So how much does the judge take into account Shapiro's constant blabbering on twitter when determining to hear an appeal?
Spanier Avoids Jailtime?
- Thread starter didier
- Start date
"No one's above the law, except for the people that bribe me."
Don't forget the employees of the OAG who passed around porn on the taxpayer's dime and had their emails covered up;
Judges too. Lots of them, and it extended all the way up to the pa supreme court. I never knew it was considered so normal for prosecutors and judges to communicate so extensively in such a clandestine fashion.
May 1st Shapiro is going to "quickly appeal" the federal judge's ruling. 4 weeks later he finally gets around to filing it. I would love to see his constitution be damned appeal.
https://www.padisciplinaryboard.org/for-attorneys/rules/rule/3/the-rules-of-professional-conduct
3.6 Trial Publicity
- A lawyer who is participating or has participated in the investigation or litigation of a matter shall not make an extrajudicial statement that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter.
- Notwithstanding paragraph (a), a lawyer may state:
- the claim, offense or defense involved and, except when prohibited by law, the identity of the persons involved; (and additional exceptions are shown)
- the claim, offense or defense involved and, except when prohibited by law, the identity of the persons involved; (and additional exceptions are shown)
LOL!
What Fina is accused of doing on Oct. 22, 2012, when he told Judge Barry Feudale that he wanted to call Cynthia Baldwin, Penn State's general counsel, as a witness against three of her clients, but Fina told the judge that he wouldn't get into any areas of questioning that would violate the attorney-client privilege.
But on Oct. 26, 2012, when Fina questioned Baldwin in front of the grand jury, he "did elicit" what the disciplinary board counsel described as "extensive . . . attorney-client privileged communications as well as "confidential information" pertaining to Baldwin's three former clients -- Penn State president Graham Spanier, vice president Gary Schultz, and athletic director Tim Curley.
Fina is accused of breaking Rule 3.10 of the Rules of Professional Conduct which states: "A public prosecutor or other government lawyer shall not, without prior judicial approval, subpoena an attorney to appear before a grand jury or other tribunal investigating criminal activity in circumstances where the prosecutor or other government lawyer seeks to compel the attorney/witness to provide evidence concerning a person who is or has been represented by the attorney/witness."
According to Kittredge, Fina deliberately misled the judge into not holding a hearing to seek prior approval before getting what he wanted behind closed doors from Baldwin, namely weaponizing the general counsel, and turning her into a witness who testified in secret grand jury proceedings against her own clients.
The actions of Fina and Baldwin were condemned by Lawrence J. Fox, a longtime Philadelphia lawyer who's a visiting lecturer at the Yale Law School, who was as an expert witness at Disciplinary Board hearings last June.
"When lawyers feign representation, but in fact abandon their clients, and worse yet, become instrumentalities of the state, aiding the prosecution of their clients, the entire system of justice is systematically destroyed," Fox wrote.
In a separate action, the state Disciplinary Board has asked the state Supreme Court, which will also have the final say on Fina, to publicly censure Baldwin for abandoning her clients.
When Baldwin testified against her three former clients, according to Kittredge, those clients "astoundingly" were "not present or notified" that they were being sold down the river. Fina's lawyers, however, have claimed that the three former clients should have known that Baldwin was representing the university as a legal entity, and not the three officials individually.
After the hearings, a three-lawyer Disciplinary Board committee in January issued an opinion recommending that the charges be dismissed against Fina because of a technicality, that Fina's name was not on the subpoena issued by the state attorney general's office that summoned Baldwin to the grand jury.
Kittredge told the panel of judges today that the hearing committee had seized on a "non-issue here," namely the technicality of which prosecutor's name was on the subpoena issued by the state attorney general's office.
Former Deputy Attorney General Bruce Beemer signed the subpoena of Baldwin, but it was Fina who questioned Baldwin in the grand jury. According to Kittredge, if the hearing committee's decision is allowed to stand, the protection afforded by Rule 3.10 of the Rules of Professional Conduct would be "obliterated" by prosecutors as long as they get one of their colleagues to sign their name on a subpoena whenever they're dragging a lawyer into the grand jury to convince them to testify against their client.
