ADVERTISEMENT

With the Benefit of Hindsight - Ziegler's new documentary podcast on scandal to start in 2021

So you believe around 10pm they discussed a sexual assault and told Mrs. M. to sit in the kitchen and mind her own business(and she complied)?
Dranov knew the score.
McGettigan, then 64, a native of Philadelphia, had carved out a reputation as an aggressive, successful prosecutor. “He is smart, tenacious, and well-prepared,” wrote one journalist, who also called him a pugnacious street brawler. “He will steamroll over anyone who gets in his way,” another lawyer observed, adding that McGettigan was a “true believer” who thought “all criminals deserve life sentences.” He was known as “Hollywood Joe McGettigan” because of his penchant for dark glasses, garish ties, and his serving as a legal consultant and writer for a one-season television series. In the press, he had already called the Second Mile “a victim factory.”https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8876661997317409023#_edn1Now McGettigan told the jurors that the young men who would testify had endured “years of victimization,” and that, although the molestation had occurred years ago, “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.”For a few alleged victims, the sexual abuse had taken place “in an escalating fashion, escalating to the point of…deviate sexual intercourse, oral sex.” Others were “less invasive and less lengthy,” and two involved only one alleged contact. McGettigan asked the jurors to think of the witnesses not as young adults, but as helpless children. “You’ll see them and understand them as the children they were.” In order to prepare them for this leap of the imagination, he showed enlarged pictures of each alleged victim as a child, one at a time, on a 12-foot high screen. “That’s Brett,” he said, showing the photo from Sandusky’s book, Touched. “Do you know whose hand that is on his shoulder? The defendant’s.” In the picture of Michal Kajak, “the defendant is right behind Michal,” McGettigan said, of course implying sodomy, although it was blown up from an innocuous group photo. McGettigan said that Zachary Konstas was “so innocent he wasn’t even sure what part of a man’s body should look like and why he should be touching him,” even though Konstas never accused Sandusky of molesting him. McGettigan explained, “Here’s a young boy who bore him no ill will because he wasn’t even aware of what happened.” McGettigan never used the phrase “repressed memories,” but he repeatedly implied them. He warned jurors that he would have to “press these young men for the details of their victimization” because “they don’t want to remember.” He instructed jurors to “imagine the age at which they were abused, the years that it was in the past, and the efforts which they had tried to bury [the memories],” which would “cause them to have difficulty in remembering with great specificity.” But that lack of recall should not disturb them. Indeed, “sometimes the honest admission of a lack of memory about…minor detail gives the clearest indication of the absolute truth of the painful events they will never forget.” In other words, the absence of detailed memory could be taken as proof that the recovered memories were true. He explained that “the investigation was slow because doors were closed. Just like the doors of people’s minds, they don’t want to talk about anything. They were closed…. In many instances you will hear even when they spoke to the police the first time, they wouldn’t fully disclose.” With sufficient encouragement, however, they did. Finally, McGettigan said that humiliation, shame, and fear were the reasons that none of the alleged victims had told anyone about the alleged abuse for years. He did not mention that some of them had not recalled the abuse until prompted by therapists, police, or lawyers. According to reporter Sara Ganim, all jury members were “listening intently, wide-eyed.” One juror shook her head in sympathetic disgust as the prosecutor described the abuse that each child had allegedly endured. The rest of McGettigan’s opening statement summarized the various witnesses he planned to call, including Mike McQueary, who would, he said, describe “how he saw that defendant in a shower pressed up against the wall, with a small boy beneath him…his front to this little boy’s back moving back and forth.”[ii] After McGettigan’s opening statement, Amendola told the judge that his team had some objections to place in the record. “We didn’t want to interrupt Mr. McGettigan,” he explained. “We had an agreement.” Amendola apparently wanted to be friendly, to be liked, so he agreed not to voice objections during opening or closing statements. Karl Rominger demurred, but because Amendola was in charge and was personal friends with Sandusky, he remained silent. “On many occasions, I disagreed with Mr. Amendola,” he recalled. “However, I did not voice my disagreement because I did not want to undermine Mr. Amendola, who had the relationship with Mr. Sandusky.” Because Amendola had taken few major cases to trial, Rominger said “I felt I would be able to assist with trial objections and evidentiary issues more ably than Mr. Amendola.”[iii] Thus, Rominger belatedly objected to McGettigans photo array of the alleged victims, which were “stylized and cut for maximum emotional impact.” He asked for a mistrial or a limiting instruction to jurors not to consider the images as evidence. Cleland curtly denied his motions. Rominger objected that “the prosecution wrongly kept referring to the complaining witnesses as victims.” Cleland regarded the term as acceptable as a “matter of convenience” and would let the jury know that “we’re using the terms victims as a shorthand, [it] obviously means alleged.” Rominger objected to McGettigan’s use of the words humiliation, shame, and fear. “What they’re doing is essentially explaining why the witnesses said nothing.” This amounted to argument, not a presentation of facts. Similarly, McGettigan should not have argued that there was a huge amount of evidence for guilt. “There is no overwhelming evidence of anything at this point.” Cleland denied these as well as all the rest of his objections.[iv] Then it was defense attorney Joe Amendola’s turn. Early in 2009, upon learning of the Aaron Fisher allegations, Sandusky had first hired Amendola, a local State College practitioner. A former prosecutor, Amendola had switched to defense, taking on drinking-under-the-influence and rape cases. He had a reputation for negotiating favorable plea bargains but had taken relatively few cases to trial. He and McGettigan were the same age, but they were stark contrasts in many ways. McGettigan was abrasive and only recently engaged to be married for the first time. Amendola had a friendly, smiling demeanor that had seen him through several failed marriages, the most recent the result of an affair in which he impregnated his 16-year-old intern in 1997 when he was 48. Many observers, including Amendola himself, were surprised that Sandusky stuck with the home-town lawyer. Before Sandusky’s arrest, Amendola said, “I’m sure some big-name attorney is going to volunteer to represent him.”[v] But Sandusky, who was known for his sometimes naïve loyalty to friends and colleagues, stuck with Amendola, and besides, no big-name attorneys wanted to take on the toxic case. After McGettigan’s masterful performance, Amendola’s opening statement was embarrassingly lame. “This is a daunting task,” he began. “I’ll be honest with you, I’m not sure how to approach it. The Commonwealth has overwhelming evidence against Mr. Sandusky.” It’s difficult to imagine a worse defensive posture than talking about the “overwhelming evidence” against his client, particularly when his colleague, Karl Rominger, had just objected to McGettigan’s use of that phrase. Rominger winced, since Amendola had just “cast Mr. Sandusky as guilty in the minds of the jurors,” he thought. “I never had a case like this in my life,” Amendola continued, “and I can assure you I never will again.” But, he said, he had to make an opening statement, even though it seemed hopeless. “We can pack it in now and say, ‘Gee whiz, we don’t have a chance.’” He compared his task as “similar to climbing Mount Everest from the bottom of the hill.” He said that he was David to the government’s Goliath, and he complained about the “boxes and boxes of materials to go through.” Finally, Amendola said that he needed to “figure out how we can present Mr. Sandusky’s case to you so that you will understand that he’s innocent.” If he expected to convince the jury of his client’s innocence, he certainly had a strange way of approaching it. He asserted, without much conviction, that “There are no victims in this case…because victims only come about after you twelve determine they’re victims.” He noted that Sandusky had “always said he’s innocent” and that it had only been seven months since the Grand Jury Presentment had been made public and Sandusky was arrested, whereas “the Commonwealth had over three years to investigate these allegations.” “So how did it start?” It began with Aaron Fisher’s allegations. “Jerry Sandusky fondled him above his clothing one time.” What Amendola undoubtedly meant to say was that Fisher alleged at first that Sandusky had touched him above his clothing, but instead he told the jury that he had indeed fondled him. Then he talked about the 1998 shower incident and said that Zachary Konstas would say that “there was no sexual touching…. They fooled around in the shower and they played.” Amendola admitted that Sandusky “got showers with kids,” and that “Many of us think that that in and of itself proves that he’s guilty of horrendous crimes.” But “Jerry’s culture growing up in his generation where he grew up, he’s going to tell you later it was routine for individuals to get showers together.” In other words, he expected to call Sandusky to the stand to testify. He warned the jury that they would hear graphic descriptions of grotesque sexual abuse. “The testimony you are going to get is going to be awful, but that doesn’t make it true.” He wondered aloud, “How do we get to the end of this case, and how do we try to establish that Jerry Sandusky is not guilty, that there’s a real reasonable doubt here?” He apparently had no idea. He then talked about the McQueary shower incident. “What we think is that he saw something and he made assumptions.” Amendola did not point out that McQueary did not in fact see much of anything. He heard slapping sounds. Then the defense attorney made it worse by alluding to “when he [McQueary] went into the shower and saw Jerry Sandusky with a young-looking person.” In reality, McQueary never went into the shower, and he didn’t initially say that he saw Sandusky with a boy in the shower. He told Dr. Dranov that night that he saw a boy, and that an arm reached out to pull him back into the shower. Amendola then alluded to this boy in the shower, Victim 2, and said, “I suspect [he] is not going to be a witness according to the Commonwealth because he hasn’t actually been identified.” Amendola didn’t say that he had been identified as Allan Myers because he didn’t intend to call him to the stand, either, since Andrew Shubin had taken him as a “victim” client. Finally, Amendola made a salient point. Dranov and McQueary’s father advised Mike McQueary to tell Joe Paterno about his concerns. “It’s not the kind of advice I would have given if someone said, ‘I just saw Jerry Sandusky having anal sex with a ten-year-old boy in the shower.” But most of Amendola’s opening statement could not possibly have convinced jurors that Sandusky was likely to be innocent. “When you hear this testimony,” he said, “think about the logical sense [that] just doesn’t make any sense,” which, of course, made no sense. “The accusers. You saw those eight photos. Cute kids. Why would they lie?” Amendola’s only explanation was financial motivation. “Money is the root of all evil.” Also, because they were Second Mile kids, “they had issues.” He did not allude to the influence of therapists or leading police interviews, though he later noted that “the accusers were questioned multiple times…. The government went back until they got an answer they wanted to hear.”
 
