Today is Jerry Sandusky’s 11th Christmas in prison. And on this day, I think it is fair to say I think he is innocent of all the charges that put him in prison.
Sandusky did not get a fair trial, an impartial judge, an ethical prosecutor, or a reasonable defense attorney — and, in the end, 12 jurors got it wrong.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the prosecution of Sandusky is how judges, prosecutors, and Sandusky’s lawyer worked together.
It had taken three years from the time “Victim 1,” Aaron Fisher, first made allegations to the time of Sandusky’s arrest. Fisher kept getting mixed up about what he remembered, and two grand juries hadn’t believed him.
Aaron Fisher, Victim 1
It took time to find other victims, who, like Fisher, had “forgotten” that Sandusky had abused them when they were boys.
Ex-Judge Barry F. Feudale
Leaking Grand Jury Secrets
In subsequent posts, I will present evidence that prosecutor Frank Fina collaborated with Judge Barry F. Feudale, who presided over the grand jury, and illegally leaked the minutes to newbie reporter Sara Ganim.
Ganim’s Gumption
Ganim’s stories helped ensure potential jurors believed Sandusky was guilty before the trial even started and supported the prosecution in finding new victims — for they only had one at the time.
He was Aaron Fisher, whose ever-changing stories in his first two grand jury appearances led to the grand jury declining to indict Sandusky.
There was only one “eyewitness,” Mike McQueary, who changed his story about what he saw to what he heard and when he heard it.
His ever-changing stories led prosecutors to illegally alter his grand jury testimony to leak a better story to Ganim.
When McQueary complained that he never said what the prosecutors changed his testimony to, Senior Deputy Attorney General Jonelle Eshbach wrote to him in an email, “I know that a lot of this stuff is incorrect and that it is hard not to respond. But you can’t.”
The prosecution illegally changed the grand jury minutes and then illegally leaked those grand jury minutes to the media.
Ganim’s stories, based on altered grand jury testimony, spread the falsehood that Sandusky raped a boy in the showers — something that the boy, as a man, said never happened — and that Paterno and others covered it up to save the Penn State football program.
Her flawed stories caught the attention of national media — and the ensuing media frenzy threatened to destroy Penn State.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) threatened to cancel Penn State’s football season, primarily because its top officials supposedly covered up Sandusky’s alleged abuse of a boy in a shower, an event that never happened.
Even Penn State’s firing of the winningest college football coach in the US, Joe Paterno, along with Penn State’s president, vice president, and athletic director, would not satisfy the media or the NCAA.
Firing Paterno only heightened the media frenzy.
President Graham Spanier and head coach Joe Paterno, Oct. 8, 2011
According to some reports, the NCAA threatened to cancel football at Penn State for five seasons, which would cause an estimated $500 million in losses to Centre County, where Penn State is located.
The Trial Judge Did Not Ensure a ‘Fair Trial’
Judge John Cleland
Judge John Cleland expedited the trial to bring Sandusky from indictment in November 2011 to conviction in June 2012 — a mere seven months — and just in time to avert the NCAA’s threatened cancellation of Penn State’s 2012 football season.
Before this was accomplished, something serious stood in the way: Sandusky’s preliminary hearing.
Judge Cleland scheduled it for December 12, 2011. The hearing could have delayed the trial by months or potentially a year — a near-guarantee of no football for 2012.
After the publicity from the leaked grand jury minutes, which included testimony from one alleged victim and one questionable witness, the prosecution gained additional victims: four men who claimed Sandusky had abused them as boys and four men who alleged he had groomed them to be abused.
Seven of the eight changed their stories over time, primarily based on what they claimed were therapist-assisted, recovered repressed memories. Their reports shifted from “Sandusky never abused” them to new memories of abuse that seemed tailored to maximize their anticipated civil litigation claims from Penn State.
At a preliminary hearing, Sandusky’s lawyer could have requested a Frye Hearing to force the court to rule whether recovered repressed memories (RRM) was “junk science” or competent, reliable, and admissible evidence. The results of that hearing could have excluded many or all of the alleged victims.
However, a Frye Hearing could delay the trial by months, with expert testimony and witnesses scheduled in advance.
There was another challenge for the prosecution: At a preliminary hearing, the defense could question the eight victims about mental health issues, the number and type of police interviews they had, what their lawyers enticed them to believe was ahead in civil awards, how much potentially memory-contaminating psychotherapy they received (as evidenced by how much their stories changed after they retained civil lawyers who arranged for memory therapists to treat them).
A preliminary hearing would allow a competent attorney to cross-examine the men, lock in their testimony so that it could not change at the trial, and investigate any contradictions in their stories.
With solid questioning and reasonable investigation, the victims who survived a Frye Hearing might not surpass the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard required to convict in a criminal trial.
Canceling the Preliminary Hearing
Jerry Sandusky was legally entitled to a preliminary hearing, and Judge Cleland set it for December 12, 2011.
However, the night before, Judge Cleland presided over a meeting with three prosecutors, a magistrate judge, and Sandusky’s attorney, Joe Amendola.
Amendola should have told Sandusky or his co-counsel, Karl Rominger, about the meeting. But it was a secret, unrecorded, unofficial, off-the-record meeting. Judge Cleland held the meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn in State College, not at court.
During that meeting, Cleland got Amendola to call Sandusky on the phone and persuade him to waive the preliminary hearing.
Hilton Garden Inn
Canceled
With the preliminary hearing canceled, Amendola wouldn’t question the witnesses before the trial.
This helped the prosecution and the victim-witnesses.
