Judge to Penn State: Turn over Freeh documents

A decision has been made on access to the Freeh report documents.

In an order Thursday, Bedford County Senior Judge Daniel Howsare, specially presiding in Centre County, told Penn State that it must turn over the source materials for former FBI director Louis Freeh’s commissioned review of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.

Seven of the university’s alumni-elected trustees petitioned the court for access to the documents, claiming they needed to see the original documents in order to adequately perform their fiduciary duties. The university is embroiled in a number of legal cases rising from the criminal case, which sent Sandusky to jail in 2012.

Howsare gave the university 20 days to turn over documents not covered by privilege or confidentiality protections, including those already in the public domain.

He gave Penn State a deadline of 45 days to review and label all confidential or privileged documents and turn those over. The petitioning trustees are only permitted to discuss the documents in executive session or with the university’s legal counsel.

The trustees are also ordered to sign an acknowledgment of the requirements.

Both sides seemed to see victory in the judge’s ruling.

Trustees’ attorney Daniel Brier called the ruling “thoughtful, thorough and correct.”

“As we maintained from the beginning, we never believed that it was in the best interest of the university to withhold important documents from the trustees of the university,” he said. “It is time for the trustees to discharge their fiduciary duties without impediment, discover the truth and move forward in the best interests of the Pennsylvania State University.”

In a statement, the trustees said they were “heartened” by the decision.

“We feel it is not only our right, but our responsibility, to understand the very foundation of the Freeh report,” they said. “The court’s ruling today ensures our right to do exactly that.”

The university also claimed vindication.

“We are pleased with the court’s recognition of the university’s interest in maintaining the confidentiality of the materials, particularly the names and identities of those who were interviewed for the Freeh report,” said university spokeswoman Lisa Powers.

“The seven alumni elected trustees’ continuing demand to know ‘who said what?’ is contrary to the university's efforts to create a climate where people feel safe in reporting possible wrongdoing,” she said in a statement. “The university offered repeatedly to provide essentially all of the approximately 3.5 million documents collected by the Freeh firm with no redactions whatsoever and all of the Freeh firm’s work product and interview memoranda with redactions of personally identifiable information, all under the conditions of a confidentiality agreement. This legal action was an unnecessary and wasteful expense.”

Watchdog group Penn Staters for Responsible Stewardship agreed on the last point.

“The only condition is that the trustees sign a confidentiality agreement — something the trustees have agreed to do since the outset,” said Maribeth Roman Schmidt.

This story was originally published November 19, 2015 at 10:45 PM with the headline "Judge to Penn State: Turn over Freeh documents."