I believe the issue with this as far as Joe and PSU is concerned is it is near impossible to clear him of which he's being accused. In many ways, it's actually a lot easier to prove Sandusky is innocent then to prove Joe wasn't complicit in a cover up, or at the very least, guilty of "not doing enough". It's interesting, because Scott briefly touches on it in the call with Zig. Says something to the effect of, it doesn't really matter what Mike saw, it's what he thought he saw or what people thought he saw/told Joe. Zig could make it his lifes work to prove Jerry's innocence, and even if it was proven in a court of law Sandusky was the victim of witness tampering and a completely created narrative that lead to his imprisonment, people could still say Joe didn't know that when he acted in the way he did.

I think the only thing that could ever turn public perception when it comes to Joe would be for MM to come forward and admit to a lot of things. Some of his own lies, admit he was pressured by police to change or exaggerate his story etc. Even then, not enough people would care to move the needle, and even they did it wouldn't move the needle enough to restore Joe's legacy in any way. At least not back to where it should be.
C/S/S were charged with 15 felonies between them and after 6 years and $millions of taxpayer money, the commonwealth was unable to prove a single charge. For there to have been a cover up, they would have had to have been guilty of most, if not all of them. For that reason, I argue the BOT has some "splaining" to do! Why not correct the narrative?

As for Joe, even if Sandusky is the monster he's believed to be, and even if C/S/S screwed up, Joe was never charged with a crime. The evidence (rather than the "opinion") contained in the Freeh report suggests Joe did exactly what he was supposed to do in that situation.

Every man, woman and Ira on that BOT knows the truth. If PSU rewrites the narrative, the press has to report it!
 
This was unbelievable to me at the time, not only that he would say this but that the judge let him get away with it when the defense had a copy of the transcript of his testimony in hand.

JZ thinks John lied to protect himself. Kevin (in recent interview) believes John was genuinely confused, although he has no idea why.
Commonwealth Dementia.....it was raging around that time.
 
