May
10

Defense seeks delay in Sandusky child sex trial

Former Penn State University assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky speaks to NBC’s Bob Costas in a Rock Center exclusive interview.? Sandusky was charged earlier this month with 40 criminal counts accusing him of sexual abuse of minors.

By msnbc.com staff and news services

The lawyer for Jerry Sandusky on Wednesday asked for a delay in the former Penn State assistant football coach’s June 5 trial on 52 counts of child sex-abuse trial.

Defense attorney Joe Amendola argued in a 13-page motion that he needed more time to prepare or he would be “unable to effectively and adequately” represent Sandusky.

Amendola said he was still waiting for material from prosecutors.

The attorney?s request came before a court hearing on evidence, the Harrisburg Patriot-News reported.

Matt Rourke / AP

Joe Amendola, attorney for Jerry Sandusky, is shown last month outside of the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Pa.

Judge John Cleland has previously indicated he was reluctant to push back the trial, to be held in Bellefonte, Penn., The Associated Press reported.

It wasn’t immediately clear when Cleland would rule on the delay motion.

Amendola said in his motion the defense team needs more time to find and interview witnesses.

Pending criminal charges against two potential witnesses, Penn State administrators Gary Schultz and Tim Curley, have made them unavailable as witnesses in June, Amendola?s motion also said.

Lawyers for Curley, the school’s athletic director now on leave, and Schultz, the retired vice president who supervised campus police, have indicated their clients will invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refuse to testify if called.

A spokesman for the state attorney general’s office declined to comment. Cleland has imposed a partial gag order on lawyers in the case.

Matt Rourke / AP

Jerry Sandusky, former Penn State assistant football coach, is shown leaving Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Penn., last month.

Sandusky, 68, is confined to his State College home to await the start of his trial involving 10 boys over age 15. Sandusky has denied the allegations.

In a separate motion, Amendola asked Cleland to direct prosecutors to provide paper copies of computer records he has been given, including phone records taken from the office of former Penn State coach Joe Paterno.

The Wednesday hearing was expected to be mainly about the use of defense subpoenas, as school districts and government agencies have asked Cleland to throw them out. Keystone Central School District, for example, home of a Sandusky accuser known as ?Victim One,? argued in an April 30 motion that defense has not set out legitimate arguments for release of their student’s counseling and academic records, the Patriot-News reported.

The charges against Sandusky concern his relationships with boys he met through his charity for at-risk kids, The Second Mile, between 1994 and 2008. At least some of the alleged abuse happened in the Penn State football team’s facilities, prosecutors said. One of the alleged attacks was witnessed by former receivers coach Mike McQueary, then a graduate assistant. The ensuing scandal led to the firing of Paterno and the ouster of university President Graham Spanier.

On Monday, prosecutors said an alleged locker-room shower assault by Sandusky on a boy known in court documents as ?Victim Two? took place around Feb. 9, 2001, about a year earlier than they first claimed. The date change may not affect the Sandusky prosecution, legal experts said, but it could mean the statute of limitations expired for related charges against Tim Curley, the athletic director who is on leave, and Gary Schultz, a university vice president who has retired. The two are fighting allegations that they lied to a grand jury and failed to properly report suspected child abuse. The date change affects the failure to report charges, their lawyer said.

This article includes reporting by The Associated Press.

NBC’s Michelle Franzen reports live at the pre-trial hearing for Jerry Sandusky, who is accused of sexually abusing 10 boys over a 15 year period.

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Mar
25

College Basketball Invitational schedule

College Basketball Invitational Schedule and Results

(All times EDT)

First round

March 13

Texas Christian 83, Milwaukee 73

Princeton 95, Evansville 86

Washington State 89, San Francisco 75

March 14

Butler 75, Delaware 58

Oregon State 80, Western Illinois 59

Pittsburgh 81, Wofford 63

Pennsylvania 74, Quinnipiac 63

Wyoming 78, North Dakota State 75

–

Quarterfinals

March 19

Pittsburgh 82, Princeton 61

Butler 63, Pennsylvania 53.

