Hearings part of wild and wacky day at courthouse

CDT Staff Reports

BELLEFONTE — It was anything but an ordinary day at the Centre County Courthouse.

Media circus

Courthouse employees tried to skirt around them. Penn State football players tried to get through them.

Media from across the state, The Associated Press, the Patriot News of Harrisburg and TV news stations from across the region staked out both entrances of the courthouse by 8 a.m. in anticipation of the preliminary hearings for six Nittany Lions.

And it was all to get pictures of the players walking in.

Student field trip

As District Judge Carmine Prestia asked witness Joseph McGarrity to stand up from the witness stand and search the courtroom for people he could identify as intruders in his apartment, about 100 students from Mount Nittany Middle School filed into the courtroom.

The students filled the spaces in the crowd, squeezing in between observers of the hearing, including many football players.

The students, were there “by coincidence” on a field trip to observe the court system, eighth-grade teacher Sue Mauersberg said.

The pre-teen audience got the full effect, twice hearing a colorful expletive from an attorney. The students listened to about 15 minutes of testimony from McGarrity on cross examination by defense attorneys.

“I thought the questions were very good,” 13-year-old Lydia Glick said afterward. “I just couldn’t see how they pertained at first.”

Witness antics

The court ordered certain witnesses to be moved into the hallway after it was alleged they came out of sequestration during a break and were whispering and pointing fingers toward the crowd — which included football players.

Attorney Stacy Parks Miller told Prestia she saw witnesses who already had testified talking to witnesses who had yet to testify. At the request of attorney Karen Muir, Prestia said he would consider what affect that might have on the testimony.

Prestia then ordered the witnesses to be separated.

Witness Kevin Sanders, a 20-year-old Penn State student, testified about how he saw Penn State defensive tackle Chris Baker enter the apartment with “an odd look” on his face.

But when asked to identify Baker in the courtroom, Sanders walked from the witness stand to the seats full of people, including the players and their families.

“I don’t see him,” Sanders said.

Baker, a 6-foot-2 inch, 305-pound lineman, was sitting off to Sanders’ left, three rows back.

A short time later, defense attorneys marveled at how witness Bernd Imle Jr., who was the alleged target of the football players’ attacks in the apartment, took the stand and immediately found Baker in the audience without looking to his right or to the middle of the court.