Deputy AG: Jerry Sandusky appeal should be denied

Not surprisingly, the state Office of the Attorney General doesn’t think Jerry Sandusky should get a new trial.

Deputy AG Jennifer Peterson submitted the prosecution’s response to Sandusky’s petition under the state’s Post Conviction Relief Act on Tuesday shortly before the court’s deadline. Peterson said the documents were hand-delivered after her office had petitioned for an extension of time to file in June.

Sandusky was convicted in June 2012 of 45 counts of child sex abuse charges after a highly-publicized trial and storm of media attention on the county, Penn State University and the Nittany Lions football team. Sandusky, a former offensive coordinator under late coach Joe Paterno, was accused of assaulting children he met through his charity, The Second Mile.

According to Peterson’s response, Sandusky’s PCRA petition should be denied because “all of the claims either lack merit and/or Sandusky fails to establish how the outcome of his trial would have been different absent such alleged errors.”

Among those arguments was Sandusky’s claim that he had ineffective counsel from Centre County attorney Joe Amendola and Karl Rominger, of Carlisle. Rominger has since been charged with multiple counts of theft in Cumberland County and disbarred.

Sandusky also argued that his constitutional rights were violated when his case was rushed to trial without being granted requested continuances to prepare. In previous appeals, the Superior Court nixed that argument. Similar claims that the publicity and the public sentiment aroused by the case were immaterial because that argument had not been previously raised.

Peterson said that the ineffective counsel argument stems from the idea that the defense did not include evidence that the attention and atmosphere was detrimental in pre-trial motions for continuance, or that they did not investigate to see if anti-Sandusky feelings had abated.

“This claim is meritless. There is no doubt, indeed no question at all, that this court was well aware of the extent of the pre-trial publicity in Sandusky’s case,” she wrote.

Also addressed was the idea that counsel was ineffective for failing to withdraw from the case when the extra time to prepare was not afforded. Peterson said that argument should be dismissed because Amendola and Rominger did attempt to withdraw, a motion denied by McKean County Senior Judge John Cleland, who presided over the case.

Peterson used comments from Amendola to support the argument that even if there had been a delay to allow better preparation, it wouldn’t have helped.

“Mr. Amendola, you would agree that much of the (discovery) material that you requested was frankly irrelevant, would you agree?” she quoted from a post-sentence motion hearing.

“It turned out to be that way,” she quoted Amendola’s answer.

She also brought up Sandusky’s damning televised interview with Bob Costas, which became part of the prosecution’s case at trial, including the stumbling answer when asked if he was attracted to young boys, claiming that counsel had waived any possible objection to its use when they protested its use, but did not ask for a mistrial or other “curative instruction.”

Peterson also addressed the idea that the grand jury indictment was, in itself, an abuse of due process, that his attorneys should have interviewed grand jury witnesses, and allegations of collusion between the grand jury’s supervising judge and the prosecution, claiming Sandusky was “still dissatisfied” with multiple aspects of the process but that didn’t merit his case succeeding.

“Sandusky is not entitled to conduct a fishing expedition in order to argue relevance,” she wrote.

More than anything, she took issue with the petition itself, saying that it contained no real arguments, just 12 separate issues “set forth in a laundry list fashion,” which did not meet the specific requirements of the PCRA.

John Ziegler, radio personality and documentarian, has established himself as the Sandusky family’s voice.

“The commonwealth claiming that even if Sandusky had not faced a Salem Witch Trial, he still would have been convicted, is both laughable and disturbing. My own rudimentary investigation has proven that if Sandusky had been given even a reasonable amount of time to prepare and his lawyers hadn’t had to deal with the nuclear explosion of the Paterno firing, he would have been easily found not guilty,” he said.

Sandusky remains incarcerated at Greene state prison.

This story was originally published September 2, 2015 at 8:31 PM with the headline "Deputy AG: Jerry Sandusky appeal should be denied."