In response, Dennis C. McAndrews, on behalf of Fina, basically did a tap dance routine that involved plenty of feigned outrage and references to the noble crusade Fina was on before he was turning Baldwin into a cooperator. McAndrews referred to Fina's dogged pursuit of convicted serial child molester Jerry Sandusky, and subsequent pursuit of Penn State officials who allegedly covered up Sandusky's crimes.
Who are we supposed to look up to anymore when our elected officials scoff at the rule of law? Who wants to live in a society like this? I have to make my own moral compass because everyone else is so corrupt.
And McQueary never even spoke to Spanier
Heim is a name repeatedly pushed to the background. Go comment on it on PennLies, the result...deletion and immediate ban.
You are right. Shapiro's actions are unsupportable!!! He should be removed from office for numerous crimes - not the least of which is his oath of office which includes supporting the laws of the state and nation.
He keeps referring to a cover-up, for which Spanier was found not guilty. That in itself should be enough to throw this appeal in the garbage. What a dick he is.
I really want to know more about bruce heim and the BOT connections and personal enrichment that they were trying to preserve.
Shapiro also seems to have a problem with Catholics--and there are a lot of Catholic voters in PA. http://www.catholicsforamerica.org/...tle-sisters-of-the-poor-with-immoral-lawsuit/ Regardless of what one thinks of birth control (I am for it) and abortion, pressuring a religious organization to go against its beliefs is over the line.
Heim Heim - Bruce Heim is apparently one of the wealthiest people in State College and was a long time board member of the Second Mile charity. He was also a big supporter of Jerry Sandusky, even after the initial report of the grand jury investigation surfaced in early 2011 (but quickly dropped him like everyone else did after his arrest).
One of the most startling facts I uncovered in my Sandusky interview was that just a couple of months before his arrest, Heim hosted Sanduky, future Penn State board member Ryan McCombie, and the man who would soon be known (but who in the prosecution’s eyes didn’t even exist) as Victim 2, for a round of golf at the Toftrees resort in State College.
Think about that for a moment. It is so bizarre as to be emblematic of this entire case which continually produces a script which no Hollywood screenwriter could ever produce while sober. If you were the “boy in the shower” in the McQueary episode and you had been sexually assaulted by Jerry Sandusky, would you be playing golf with him ten years later, as a married former Marine, after it was publicly known that Sandusky was the subject of a grand jury because of alleged sexual abuse? Seriously?!
Heim said that he did not know at the time that the man he added to the foursome because his military background gave him something in common with McCumbie was the kid from the 2001 incident. However, he did know that there was such an “episode” because he was told by the head of the Second Mile Jack Raykovitz that Penn State had informed him about it. Raykovitz told Heim at the time that he had spoken to Sandusky regarding what he had learned from Tim Curley, but did not mention the identity of the boy. Heim insisted to me that this meant that Sandusky never told Raykovitz who it was, but that makes no sense given that Sandusky was very confident the boy would back him up and was well aware that the Raykovitz was extremely familiar with the boy because he was very prominent within the Second Mile. It would have been exceedingly odd and against his own self interest for Sandusky not to have done exactly what he told me he was positive that he indeed had.
I believe Heim when he says that Raykovitz didn’t give him the name (this issue is important, for among other reasons, because Raykovitz has testified that he didn’t know who it was, as well as other key facts which Sandusky told me he informed him of), but I think he is giving Raykovitz way too much credit when he concludes that this means Sandusky didn’t tell him. Both Jerry and Dottie are very insistent that Jerry told Raykovitz who the boy was and Raykovitz clearly has an incentive to lie about that now (while the timing doesn’t work out quite right, it seems possible that Raykovitz may have been doing the prosecution a “favor” by saying he didn’t know who Sandusky cited as the boy). As for why Raykovitz didn’t tell Heim at the time, it could have either been a simple oversight, or because of a confidentiality concern (when I proposed that second possibility to Heim he could not rule it out).