  • Like
Reactions: indynittany
Dranov knew the score.
McGettigan, then 64, a native of Philadelphia, had carved out a reputation as an aggressive, successful prosecutor. “He is smart, tenacious, and well-prepared,” wrote one journalist, who also called him a pugnacious street brawler. “He will steamroll over anyone who gets in his way,” another lawyer observed, adding that McGettigan was a “true believer” who thought “all criminals deserve life sentences.” He was known as “Hollywood Joe McGettigan” because of his penchant for dark glasses, garish ties, and his serving as a legal consultant and writer for a one-season television series. In the press, he had already called the Second Mile “a victim factory.”https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8876661997317409023#_edn1Now McGettigan told the jurors that the young men who would testify had endured “years of victimization,” and that, although the molestation had occurred years ago, “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.”For a few alleged victims, the sexual abuse had taken place “in an escalating fashion, escalating to the point of…deviate sexual intercourse, oral sex.” Others were “less invasive and less lengthy,” and two involved only one alleged contact. McGettigan asked the jurors to think of the witnesses not as young adults, but as helpless children. “You’ll see them and understand them as the children they were.” In order to prepare them for this leap of the imagination, he showed enlarged pictures of each alleged victim as a child, one at a time, on a 12-foot high screen. “That’s Brett,” he said, showing the photo from Sandusky’s book, Touched. “Do you know whose hand that is on his shoulder? The defendant’s.” In the picture of Michal Kajak, “the defendant is right behind Michal,” McGettigan said, of course implying sodomy, although it was blown up from an innocuous group photo. McGettigan said that Zachary Konstas was “so innocent he wasn’t even sure what part of a man’s body should look like and why he should be touching him,” even though Konstas never accused Sandusky of molesting him. McGettigan explained, “Here’s a young boy who bore him no ill will because he wasn’t even aware of what happened.” McGettigan never used the phrase “repressed memories,” but he repeatedly implied them. He warned jurors that he would have to “press these young men for the details of their victimization” because “they don’t want to remember.” He instructed jurors to “imagine the age at which they were abused, the years that it was in the past, and the efforts which they had tried to bury [the memories],” which would “cause them to have difficulty in remembering with great specificity.” But that lack of recall should not disturb them. Indeed, “sometimes the honest admission of a lack of memory about…minor detail gives the clearest indication of the absolute truth of the painful events they will never forget.” In other words, the absence of detailed memory could be taken as proof that the recovered memories were true. He explained that “the investigation was slow because doors were closed. Just like the doors of people’s minds, they don’t want to talk about anything. They were closed…. In many instances you will hear even when they spoke to the police the first time, they wouldn’t fully disclose.” With sufficient encouragement, however, they did. Finally, McGettigan said that humiliation, shame, and fear were the reasons that none of the alleged victims had told anyone about the alleged abuse for years. He did not mention that some of them had not recalled the abuse until prompted by therapists, police, or lawyers. According to reporter Sara Ganim, all jury members were “listening intently, wide-eyed.” One juror shook her head in sympathetic disgust as the prosecutor described the abuse that each child had allegedly endured. The rest of McGettigan’s opening statement summarized the various witnesses he planned to call, including Mike McQueary, who would, he said, describe “how he saw that defendant in a shower pressed up against the wall, with a small boy beneath him…his front to this little boy’s back moving back and forth.”[ii] After McGettigan’s opening statement, Amendola told the judge that his team had some objections to place in the record. “We didn’t want to interrupt Mr. McGettigan,” he explained. “We had an agreement.” Amendola apparently wanted to be friendly, to be liked, so he agreed not to voice objections during opening or closing statements. Karl Rominger demurred, but because Amendola was in charge and was personal friends with Sandusky, he remained silent. “On many occasions, I disagreed with Mr. Amendola,” he recalled. “However, I did not voice my disagreement because I did not want to undermine Mr. Amendola, who had the relationship with Mr. Sandusky.” Because Amendola had taken few major cases to trial, Rominger said “I felt I would be able to assist with trial objections and evidentiary issues more ably than Mr. Amendola.”[iii] Thus, Rominger belatedly objected to McGettigans photo array of the alleged victims, which were “stylized and cut for maximum emotional impact.” He asked for a mistrial or a limiting instruction to jurors not to consider the images as evidence. Cleland curtly denied his motions. Rominger objected that “the prosecution wrongly kept referring to the complaining witnesses as victims.” Cleland regarded the term as acceptable as a “matter of convenience” and would let the jury know that “we’re using the terms victims as a shorthand, [it] obviously means alleged.” Rominger objected to McGettigan’s use of the words humiliation, shame, and fear. “What they’re doing is essentially explaining why the witnesses said nothing.” This amounted to argument, not a presentation of facts. Similarly, McGettigan should not have argued that there was a huge amount of evidence for guilt. “There is no overwhelming evidence of anything at this point.” Cleland denied these as well as all the rest of his objections.[iv] Then it was defense attorney Joe Amendola’s turn. Early in 2009, upon learning of the Aaron Fisher allegations, Sandusky had first hired Amendola, a local State College practitioner. A former prosecutor, Amendola had switched to defense, taking on drinking-under-the-influence and rape cases. He had a reputation for negotiating favorable plea bargains but had taken relatively few cases to trial. He and McGettigan were the same age, but they were stark contrasts in many ways. McGettigan was abrasive and only recently engaged to be married for the first time. Amendola had a friendly, smiling demeanor that had seen him through several failed marriages, the most recent the result of an affair in which he impregnated his 16-year-old intern in 1997 when he was 48. Many observers, including Amendola himself, were surprised that Sandusky stuck with the home-town lawyer. Before Sandusky’s arrest, Amendola said, “I’m sure some big-name attorney is going to volunteer to represent him.”[v] But Sandusky, who was known for his sometimes naïve loyalty to friends and colleagues, stuck with Amendola, and besides, no big-name attorneys wanted to take on the toxic case. After McGettigan’s masterful performance, Amendola’s opening statement was embarrassingly lame. “This is a daunting task,” he began. “I’ll be honest with you, I’m not sure how to approach it. The Commonwealth has overwhelming evidence against Mr. Sandusky.” It’s difficult to imagine a worse defensive posture than talking about the “overwhelming evidence” against his client, particularly when his colleague, Karl Rominger, had just objected to McGettigan’s use of that phrase. Rominger winced, since Amendola had just “cast Mr. Sandusky as guilty in the minds of the jurors,” he thought. “I never had a case like this in my life,” Amendola continued, “and I can assure you I never will again.” But, he said, he had to make an opening statement, even though it seemed hopeless. “We can pack it in now and say, ‘Gee whiz, we don’t have a chance.’” He compared his task as “similar to climbing Mount Everest from the bottom of the hill.” He said that he was David to the government’s Goliath, and he complained about the “boxes and boxes of materials to go through.” Finally, Amendola said that he needed to “figure out how we can present Mr. Sandusky’s case to you so that you will understand that he’s innocent.” If he expected to convince the jury of his client’s innocence, he certainly had a strange way of approaching it. He asserted, without much conviction, that “There are no victims in this case…because victims only come about after you twelve determine they’re victims.” He noted that Sandusky had “always said he’s innocent” and that it had only been seven months since the Grand Jury Presentment had been made public and Sandusky was arrested, whereas “the Commonwealth had over three years to investigate these allegations.” “So how did it start?” It began with Aaron Fisher’s allegations. “Jerry Sandusky fondled him above his clothing one time.” What Amendola undoubtedly meant to say was that Fisher alleged at first that Sandusky had touched him above his clothing, but instead he told the jury that he had indeed fondled him. Then he talked about the 1998 shower incident and said that Zachary Konstas would say that “there was no sexual touching…. They fooled around in the shower and they played.” Amendola admitted that Sandusky “got showers with kids,” and that “Many of us think that that in and of itself proves that he’s guilty of horrendous crimes.” But “Jerry’s culture growing up in his generation where he grew up, he’s going to tell you later it was routine for individuals to get showers together.” In other words, he expected to call Sandusky to the stand to testify. He warned the jury that they would hear graphic descriptions of grotesque sexual abuse. “The testimony you are going to get is going to be awful, but that doesn’t make it true.” He wondered aloud, “How do we get to the end of this case, and how do we try to establish that Jerry Sandusky is not guilty, that there’s a real reasonable doubt here?” He apparently had no idea. He then talked about the McQueary shower incident. “What we think is that he saw something and he made assumptions.” Amendola did not point out that McQueary did not in fact see much of anything. He heard slapping sounds. Then the defense attorney made it worse by alluding to “when he [McQueary] went into the shower and saw Jerry Sandusky with a young-looking person.” In reality, McQueary never went into the shower, and he didn’t initially say that he saw Sandusky with a boy in the shower. He told Dr. Dranov that night that he saw a boy, and that an arm reached out to pull him back into the shower. Amendola then alluded to this boy in the shower, Victim 2, and said, “I suspect [he] is not going to be a witness according to the Commonwealth because he hasn’t actually been identified.” Amendola didn’t say that he had been identified as Allan Myers because he didn’t intend to call him to the stand, either, since Andrew Shubin had taken him as a “victim” client. Finally, Amendola made a salient point. Dranov and McQueary’s father advised Mike McQueary to tell Joe Paterno about his concerns. “It’s not the kind of advice I would have given if someone said, ‘I just saw Jerry Sandusky having anal sex with a ten-year-old boy in the shower.” But most of Amendola’s opening statement could not possibly have convinced jurors that Sandusky was likely to be innocent. “When you hear this testimony,” he said, “think about the logical sense [that] just doesn’t make any sense,” which, of course, made no sense. “The accusers. You saw those eight photos. Cute kids. Why would they lie?” Amendola’s only explanation was financial motivation. “Money is the root of all evil.” Also, because they were Second Mile kids, “they had issues.” He did not allude to the influence of therapists or leading police interviews, though he later noted that “the accusers were questioned multiple times…. The government went back until they got an answer they wanted to hear.”
Amendola should have never represented Sandusky, and he should have refused. Possibly the worst decision of all, since his incompetency caused a trial taken to court faster than any I have ever seen.
 
  • Like
Reactions: francofan
Amendola should have never represented Sandusky, and he should have refused. Possibly the worst decision of all, since his incompetency caused a trial taken to court faster than any I have ever seen.
Amendola was in over his head and out of his league. He threaten to resign when he was continually denied continuances and unable to mount a reasonable defense, but relented and backed off. By rights, he should have resigned right then.

Bruce Heim recommended Amendola to Jerry when Aaron Fisher first made accusations and the case wasn't very strong. However, when the SHTF in 2010/2011 Heim thought Jerry should have taken things seriously and traded up and gone with a law firm that could have mounted an agressive defense. In hindsight, it may be that no defense would have been able to adequately defend Jerry; but it is clear that Joe Amendola was not up to the task.
 