Oregon State 101, Texas Christian 81

Washington State 61, Wyoming 41

–

Semifinals

March 21

Pittsburgh 68, Butler 62 (OT)

Washington State 72, Oregon State 55

–

Finals

(Best of three)

March 26

Pittsburgh vs Washington State, 10 p.m., at Pullman, Wash. (HDNet)

March 28

Washington vs. Pittsburgh, 7 p.m., at Pittsburgh (HDNet)

March 30

(if necessary)

Washington vs. Pittsburgh, 7 p.m., at Pittsburgh (HDNet)

Source: http://pheed.upi.com/click.phdo?i=cecd3c3333c8d3de67ea28ae35ae4982

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Feb
12

Romney adds to delegate lead with Maine victory (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Mitt Romney added to his lead in the race for delegates Saturday with a narrow victory in the Maine Republican presidential caucuses.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, won 11 delegates and Texas Rep. Ron Paul won 10, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich were shut out.

Romney leads the overall race for delegates with 123, including endorsements from members of the Republican National Committee who automatically attend the party’s national convention and can support any candidate they choose.

Santorum has 72 delegates, Gingrich has 32 and Paul has 19. The race for delegates is still in the early stages. It will take 1,144 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president.

Maine’s delegates to the party’s national convention are not bound by the results of local caucuses. The caucuses were the first in a multistep process to award the state’s delegates.

However, the AP analysis showed Romney would win most of Maine’s delegates, if he maintains the same level of support throughout the process.

Maine held local caucuses throughout the week. The results were announced Saturday evening, even though some communities have yet to hold their caucuses.

Romney won 39 percent of the vote and Paul got 36 percent. Santorum trailed with 18 percent and Gingrich got 6 percent.

Maine GOP Chairman Charlie Webster said results from future caucuses would not be tallied. Those communities, however, will send delegates to the party’s state convention, where national delegates are selected.

The AP calculates the number of national convention delegates won by candidates in each presidential primary or caucus, based on state and national party rules. Most primaries and some caucuses are binding, meaning delegates won by the candidates are pledged to support that candidate at the national conventions this summer.

Political parties in some states, including Maine, use local caucuses to elect delegates to state or congressional district conventions, where national delegates are selected. In these states, the AP uses the results from local caucuses to calculate the number of national delegates each candidate will win, if the candidates maintain the same level of support.

The AP will update delegate totals if support for the candidates changes. The AP also interviews RNC delegates, who can support any candidate they choose, to see which one they support.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120212/ap_on_el_pr/us_gop_delegates

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Jan
25

Joe Paterno, revered coach tainted by scandal, dies (Reuters)

STATE COLLEGE, Pennsylvania (Reuters) ? Penn State’s Joe Paterno, the winningest coach in major college football history who was fired in November over a child sexual abuse scandal involving an assistant that rocked America, died on Sunday of lung cancer. He was 85.

Paterno won adoration from fans of the highly successful and profitable Penn State football program and they unleashed invective at the university board of trustees who fired him unceremoniously after 46 years as head coach, tarnishing his outsized legacy.

Equally outraged were his critics and advocates for victims of sexual abuse who faulted Paterno for his relative inaction upon hearing an accusation that former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky had sexually abused a young boy in the Penn State football showers in 2002.

Paterno told university officials but not police, opening him to criticism that he protected an accused child molester for nine years.

Sandusky, 67, who has maintained his innocence, faces 52 criminal counts accusing him of sexually abusing 10 boys over 15 years, using his position as head of a The Second Mile, a charity dedicated to helping troubled children, to find his victims. The court placed him under house arrest.

Waves of mourners descended on a makeshift shrine to Paterno outside the university’s Beaver Stadium. They draped an American flag on a statue of Paterno and wrapped its neck with a Penn State scarf.

Sobbing at the statue’s feet was Dana Gordon, a 1982 graduate who blamed the school’s board of trustees for hastening Paterno’s death by firing him in a “callous way.”

“The way the board treated him took a lot of the fight out of him,” Gordon said.

Later, a few thousand mourners braved freezing cold temperatures to attend a vigil. Many held candles while the football team’s marching band played somber music, including “Amazing Grace.”