I had never heard of Heim (other than Sandusky’s brief mention of him) until he out of the blue said after he had heard through the State College grapevine that I had interviewed Sandusky. It was immediately obvious to me that he was very concerned about what Jerry may have said, specifically about Raykovitz, about whom he was very protective. Heim came on so strong that it immediately raised my suspicions that he had reason to be very concerned about something (for context, I had heard rumors, which I do not currently believe, that Heim had given cars to the families of Sandusky victims as a way to keep them quiet).
It was also very obvious to me that Heim was personally very odd and remarkably inappropriate. He told me that he was still convinced that there was no “sex” in the McQueary episode because Mike had admitted that he saw no erection on Sandusky and that he knew from personal experience in his own sex life that, even at an advanced age, that it was impossible to get rid of an erection that quickly. If that wasn’t a strange enough piece of information for him to tell someone he had never met in their second phone conversation, Bruce then apparently put me, briefly, on his personal e-mail chain where the first item he sent out was a series of bare-chested women from Marti Gras.
But that was nothing compared to my final phone conversation with Heim. It must have become clear to him that I was not buying what he was trying way too hard to sell me and that I wasn’t remotely intimidated by him or his money. He called me and told me that he had really struggled with how he had treated Jerry and Dottie. He wondered whether he had abandoned his friends too easily and whether at least some of the charges against him were somehow false.
This conflict resonated with me because I was struggling with a similar dilemma regarding how I was going to handle my still to come national television interviews and the inevitable questions about Sandusky’s guilt. However, what he told me next would end up ranking right at the top of a very long list of things I have heard in the last year which I will never forget.
Heim said that he no longer worried about having potentially been disloyal to Sandusky because he had spoken to a “very reliable source” a couple of days before who had told him that they had seen a videotape of Jerry Sandusky having sex with a boy.
I am pretty sure that Heim was being serious, but I don’t know what he expected my reaction to be (he was clearly hoping that I would now buy totally into the Sandusky as complete “monster” narrative so that I wouldn’t believe a word he said). I am pretty sure he was rather surprised by what I did do.
I found it utterly hilarious that a man of Heim’s stature could either delude himself (which is what I think happened) that it would be possible for such a tape to exist without it ever surfacing all because he wanted to get rid of some lingering guilt, or that he would actually think that I would be so gullible as to believe such a story without any real evidence. I then asked him a few basic questions about his “source,” which he refused to answer. Then I told him that, while I would love to believe the story (because it would make my task far less complex), I was sure that it was false. He seemed rather stunned at my frankness and the conversation pretty much ended after that. I never heard from him again.
I was fascinated by Heim’s story from several perspectives. Ironically, the contrarian in me actually saw the existence of a wild rumor that there was a “Sandusky sex tape” as further “evidence” that Sandusky might be less guilty than we think. After all, if someone like Heim is willing to believe something that absurd (it’s ridiculous not just because there would be no way in this era to keep something like that completely quiet, but because it is entirely inconsistent with the total lack of pornography in the case) all because he wants to absolve a guilty conscience, then deep down he must really have very serious doubts about Sandusky’s guilt.
While I will never forget the “sex tape” story, my primary take away from Heim was that those who suspect that Jack Raykovitz has something to hide and probably perjured himself are definitely on to something.
Heim is not guiltless in this entire debacle of scumbaggery. He is a driving force among much of the heaped bullshit.
Jerot who wrote this? I dont believe the 'I' in the story is you. TIA
It would be nice for Jerot to identify his source material, but I am guessing that he won’t
He's quoting JZ's book, "The Betrayal of Joe Paterno"--Chapter 10. Cut and Paste is your friend. Assuming Jerot is not JZ, he would do well to make use of quotation marks and citations.
I've not checked all of Jerot's postings, but they could very well all be from JZ's writings.
They are not all JZ's writing. They come from a variety of sources. He has used material that I have written in the past. @JmmyW has identified other material that Jerot has used that have come from other sources.
I wonder if we can teach the bot to swear?
If you copy some of his text (except his first word or sentence) and do a search in google, you should be able to easily identify where he got it.