Amendola was in over his head and out of his league. He threaten to resign when he was continually denied continuances and unable to mount a reasonable defense, but relented and backed off. By rights, he should have resigned right then.

Bruce Heim recommended Amendola to Jerry when Aaron Fisher first made accusations and the case wasn't very strong. However, when the SHTF in 2010/2011 Heim thought Jerry should have taken things seriously and traded up and gone with a law firm that could have mounted an agressive defense. In hindsight, it may be that no defense would have been able to adequately defend Jerry; but it is clear that Joe Amendola was not up to the task.
Refresh my memory/legal question:

I have a vague recollection that when Amendola tried to step down, the judge essentially wouldn't let him. Is that correct?

If so, question for attorneys: why is that a thing? Why can't an attorney just go "eff this, I'm out"? Seems pretty unfair to the defendant to force them to have counsel who doesn't want to be there.
 
Refresh my memory/legal question:

I have a vague recollection that when Amendola tried to step down, the judge essentially wouldn't let him. Is that correct?

If so, question for attorneys: why is that a thing? Why can't an attorney just go "eff this, I'm out"? Seems pretty unfair to the defendant to force them to have counsel who doesn't want to be there.
I'm not an attorney, but my guess is it has to do with right to council. If you allow an attorney to walk whenever they want, you're hurting a defendants ability to defend themselves. If your attorney leaves in a critical part of the trial process and you need to find new council, I would imagine that would make life incredibly difficult for the defendant of a criminal trial.
 
Refresh my memory/legal question:

I have a vague recollection that when Amendola tried to step down, the judge essentially wouldn't let him. Is that correct?

If so, question for attorneys: why is that a thing? Why can't an attorney just go "eff this, I'm out"? Seems pretty unfair to the defendant to force them to have counsel who doesn't want to be there.
I believe you are correct that Judge Cleland would not accept Amendola's proposed resignation. That should not have stopped Amendola imo. If he wasn't able to mount a competent defense he is duty bound to step down and then deal with any consequences later. If Cleland raised a stink, Amendola could have responded that he has an easy solution - grant him the continuance and give him the time to present a reasonable defense.
 
Episode 6 has dropped.

Episode Six: Family Affair, The Aaron Fisher Story

This is the story of Victim #1, Aaron Fisher. Aaron Fisher had a very difficult childhood filled with abuse. He never knew his paternal father and the stepfather he endured for five years abused his mother and half sister and eventually went to prison after pleading guilty to over 100 counts of abuse Fisher's mother Dawn Daniels loved to drink and party. Dawn knew all about "making rain" from an abuse case. It was a complaint made by Dawn that started this entire mess. Was Dawn afraid for her son or was she shopping for a big payday? She told her neighbor, Josh Fravel, that she was gonna "own that MF's house" Aaron was a well-known storyteller. His school administrators didn't believe he was abused by Sandusky, his friends didn't believe he was abused by Sandusky either but a young CYS caseworker did and she brought him to therapist Mike Gillum. Gillum spent months helping Aaron "remember" his abuse and prepping him to give grand jury testimony. Aaron made a terrible witness, so poor a witness that prosecutors enlisted the help of a naïve cub reporter to keep their case alive. And then they got lucky...

 
I believe you are correct that Judge Cleland would not accept Amendola's proposed resignation. That should not have stopped Amendola imo. If he wasn't able to mount a competent defense he is duty bound to step down and then deal with any consequences later. If Cleland raised a stink, Amendola could have responded that he has an easy solution - grant him the continuance and give him the time to present a reasonable defense.
Just one of the many befuddling things about this case. Certainly Cleland should have known that Amendola was not capable of defending Sandusky in a case like this. Getting people out of dui's does not equal child molestation charges.
 
  • Like
Reactions: francofan
I contend that if Joe Paterno was so driven to win football games and satisfy his ego that he would have intentionally covered up an allegation of child sex assault, then his (Joe) callous behavior would have since become evident in other episodes repeated over the course of his 40+ years as head coach. After his passing in 2012, and the "all powerful and all-knowing Joe Paterno” was no longer alive to intimidate anyone, then I would have expected many similar stories to emerge....... but nothing, crickets for now almost 10 years.

It is my opinion that Joe lived a relatively simple and humble life given his position and notoriety. Drive past his old house or stop by his gravesite and you can see this from where he chose to live and how he wanted to be remembered. Read the hundreds of stories on this site that remember him, all in a positive light. This is how I remember him.

Was the man perfect, probably not (who of us really is), but he appears to have been who we all thought he was prior to the shameful events of 2011 and how he and his family (and all of us Penn Staters too) were dragged through the mud. FMP BSEE 1989
 
There's a massive difference between a short Tweet or social media post and 40+ hours of podcasts and interviews. I agree there are lots of nuances here but 99.9% of the population isn't going to bother to listen to that much material. I'm interested in the content and even I am not going to put in that much time to listen to it because I have a busy life with other things to do. Add in Ziegler's abrasive style that is nearly unlistenable in my opinion and you have a recipe where this is going to simply be ignored except for a very small percentage of the population.

If you're trying to sway the public and you already know they have short attention spans, the ownership is on you to change your delivery method in order to attract more ears, eyeballs and interest. How much time do you think the average podcast listener spends listening? Maybe an hour a day? I'm just guessing, I have no idea. It would take people a month+ to get through this content and that's simply not going to happen, they are just going to ignore it. That doesn't even factor in the people that don't listen to podcasts at all, which I'd imagine is also a significant number. Before even publishing this material it should have been known that very few people will even bother with it. So why release it in this format without a more concise summary that would appeal to more people? Not doing so and expecting this to move the narrative at all is a fool's errand.
I disagree. Ziegler is an excellent orator and very articulate, especially with such a complicated case. I think it’s great that they’re getting it all out there. Agree that it’s too much for the average person. But, for someone that wanted to make a “Making of a Murderer” type Netflix series, this is the ultimate source of reference. Hopefully that happens at some point in the future. Ziegler is to be commended, if PSU had him in their corner and actually listened to him things would be completely different. Instead we have a board that “wet their pants” as the song goes.
 
  • Like
Reactions: francofan
I'm not an attorney, but my guess is it has to do with right to council. If you allow an attorney to walk whenever they want, you're hurting a defendants ability to defend themselves. If your attorney leaves in a critical part of the trial process and you need to find new council, I would imagine that would make life incredibly difficult for the defendant of a criminal trial.
You wouldn't be denying them right to counsel. They would just have to find other counsel.

The only argument I could see for this would be if the court felt the attorney was resigning only to delay the proceedings (i.e. as a loophole to indefinitely delay the trial). That clearly was not the case here.

What would have happened if Amendola just stopped showing up to court? They can't *make* him represent Sandusky, can they?
 
Amendola was in over his head and out of his league. He threaten to resign when he was continually denied continuances and unable to mount a reasonable defense, but relented and backed off. By rights, he should have resigned right then.

Bruce Heim recommended Amendola to Jerry when Aaron Fisher first made accusations and the case wasn't very strong. However, when the SHTF in 2010/2011 Heim thought Jerry should have taken things seriously and traded up and gone with a law firm that could have mounted an agressive defense. In hindsight, it may be that no defense would have been able to adequately defend Jerry; but it is clear that Joe Amendola was not up to the task.
Wouldn't a competent defense attorney announce a major press conference after AM gave his statement? March him out there in his Marine uniform, have him make his statement that he's V2, was not abused that night or ever and the PSP tried to pressure him into saying otherwise. Take no questions and the media tide would have turned.
 