“I am not only a better player because of him, but also a better person as well,” Penn State quarterback Matt McGloin said in a ceremony that made only vague references to the scandal. “This guy was not only a football coach. He was also a father, a husband, and I consider him a friend.”

The scandal raised questions about the measures the university took to protect Sandusky and a football program that Forbes magazine estimated made a profit of $53 million in 2010, especially since accusations against him first surfaced in 1998. At that time a university police detective admonished Sandusky to stop showering naked with boys but stopped short of bringing criminal charges.

One of the biggest scandals in college sports history, it provoked a national discussion about pedophilia in the same way charges involving Roman Catholic priests did years earlier.

The matter also drew impassioned arguments about the balance between protecting the young and the rights of criminal defendants, who are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

“I hope his passing and the controversy surrounding Sandusky will deter other people, especially powerful people, from covering up child sex crimes,” said David Clohessy, director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a support group.

“Even decades of professional achievement should not obscure dreadfully reckless and callous inaction that results in child sex crimes,” Clohessy said.

Sandusky issued a statement sending condolences to the Paterno family but did not mention the investigation.

“Nobody did more for the academic reputation of Penn State than Joe Paterno. He maintained a high standard in a very difficult profession,” Sandusky said.

Paterno won a reputation for making sure his players graduated and one of the program’s mottos was “Success With Honor.”

Paterno’s downfall was spectacular. For decades he was a symbol of vitality who patrolled the Penn State sidelines with unchallenged authority, easily recognizable by his thick eyeglasses and jet-black hair that grayed a little in his later years. His two national championships, in 1982 and 1986, won him enduring loyalty from fans who affectionately called him “JoePa.”

In the end, he was confined to a wheelchair upon breaking his hip in a fall one month after being fired, and he wore a wig after losing his hair to chemotherapy, according to the Washington Post, which interviewed Paterno about a week before his death.

Paterno was surrounded by family when he died 9:25 a.m. on Sunday of metastatic small cell carcinoma of the lung, Mount Nittany Medical Center said in a statement.

IMPACT ON CRIMINAL CASE

Paterno’s death may not significantly affect the case against Sandusky, but was more likely to weaken the criminal case against two university officials charged with perjury, legal experts said.

Paterno learned of at least one accusation against Sandusky in 2002, when graduate assistant Mike McQueary told Paterno he witnessed Sandusky molesting a boy of about 10 years old in the showers of the Lasch Football Building.

Paterno told university officials but not police, a decision that ultimately led to his downfall.

Paterno, in an interview with the Washington Post published on January 14, said he was uncertain how to handle the matter and trusted the university administration.

Paterno testified before the grand jury that he informed former athletic director Tim Curley about what McQueary told him. About 10 days later, McQueary testified, he was called to a meeting with Curley and university finance official Gary Schultz to discuss what happened.

Curley and Schultz both face perjury charges based on their inaction. Schultz also testified before the grand jury he was aware of the 1998 investigation of Sandusky.

University President Graham Spanier was fired along with Paterno, and Curley and Schultz stepped down.

“If he (Paterno) had known the devastation that this means, he would have reacted differently,” said Peter Pelullo, founder of Let Go, Let Peace Come In, a support group helping some of Sandusky’s accusers with counseling.

Because Paterno was not believed to have witnessed any purported abuse, his testimony would not have been crucial to Sandusky trial, said Paul Callan, a former prosecutor and criminal defense attorney.

But his death could set back the criminal case against Curley and Schultz because they will be denied the chance to cross-examine an important witness.

Max Kennerly, a Philadelphia trial lawyer who has followed the case, said Paterno’s death was unlikely to alter any civil litigation being contemplated by Sandusky’s accusers. If any were considering suing Paterno, they could just name his estate.

“Death doesn’t change your status as a party,” Kennerly said.

(Additional reporting by Ian Simpson, Barbara Goldberg, Noeleen Walder and Andrew Longstreth; Writing by Daniel Trotta and Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/diseases/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120123/ts_nm/us_usa_paterno

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