Wherever he (or she) gets it, it’s always on topic, and he/she always has it at the ready.
Figured rather than starting a new thread I'd put this here:
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2019/...-faces-call-for-a-law-license-suspension.html
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2019/...-faces-call-for-a-law-license-suspension.html
A state board charged with hearing professional conduct complaints against lawyers has called for a license suspension of one year and one day for the chief supervisor of the state’s 2010-11 probe of failures by Penn State officials to act on evidence of Jerry Sandusky’s sex crimes.
The Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania’s recommendation against Frank Fina, who is now in private practice in the Philadelphia suburbs, now moves to the Supreme Court for final disposition.
The decision comes about two months after the same board recommended a public censure of former Penn State general counsel Cynthia Baldwin for her role in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.
The Disciplinary Board, in that case, found Baldwin broke attorney-client privilege she owed former Penn State President Graham Spanier and two of his senior managers after she flipped to become a prosecution witness in a related Penn State cover-up case.
Today’s recommendation - which has been docketed on the Disciplinary Board Web site - seems to apply the same kind of care for the privilege to Fina, the then-Chief Deputy Attorney General who helped to pave the way for Baldwin’s flip.
The full report has not yet been posted.
Neither Fina or his attorneys could be reached for comment for this report.
It also marks another wild swing of the pendulum on the Penn State element of the Sandusky scandal that’s left judges, alumni and the public on both sides of a divide over whether evidence used to prosecute the former Penn State officials was properly obtained.
Fina was absolved by a hearing committee that heard testimony on complaints against him last year on technical grounds: the hearing showed that the subpoena requesting Baldwin’s testimony before the grand jury was actually signed by another attorney in the Attorney General’s office, Bruce Beemer.
That pointed to the fact that Fina was operating at all times with the full consent of his superiors in the Attorney General’s office in pursuing a trail of evidence that, at a minimum, showed former Penn State President Graham Spanier, his-then Athletic Director Tim Curley, and former senior vice president of business and finance Gary Schultz had known for a decade before state investigators ever received the case that they had a potential problem with the once-lauded Sandusky.
The administrators, the evidence showed, carefully weighed a choice to handle an allegation against Sandusky internally in 2001, and then later appeared to re-shape what they knew and did back then when state investigators came calling in 2010-11.
The question before the disciplinary board was whether Fina, in applying pressure on Baldwin to became a prosecution witness, effectively shredded the Penn State administrators’ attorney-client privilege as they moved from fact witnesses to targets.
Fina and Baldwin, besides winning the original consent to her testimony of the supervising grand jury judge Barry Feudale, also had previously seen their actions upheld by trial judge Todd Hoover in the pre-trial action in initial criminal cases against the former Penn State administrators.
Hoover is still the only judge who took direct testimony from Spanier, Curley and Schultz on the matter.
Baldwin has testifed that she saw her cooperation with Attorney General’s investigators as a matter of separating herself from a pattern of deceptions by the Spanier, Curley and Schultz that she believed had made her an unwitting participant in a cover-up.
But the obstruction and perjury charges against the former administrators were thrown out by a state Superior Court panel in 2016, which cited what it saw as inherent conflicts in Baldwin’s attempt to represent the men only as agents of Penn State, and what it felt were breaches of the defendants’ attorney-client privilege.
Then, in the professional conduct world, both Baldwin and Fina won their first round before a Disciplinary Board hearing committee, only to see that reversed by the full disciplinary board.
The latest reversal wasn’t a shock, given the board’s decision in the Baldwin case. It would have been difficult for the board to recommend censure for Baldwin, and then not impose any discipline against the attorney who played the single biggest role in her flip.
The rules violations are a matter of professional regulation of the practice of law, and are not criminal violations.
Because the Supreme Court has reserved for itself the regulation of attorney conduct, it directly decides all proposed license suspensions or calls for disbarment. In that review, a majority on the seven-member Supreme Court will carry the day.
The more that comes out, the more credence is lent that this whole thing was nothing more than a well orchestrated political hit job.