Wouldn't a competent defense attorney announce a major press conference after AM gave his statement? March him out there in his Marine uniform, have him make his statement that he's V2, was not abused that night or ever and the PSP tried to pressure him into saying otherwise. Take no questions and the media tide would have turned.
I agree.

However, I will note that I think there is a tendency, even with good attorneys, to look at cases differently when they are convinced their client is innocent.

I think early on many people caught up in this (JS, GS, GS, TC) believed this was a huge misunderstanding and this colored many of the actions (including potentially some by their counsels).

Not defending it, just pointing it out.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bob78 and francofan
I disagree. Ziegler is an excellent orator and very articulate, especially with such a complicated case. I think it’s great that they’re getting it all out there. Agree that it’s too much for the average person. But, for someone that wanted to make a “Making of a Murderer” type Netflix series, this is the ultimate source of reference. Hopefully that happens at some point in the future. Ziegler is to be commended, if PSU had him in their corner and actually listened to him things would be completely different. Instead we have a board that “wet their pants” as the song goes.
 
  • Like
Reactions: nits74
Does MM still live in or around State College? If so, does he come out in public?
 
You wouldn't be denying them right to counsel. They would just have to find other counsel.

The only argument I could see for this would be if the court felt the attorney was resigning only to delay the proceedings (i.e. as a loophole to indefinitely delay the trial). That clearly was not the case here.

What would have happened if Amendola just stopped showing up to court? They can't *make* him represent Sandusky, can they?
He could have been disbarred.
 
He does not. He lives in my area and has reached out to friends of mine on dating apps and his behavior is similar to what we have heard in this case...
He got $12 million from PSU. He should be able to attract some women with that.
 
Listen the Schultz interview. Listen to the Snedden interview. I don't see how anyone could listen to those two and not at least re-think their position.
This is the whole issue in a nutshell. People won’t admit they got duped. It’s really that simple. It could not be more clear at this point. People panicked, rushed to judgement, lives were ruined, millions of dollars wasted, and those who were dead wrong can’t admit it. Welcome to modern society.
 
This is the whole issue in a nutshell. People won’t admit they got duped. It’s really that simple. It could not be more clear at this point. People panicked, rushed to judgement, lives were ruined, millions of dollars wasted, and those who were dead wrong can’t admit it. Welcome to modern society.
The media loves a scandal, especially if they can hang it on a prominent figure like Joe Paterno.

The BOT didn't want any of this to come back at them so they were more than willing to throw a few people under the bus, dish out a lot of money, and hope the whole thing would go away.

If the BOT wasn't willing to defend the university and their employees why would anybody else to do so.
 
Wouldn't a competent defense attorney announce a major press conference after AM gave his statement? March him out there in his Marine uniform, have him make his statement that he's V2, was not abused that night or ever and the PSP tried to pressure him into saying otherwise. Take no questions and the media tide would have turned.
Nah.
Joe Amendola and Karl Rominger, the attorneys for Jerry Sandusky, faced a virtually insurmountable task in preparing for the trial, which Judge John Cleland was clearly intent on holding as soon as possible. Cleland was perhaps sensitive to media criticism questioning why it had taken three years from the time Aaron Fisher, “Victim 1,” first made allegations, to the time of Sandusky’s arrest.[1] The reason: it took those three years for the prosecutors to grow memories, find other alleged victims, and convince the Grand Jury and Office of the Attorney General that there was sufficient evidence to recommend an indictment, but in the hysteria over the case, no one acknowledged that reality.Judge Cleland initially set the court date for May 14, 2012.[2] Then, in response to Amendola’s increasingly anguished complaints that he had not even received the transcripts of the Grand Jury testimony, Cleland delayed the trial by a mere three weeks, until June 5.[3] Astonishingly, Pennsylvania law specified that prosecutors didn’t have to hand over testimony given during secret grand jury proceedings until each witness testified at trial.[4] The Grand Jury had essentially amounted to a kangaroo court. Not only was Amendola not allowed to cross-examine witnesses there, he was not even allowed to be present. Judge Barry Feudale, presiding judge of the 30th grand juries, ruled that the Sandusky defense team could have access to the grand jury transcripts only ten days before the first witness was scheduled to testify.Amendola and Rominger had to speed-read through the thousands of pages of discovery material that they did get. For a while, they couldn’t even get the prosecution to give them the names and birthdates of the alleged victims, along with the exact dates on which they were supposed to have been abused by Sandusky. Amendola also wanted the names of anyone who had come forward to claim abuse but who "did not fit the commonwealth's profile and/or the report was deemed to be false,” but that was not forthcoming, either. Neither was information on whatever the prosecution had discovered on Sandusky’s computer, probably because they had found nothing incriminating whatsoever – no child pornography, which was surprising if Sandusky was the compulsive pedophile he was supposed to be.·[5] “We’re really being pushed to kind of decipher this stuff,” Amendola said in February 2012 about the reams of material. “We’ll be prepared to try the case whenever the judge says, but we’re playing a lot of catch-up right now.”[6]Amendola kept complaining. He threatened to file a motion to dismiss the case, since it was very difficult to prepare a defense without exact times and dates of alleged offenses. “All we are asking is [for prosecutors] to go back to these accusers and say, ‘You went to football games — which ones?’ Give us at least something that we could check,” Amendola begged.Prosecuting attorney Joe McGettigan responded that “many of the alleged victims were abused several times a week, or month,” so it wasn’t possible to pin down a particular time. Besides, “They didn’t want to remember what happened and were even encouraged by Sandusky to forget,” he said. Here was another red flag that the alleged victims may have been in therapy searching for repressed memories, but no one picked up on it. When the prosecutors said they wouldn’t provide the information, Judge Cleland commented, "I think the answer is they can't." He thus declared that it was “futile” to demand such details. According to reporter Sara Ganim, “the state Attorney General's Office countered that Sandusky is accused of abusing boys who are now men, who were pressured into forgetting what happened and many times abused weekly for many years.”[7]Despite Amendola’s strenuous objections and repeated requests for a continuance, Cleland denied the requests and stuck to his promised June 5 trial date, which would take place in Centre County, where State College and Penn State were located. Incredibly, Jerry Sandusky had instructed Amendola to oppose a change in venue, assuming that his local reputation would benefit him.[8] Instead, the last place on earth that he was likely to get a fair trial was in Penn State territory, where the case had received a huge amount of horrendous publicity, and Penn State fans were bitter and angry at the impact on Coach Paterno and their beloved institution.On May 30, in a private unscheduled meeting with the judge and prosecutors, Amendola pled for a delay of the trial to allow him time to prepare for it properly. He wanted to call a psychologist as an expert witness, but the psychologist had been unable to prepare his reports because he hasn't been given access to the grand jury testimony. His jury consultant was in Puerto Rico on vacation. One of Amendola’s investigators was having surgery. Amendola and Rominger didn’t have enough time to review all the evidence. They couldn’t call Gary Schultz or Tim Curley because they had exercised their fifth-amendment rights. Cleland again denied the requested continuance, saying "No trial date is ever perfect, but some days are better than others."[9]Later that same day, in an official pre-trial hearing, Amendola asked Cleland to throw out three of the ten alleged victims before the trial. Victim 2, the unnamed Allan Myers, should be thrown out because Mike McQueary’s version of the shower incident kept changing, including the date on which it was supposed to have occurred. Victim 8, the phantom victim supposedly witnessed by the janitor who now had dementia, should be thrown out because it was pure hearsay. And Victim 6, Zachary Konstas, should be thrown out because the district attorney had decided in 1998 that there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute, so to try it again amounted to a kind of double jeopardy. Cleland denied all of Amendola’s requests. All ten alleged victims would be presented to the jury.[10]On June 5, just before the process of picking a jury commenced, Amendola tried one more tactic. He filed a motion to withdraw as Sandusky’s lawyer, “based on the lack of preparation of all the things that are going on, most notably the absence of our experts and jury consultant.” A “key witness” was unavailable. “My office is still copying materials which we cannot send out to anybody because they’re all confidential. They’re all grand jury materials. My staff is ready to quit.” He said that “some day when people talk to my staff and get a real flavor for what was going on in my office for the past 30, 60 days, they’ll have a better understanding that this is not lawyering.” The reality was that “we have been so far behind, just keeping up with the discovery materials and trying to do due diligence… but we’re at a loss.” They hadn’t even had time to serve subpoenas to potential witnesses. He concluded that “we’re not prepared to go to trial at this time.”Co-counsel Karl Rominger added that he had called the Pennsylvania Bar Ethics Hotline the day before, and they had called his attention to Rule 17.1, a lawyer’s “duty of competency,” and that Rule 1.16 called upon a judge to ask lawyers to withdraw if the judge could tell that they were completely unprepared. The lawyer who answered the hotline said that they would normally render a formal opinion in such cases, but since they knew it was the Sandusky case, they didn’t want to get involved.Amendola said that he was “fully cognizant of the fact that the Court will deny but at least there will be a record.”[11] And he was right. Cleland refused to allow him to withdraw from the case, and jury selection began.

