thread should have been pursued by FactFreeh. The BOT should have waited for an answer to that question before making any decisions regarding guilt, mistakes, failures, cover-up, conspiracies, firings, and settlement payments.
For Spanier, I think the question is almost irrelevant and inconsequential. THat was 1998. The situation in question is regarding 2001. My earlier remark was that someone really should be looking at WHO and HOW the State and the child protective agencies failed miserably well before 2001. That is the root cause of it all.
I think Seasocks report was an excuse for him not to bring charges. Seasock probably had a reputation of providing desired outcomes.
It will be interesting to see if the commonwealth attempts to paint that picture & then connect the dots to Spanier.
OAG knows Seasocks report is bogus. Whether it will be brought up in this trial is questionable.