Jerry Sandusky prosecutor Frank Fina faces call for a law license suspension
Updated 1:09 PM; Today 11:31 AM
A state disciplinary panel has found that former Jerry Sandusky prosecutor Frank Fina did break rules of professional conduct in his pursuit of Penn State administrators. Its report now goes to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for final consideration.
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By Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com
A state board charged with hearing professional conduct complaints against lawyers has called for a license suspension of one year and one day for the chief supervisor of the state’s 2010-11 probe of failures by Penn State officials to act on evidence of Jerry Sandusky’s sex crimes.
The Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania’s recommendation against Frank Fina, who is now in private practice in the Philadelphia suburbs, now moves to the Supreme Court for final disposition.
The decision comes about two months after the same board recommended a public censure of former Penn State general counsel Cynthia Baldwin for her role in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.
The Disciplinary Board, in that case, found Baldwin broke attorney-client privilege she owed former Penn State President Graham Spanier and two of his senior managers after she flipped to become a prosecution witness in a related Penn State cover-up case.
Today’s recommendation - which has been docketed on the Disciplinary Board Web site - seems to apply the same kind of care for the privilege to Fina, the then-Chief Deputy Attorney General who helped to pave the way for Baldwin’s flip.
The full report has not yet been posted.
Neither Fina or his attorneys could be reached for comment for this report.
It also marks another wild swing of the pendulum on the Penn State element of the Sandusky scandal that’s left judges, alumni and the public on both sides of a divide over whether evidence used to prosecute the former Penn State officials was properly obtained.
Fina was absolved by a hearing committee that heard testimony on complaints against him last year on technical grounds: the hearing showed that the subpoena requesting Baldwin’s testimony before the grand jury was actually signed by another attorney in the Attorney General’s office, Bruce Beemer.
That pointed to the fact that Fina was operating at all times with the full consent of his superiors in the Attorney General’s office in pursuing a trail of evidence that, at a minimum, showed former Penn State President Graham Spanier, his-then Athletic Director Tim Curley, and former senior vice president of business and finance Gary Schultz had known for a decade before state investigators ever received the case that they had a potential problem with the once-lauded Sandusky.
The administrators, the evidence showed, carefully weighed a choice to handle an allegation against Sandusky internally in 2001, and then later appeared to re-shape what they knew and did back then when state investigators came calling in 2010-11.
The question before the disciplinary board was whether Fina, in applying pressure on Baldwin to became a prosecution witness, effectively shredded the Penn State administrators’ attorney-client privilege as they moved from fact witnesses to targets.
Fina and Baldwin, besides winning the original consent to her testimony of the supervising grand jury judge Barry Feudale, also had previously seen their actions upheld by trial judge Todd Hoover in the pre-trial action in initial criminal cases against the former Penn State administrators.
Hoover is still the only judge who took direct testimony from Spanier, Curley and Schultz on the matter.
Baldwin has testifed that she saw her cooperation with Attorney General’s investigators as a matter of separating herself from a pattern of deceptions by the Spanier, Curley and Schultz that she believed had made her an unwitting participant in a cover-up.
But the obstruction and perjury charges against the former administrators were thrown out by a state Superior Court panel in 2016, which cited what it saw as inherent conflicts in Baldwin’s attempt to represent the men only as agents of Penn State, and what it felt were breaches of the defendants’ attorney-client privilege.
Then, in the professional conduct world, both Baldwin and Fina won their first round before a Disciplinary Board hearing committee, only to see that reversed by the full disciplinary board.
The latest reversal wasn’t a shock, given the board’s decision in the Baldwin case. It would have been difficult for the board to recommend censure for Baldwin, and then not impose any discipline against the attorney who played the single biggest role in her flip.
The rules violations are a matter of professional regulation of the practice of law, and are not criminal violations.
Because the Supreme Court has reserved for itself the regulation of attorney conduct, it directly decides all proposed license suspensions or calls for disbarment. In that review, a majority on the seven-member Supreme Court will carry the day.
It's about time that these turds are being called to account. Is PennLies reporting?
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