· Although there was no pornography on Sandusky’s computer, his investigators were sending “graphic and raunchy” pornography by email to one another, though the Office of the Attorney General has refused to make the emails public.
 
Wouldn't a competent defense attorney announce a major press conference after AM gave his statement? March him out there in his Marine uniform, have him make his statement that he's V2, was not abused that night or ever and the PSP tried to pressure him into saying otherwise. Take no questions and the media tide would have turned.

I think there are two possibilities. First Amendola panicked after the GJR was released. While Joe later acknowledged he truly believed in Sandusky’s innocence (he said that AFTER he was no longer his attorney and Sandusky was appealing based partly on incompetent counsel, so he had no incentive to lie), it seems reasonable Amendola had doubts at that time. He was perhaps fearful that after the press conference, the “real V2” would come forward and say yes he was abused.

The other possibility is that AM started doubting Sandusky’s innocence right away. Remember Paterno’s firing happened that night, so he became uncomfortable defending Sandusky almost immediately after the Everhart statement.
 
John Ziegler's twitter account has been hacked. Ziegler believes he was likely targeted because of his work on the Penn State case. Perhaps the "With the Benefit of Hindsight" podcast is getting too close to home for some of the antagonists in the case.

 
Nah.
Joe Amendola and Karl Rominger, the attorneys for Jerry Sandusky, faced a virtually insurmountable task in preparing for the trial, which Judge John Cleland was clearly intent on holding as soon as possible. Cleland was perhaps sensitive to media criticism questioning why it had taken three years from the time Aaron Fisher, “Victim 1,” first made allegations, to the time of Sandusky’s arrest.[1] The reason: it took those three years for the prosecutors to grow memories, find other alleged victims, and convince the Grand Jury and Office of the Attorney General that there was sufficient evidence to recommend an indictment, but in the hysteria over the case, no one acknowledged that reality.Judge Cleland initially set the court date for May 14, 2012.[2] Then, in response to Amendola’s increasingly anguished complaints that he had not even received the transcripts of the Grand Jury testimony, Cleland delayed the trial by a mere three weeks, until June 5.[3] Astonishingly, Pennsylvania law specified that prosecutors didn’t have to hand over testimony given during secret grand jury proceedings until each witness testified at trial.[4] The Grand Jury had essentially amounted to a kangaroo court. Not only was Amendola not allowed to cross-examine witnesses there, he was not even allowed to be present. Judge Barry Feudale, presiding judge of the 30th grand juries, ruled that the Sandusky defense team could have access to the grand jury transcripts only ten days before the first witness was scheduled to testify.Amendola and Rominger had to speed-read through the thousands of pages of discovery material that they did get. For a while, they couldn’t even get the prosecution to give them the names and birthdates of the alleged victims, along with the exact dates on which they were supposed to have been abused by Sandusky. Amendola also wanted the names of anyone who had come forward to claim abuse but who "did not fit the commonwealth's profile and/or the report was deemed to be false,” but that was not forthcoming, either. Neither was information on whatever the prosecution had discovered on Sandusky’s computer, probably because they had found nothing incriminating whatsoever – no child pornography, which was surprising if Sandusky was the compulsive pedophile he was supposed to be.·[5] “We’re really being pushed to kind of decipher this stuff,” Amendola said in February 2012 about the reams of material. “We’ll be prepared to try the case whenever the judge says, but we’re playing a lot of catch-up right now.”[6]Amendola kept complaining. He threatened to file a motion to dismiss the case, since it was very difficult to prepare a defense without exact times and dates of alleged offenses. “All we are asking is [for prosecutors] to go back to these accusers and say, ‘You went to football games — which ones?’ Give us at least something that we could check,” Amendola begged.Prosecuting attorney Joe McGettigan responded that “many of the alleged victims were abused several times a week, or month,” so it wasn’t possible to pin down a particular time. Besides, “They didn’t want to remember what happened and were even encouraged by Sandusky to forget,” he said. Here was another red flag that the alleged victims may have been in therapy searching for repressed memories, but no one picked up on it. When the prosecutors said they wouldn’t provide the information, Judge Cleland commented, "I think the answer is they can't." He thus declared that it was “futile” to demand such details. According to reporter Sara Ganim, “the state Attorney General's Office countered that Sandusky is accused of abusing boys who are now men, who were pressured into forgetting what happened and many times abused weekly for many years.”[7]Despite Amendola’s strenuous objections and repeated requests for a continuance, Cleland denied the requests and stuck to his promised June 5 trial date, which would take place in Centre County, where State College and Penn State were located. Incredibly, Jerry Sandusky had instructed Amendola to oppose a change in venue, assuming that his local reputation would benefit him.[8] Instead, the last place on earth that he was likely to get a fair trial was in Penn State territory, where the case had received a huge amount of horrendous publicity, and Penn State fans were bitter and angry at the impact on Coach Paterno and their beloved institution.On May 30, in a private unscheduled meeting with the judge and prosecutors, Amendola pled for a delay of the trial to allow him time to prepare for it properly. He wanted to call a psychologist as an expert witness, but the psychologist had been unable to prepare his reports because he hasn't been given access to the grand jury testimony. His jury consultant was in Puerto Rico on vacation. One of Amendola’s investigators was having surgery. Amendola and Rominger didn’t have enough time to review all the evidence. They couldn’t call Gary Schultz or Tim Curley because they had exercised their fifth-amendment rights. Cleland again denied the requested continuance, saying "No trial date is ever perfect, but some days are better than others."[9]Later that same day, in an official pre-trial hearing, Amendola asked Cleland to throw out three of the ten alleged victims before the trial. Victim 2, the unnamed Allan Myers, should be thrown out because Mike McQueary’s version of the shower incident kept changing, including the date on which it was supposed to have occurred. Victim 8, the phantom victim supposedly witnessed by the janitor who now had dementia, should be thrown out because it was pure hearsay. And Victim 6, Zachary Konstas, should be thrown out because the district attorney had decided in 1998 that there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute, so to try it again amounted to a kind of double jeopardy. Cleland denied all of Amendola’s requests. All ten alleged victims would be presented to the jury.[10]On June 5, just before the process of picking a jury commenced, Amendola tried one more tactic. He filed a motion to withdraw as Sandusky’s lawyer, “based on the lack of preparation of all the things that are going on, most notably the absence of our experts and jury consultant.” A “key witness” was unavailable. “My office is still copying materials which we cannot send out to anybody because they’re all confidential. They’re all grand jury materials. My staff is ready to quit.” He said that “some day when people talk to my staff and get a real flavor for what was going on in my office for the past 30, 60 days, they’ll have a better understanding that this is not lawyering.” The reality was that “we have been so far behind, just keeping up with the discovery materials and trying to do due diligence… but we’re at a loss.” They hadn’t even had time to serve subpoenas to potential witnesses. He concluded that “we’re not prepared to go to trial at this time.”Co-counsel Karl Rominger added that he had called the Pennsylvania Bar Ethics Hotline the day before, and they had called his attention to Rule 17.1, a lawyer’s “duty of competency,” and that Rule 1.16 called upon a judge to ask lawyers to withdraw if the judge could tell that they were completely unprepared. The lawyer who answered the hotline said that they would normally render a formal opinion in such cases, but since they knew it was the Sandusky case, they didn’t want to get involved.Amendola said that he was “fully cognizant of the fact that the Court will deny but at least there will be a record.”[11] And he was right. Cleland refused to allow him to withdraw from the case, and jury selection began.

· Although there was no pornography on Sandusky’s computer, his investigators were sending “graphic and raunchy” pornography by email to one another, though the Office of the Attorney General has refused to make the emails public.
I recall Amendola trying to cross examine the father or dranov...can't remember which..early in the trial. After some damaging testimony, Amendola brought up inconsistencies in the testimony versus the deposition given back in Harrisburgh. The dad or dranov said he didn't recall giving a deposition in Harrisburgh. Gobsmacked, Amendola started to go down the path of ruining the testimony given the inconsistencies. The judge made him "move on" and move on he did.

That is when I knew the trial was fast tracked to conviction. Amendola and Sandusky didn't have a chance. Was it because he was easily guilty or were people trying to hide something? I have no idea but it was clear that there was going to be conviction come hell of high water.
 
I recall Amendola trying to cross examine the father or dranov...can't remember which..early in the trial. After some damaging testimony, Amendola brought up inconsistencies in the testimony versus the deposition given back in Harrisburgh. The dad or dranov said he didn't recall giving a deposition in Harrisburgh. Gobsmacked, Amendola started to go down the path of ruining the testimony given the inconsistencies. The judge made him "move on" and move on he did.

That is when I knew the trial was fast tracked to conviction. Amendola and Sandusky didn't have a chance. Was it because he was easily guilty or were people trying to hide something? I have no idea but it was clear that there was going to be conviction come hell of high water.
I think this was actually Rominger (the Sandusky co-counsel who got disbarred later for stealing $$ from clients) who did this particular questioning, but your point is the same.

I am not a lawyer, but if a witness is being questioned about his prior testimony and the questioning attorney *has a copy of the transcript of said testimony in his hands while asking the question* it is not clear to me how the judge can allow that witness to state that. It's got to be perjury right? Or should Rominger/Amendola followed up with "Do you suffer from dementia or any other medical problems that affect your memory?" If the answer is yes, the that negates any testimony he has previously made. If he says no, then I think the perjury charges are applicable.
 
My suspicions about the methods, tactics and ethics of the PSP and The Commonwealth OAG have been confirmed after listening to Gary Schultz and Kevin Horne on the podcast. Schultz reveals the shouting and fist pounding antics of prosecutors, unhappy with responses that did not fit their agenda. Horne makes it clear that while he suspected Sandusky to be innocent for some time, felt compelled (due to potential repercussions) to keep his opinion to himself. We already knew that 2 PSP perjured themselves (without any discipline). Now we have empirical evidence of how justice worked under the direction of Tom Corbett. The Commonwealth essentially operated as a totalitarian state. Citizens never cower when they see guilty parties prosecuted. However, when the innocent are randomly targeted a culture of fear is created. The goal of keeping Tim and Gary from testifying at the Sandusky Trial, coupled with the desire to suppress any outcry for a measured applications of justice explains the secret police methods employed in this case. It should lead us to question how often Fina and his Oprichnik like side kicks bullied others in their reign of terror.
Regardless of your opinion on Sandusky's guilt, if you are a citizen of Pa. you should be outraged.
What you state rings true over history...(see Germany circa 1933 - 1945) and is downright frightening...
 
My suspicions about the methods, tactics and ethics of the PSP and The Commonwealth OAG have been confirmed after listening to Gary Schultz and Kevin Horne on the podcast. Schultz reveals the shouting and fist pounding antics of prosecutors, unhappy with responses that did not fit their agenda. Horne makes it clear that while he suspected Sandusky to be innocent for some time, felt compelled (due to potential repercussions) to keep his opinion to himself. We already knew that 2 PSP perjured themselves (without any discipline). Now we have empirical evidence of how justice worked under the direction of Tom Corbett. The Commonwealth essentially operated as a totalitarian state. Citizens never cower when they see guilty parties prosecuted. However, when the innocent are randomly targeted a culture of fear is created. The goal of keeping Tim and Gary from testifying at the Sandusky Trial, coupled with the desire to suppress any outcry for a measured applications of justice explains the secret police methods employed in this case. It should lead us to question how often Fina and his Oprichnik like side kicks bullied others in their reign of terror.
Regardless of your opinion on Sandusky's guilt, if you are a citizen of Pa. you should be outraged.
right...and this is why people rioted last year, not the front line cops. The mess is the entire system. I've posted several times that in my wife's short legal career she's caught both cops and prosecutors gaming the system by illegal methods like withholding evidence or turning off cameras. Caught redhanded their punishment was to restart the trial. The judge suggested my wife try to get the prosecutor's disbarred which is a years worth of work for zero pay. good luck with that. The police officer? She's fought one case for over three years, including a win at the appeal level. They simply wear your ass out, not to mention the person arrested who sits in limbo for years and cannot hold a job. Finally, they threaten you and your family with more charges (they will tell you that they caught you lying and will charge you with perjury or if you shrug your shoulders they'll charge you with resisting arrest). One cop went so far as to shoot a hole through a coworker's office chair when he thought the coworker was going to testify against him. "Oops, didn't realize the gun was loaded!". Don't get me started on the unions.

The only way to win is to NOT defend but to ATTACK. When they threaten you with A you threaten them with B, C and D which will ruin their careers and jeopardize their license.
 
  • Like
Reactions: indynittany
He was living in a very nice condo in Reston . I don’t know if he’s still there. He’s a member of a nice golf course called trump international (used to be called Loews island). He’s there a lot.
 
There has to be more to the story of victim 8. It's clearly bad enough that they're having a story told 3rd hand as evidence but how does Amendola not point out they have the original guy on tape saying there is no way it was Sandusky? John's reasoning of Amendola being told not to touch the dementia makes zero sense. Victim 8 should've been thrown out to begin with
 
There has to be more to the story of victim 8. It's clearly bad enough that they're having a story told 3rd hand as evidence but how does Amendola not point out they have the original guy on tape saying there is no way it was Sandusky? John's reasoning of Amendola being told not to touch the dementia makes zero sense. Victim 8 should've been thrown out to begin with

It is unbelievable that Sandusky was found guilty on all 5 counts for the v8 janitor victim hoax. There was no victim. There was no date. There was no witness. The supposed witness is on tape saying that it wasn’t Sandusky. The hearsay witness was only allowed to testify because there was another janitor that was going to corroborate his account. The other janitor was a no-show at trial.
 
I think this was actually Rominger (the Sandusky co-counsel who got disbarred later for stealing $$ from clients) who did this particular questioning, but your point is the same.

I am not a lawyer, but if a witness is being questioned about his prior testimony and the questioning attorney *has a copy of the transcript of said testimony in his hands while asking the question* it is not clear to me how the judge can allow that witness to state that. It's got to be perjury right? Or should Rominger/Amendola followed up with "Do you suffer from dementia or any other medical problems that affect your memory?" If the answer is yes, the that negates any testimony he has previously made. If he says no, then I think the perjury charges are applicable.
Word be dementhe!
Amendola also did nothing to prep Sandusky for talking with Costas, Sandusky's appeal lawyers say. That 2011 interview was replayed in court by the prosecutors, who proceeded to rip Sandusky for talking to Costas, but not the jury. Sandusky was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison.

The idiocy of the Costas interview was recounted in a 257-page post-hearing brief filed Thursday in Centre County Common Pleas Court by Sandusky's appeal lawyers, Alexander H. Lindsay Jr. and J. Andrew Salemme, of Butler, PA.

Lindsay and Salemme argue that Sandusky deserves a new trial because Amendola foolishly chose to go on national TV and give up his client's right to remain silent and not convict himself. Amendola went on Costas's TV show in a misguided campaign to cultivate "friends" in the media, Sandusky's appeal lawyers write. Amendola told a judge he embarked on his campaign because at the time the media was saying that his client was "worse than Adolph Hitler."


In the interview, Costas asked Sandusky if he was sexually attracted to young boys.

Sandusky repeated the question a couple of times, before saying, "I -- I love to be around them . . I -- I -- but no, I'm not sexually attracted to young boys."

In their appeal brief, Sandusky's lawyers argue that the Costas debacle wasn't all Jerry's fault. It was editing by NBC that made it appear "that there was repetition of the infamous question and answer regarding Mr. Sandusky being sexually attracted to young boys," the lawyers write.

Amendola admitted that the Costas interview presented at trial had the "same effect as a police interview," except that Amendola was powerless on TV to stop the questioning, Sandusky's lawyers write.

In their brief, Sandusky's lawyers quote another criminal defense attorney, James Bryant, as saying he would have only agreed to the Costas interview if they put "a gun to my head."

That interview "killed" Sandusky, Bryant said. Especially when it was played at trial.

At trial, Sandusky's lawyers said, the prosecutors "sought to fix a bias and hostility against Mr. Sandusky in the jury's minds based on the fact that Mr. Sandusky was willing to talk to the media about his case, but he did not take the stand to talk to the jury directly."

Sandusky's lawyers cited the Fifth Amendment that says no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."

Except if he voluntarily decides to waive that privilege, by going on national TV.

Prior to the Costas interview, Sandusky's lawyers write, Amendola told Sandusky that only Amendola would be interviewed by Costas. And that if Sandusky was interviewed, the only thing he would have to say was that "he was innocent."

The short notice to Sandusky was disclosed by the host of Rock Center, Sandusky's lawyers say.

"Bob Costas, himself, provided an interview in which he recalled that Mr. Amendola only contacted Mr. Sandusky 15 minutes before the interview," Sandusky's lawyers write.

Sandusky originally wasn't even supposed to appear on the show. At the time, in his campaign to win friends in the media, Amendola had promised to do his first interview with Costas. But then the lawyer gave an interview to CNN.

An NBC producer "voiced strong displeasure" after the CNN interview, Sandusky's lawyers write.

"In order to make up for this and ingratiate himself with the media again, Mr. Amendola convinced Mr. Sandusky to do the interview" with Costas, Sandusky's lawyers write. Aamendola told Sandusky the Costas interview would provide a "golden opportunity" to proclaim his innocence.

In their appeal brief, Sandusky's lawyers also fault Amendola for failing to move to quash the grand jury charges against Sandusky because of illegal grand jury leaks.

Amendola was aware that former Patriot News reporter Sara Ganim "had the name and phone number of an agent involved in the investigation and was providing it to potential witnesses," but did nothing to investigate, Sandusky's lawyers write.

Ganim, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on Sandusky, wrote the first story about the supposedly secret Sandusky grand jury investigation, on March 30, 2011, so somebody in the know was obviously leaking grand jury secrets to her. In that article, Ganim cited a prior 1998 investigation into another Sandusky shower incident. Somebody had obviously leaked to Ganim a police report from the prior 1998 case that had turned up no crime, and was supposed to be expunged.

In their brief, Sandusky's lawyers write that Ganim "approached the mother of accuser 6," Deb McCord, according to the testimony of State Police Corporal Joseph Leiter, and gave the mother the name and phone number for an investigator assigned to the attorney general's office.

Ganim, according to the brief, had a message for McCord:

"Debra, it's Sara from the Patriot. I just want to pass along this agent's name and number. The Attorney General has expressed interest in helping you."


Sandusky's lawyers say the trial judge was at fault for not allowing the defense to call Ganim as a witness, so they could ask about the grand jury leaks.

After the initial Ganim article, Ronald Petrosky, a retired Penn State janitor, came forward to accuse
Sandusky of another shower incident.

At the Sandusky trial, prosecutors were allowed to present hearsay evidence via Ronald Petrosky that another retired janitor, James Calhoun, had allegedly "observed Jerry Sandusky molesting a child in the Lasch Building shower."

Sandusky's appeal lawyers fault trial lawyer Amendola for not telling the jury that 13 months prior to the trial, Calhoun had given a taped interview to a state trooper where he denied that it was Sandusky he saw in the shower having sex with a boy.

At trial, however, Sandusky was found guilty of abusing "victim 8," identity unknown. Sandusky's appeal lawyers also faulted Amendola for not objecting when prosecutor Joseph McGettigan told the jury that the identity of Victim No. 2 -- the boy Mike McQueary had allegedly witnessed being anally raped in the showers by Sandusky -- was "known only to God."

At the time, the prosecutors knew that Allan Myers had claimed to be the boy in the showers with Sandusky, and they had done nothing to denied it, Sandusky's lawyers write. Myers told state troopers that he and Sandusky were snapping towels in the shower, which could have accounted for the "slapping sounds" heard by McQueary.

Myers told corporal Corporal Jospeh Leiter and Trooper James Ellis in 2011 that "The grand jury report says Coach McQuearry said he observed Jerry and I engaged in sexual activity. This is not the truth and McQueary is not telling the truth. Nothing occurred that night in the shower."

But Amendola was so incompetent he never presented Myers's statements to the jury, Sandusky's appeal lawyers write.

In their brief, Sandusky's lawyers also hit Amendola for not presenting any expert witness testimony "regarding repressed or false memories" of the alleged victims.

Amendola knew about recordings "showing suggestive police questioning and learning that therapy was used to enhance the memories of the accusers," Sandusky's lawyers write. Yet, Amendola did not challenge "the reliability of the accusers or present expert testimony on suggestive questioning" by police and therapists.

In their brief, Sandusky's lawyers quote the testimony of Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, a renowned expert on memory.

In an appeal hearing, Loftus testified that Aaron Fisher, Victim No. 1 in the Sandusky case, "had a therapist who appeared to have convinced his patient that he had repressed memories of abuse."

Aaron Fisher "did undergo a type of repressed memory therapy . . . designed to get people to remember things that somebody thinks they have repressed or forgotten," Loftus testified.

There is "no credible scientific evidence" to support the theory of massive repression of traumatic memories, and subsequent recovery of those repressed memories, Sandusky's lawyers write.

The theory of repressed memory "is so controversial that in many other jurisdictions, accusers who claim to have repressed memories that have been recovered, the cases are even dismissed because of the controversial nature of that theory," Loftus testified.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Yanks49
ADVERTISEMENT