For instance, Sabastian Paden (victim #9) would testify at the trial that when he was a teen, Sandusky locked him in his soundproof basement nearly every weekend for three years and anally raped him as he screamed for help.
Then the lad would go home, go to school, say nothing to anyone about the rapes, and then show up the following weekend for more locked-in-the-soundproof-basement rapes as he screamed for help.
Had Amendola learned about Paden’s story at the preliminary hearing instead of hearing it at (or just before) the trial, he could have had evidence to refute Paden’s testimony. It would have been easy to prove that there were never locks on the doors to lock someone in the Sandusky basement.
Paden later got $20 million from Penn State for the story he told the jury. Since Amendola waived the preliminary hearing, he was unprepared to challenge Paden’s story in his cross-examination.
Indeed, Amendola did the opposite. He began his cross of Paden with the question “And when did the first sexual contact take place?”
Sabastian Paden
The Sandusky home had no lock outside the door to imprison a teenager in the basement.
Sabastian Paden said Sandusky locked him in the basement, but the basement only had a lock on the inside, which would have allowed Paden to lock his abuser out.
Because the Sandusky house is set on sloping terrain, there is a door in the basement that leads outside. Paden could have escaped anytime from the back door, or even the window.
Another example of how Amendola’s cancellation of the preliminary hearing prejudiced Sandusky’s chance at a fair trial was Fisher’s testimony:
Fisher testified Sandusky’s abuse caused him to become a bedwetter. Had he heard this from testimony at the preliminary hearing, Amendola could have called witnesses who would have testified that Fisher was a bedwetter years before he met Sandusky. These same witnesses, who have since gone on the record with this information, would have also testified that Fisher and his mother made no secret that they hatched a money-driven plot to frame Sandusky and recruited some victims.
Other Deficiencies
Because he waived the preliminary hearing, Amendola did not know enough to demand and acquire a complete list of all interviews conducted in the investigation of two grand juries that produced zero criminal charges.
Attorney Joe Amendola
Amendola failed to demand and acquire psychotherapy records for the witnesses who changed “memory reports” following psychotherapy with therapists.
He did not explore the financial arrangements of therapists with civil lawyers to generate unvetted, uncorroborated “new memories” of abuse that later rewarded these men millions of dollars in settlements.
He failed to call an expert witness to explain to the jury the history of thousands of examples of therapist-induced false memories from the “Memory Wars” malpractice litigation, as well as the hundreds of therapist-induced false memories of abuse debunked by Special Agent Ken Lanning’s FBI Task Force.
He failed to demand and acquire a complete list of all the unrecorded police interviews, where police lied to the victims and guided them, with their civil attorneys present, in crafting their stories. He failed to call a competent investigation methodology expert to expose the repetitive, memory-contaminative interview methods of the police.
And because he canceled the preliminary hearing, Amendola did not even know the names and birthdates of all of the alleged victims, along with the exact dates on which they were supposed to have been abused by Sandusky.
Jury Selection
As the trial date of June 5 drew near, Judge Feudale, who had helped leak the grand jury minutes to the reporter Ganim a year before the trial, ruled that the Sandusky defense team could not have access to the grand jury material until ten days before the first witness was scheduled to testify.
Fina ensured the defense got boxes of documents and recordings containing evidence of Sandusky’s innocence on the eve of trial — without enough time to review them.
In Centre County, where Sandusky’s trial was held, much of the population has a direct Penn State connection — and many potential jurors knew or worked with people involved in the case.
One juror said he had discussed the case with coworkers. He had heard about “more accusations coming forward. It’s more than one or two. It seems like… a case where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
Amendola said, “I find him acceptable, Judge.”
Several potential jurors admitted they knew Sandusky was guilty based on what they had read in the media.
One juror was friendly with a witness who was to testify against Sandusky. Amendola moved to strike her as a juror. Judge Cleland refused, observing: “We’re in rural Pennsylvania. There are these kinds of social interactions and contacts that just can’t be avoided, and in some ways I think there is a positive aspect of that, too, because people know each other in more than merely superficial ways.”
Another man who worked at Penn State said, “This whole” Sandusky “thing” created problems for him. “And it’s difficult to deal with sometimes.” He had begun to “form some opinions” about the case. “This isn’t like an isolated incident.” He said his wife was “totally convinced of Mr. Sandusky’s guilt,” and that if he found him not guilty, “I would have to do a lot of explaining.”
Amendola moved to strike this juror. Judge Cleland said, “I’m not going to grant that one. I think he was extremely candid and obviously wrestling with this.”
One juror was a student at Penn State. He said he had already decided Sandusky was guilty. “Being a student, I just hear everything… the whole outrage of everything.” When Amendola asked him whether he could face his friends if he voted not guilty, the young man said, “I wouldn’t tell them if that’s how I felt, because that’s not how I feel.”
After selecting the jury, Judge Cleland assured them he was “absolutely confident” that they would be the “conscience of this community.”
During Amendola’s opening statement, he revealed where the trial was going when he said, “This is a daunting task. I’ll be honest with you, I’m not sure how to approach it. The Commonwealth has overwhelming evidence against Mr. Sandusky.”
The jury found Sandusky guilty, and the judge sentenced him to 30-60 years.
After the Trial
Prosecutor Frank Fina lost his job with the Attorney General’s office when he lost his law license for a year and a day for “reprehensible” and “inexcusable” misconduct during the grand jury investigation of the alleged Penn State coverup in the Sandusky matter.
After he got his law license back, he got a job at the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, where he was outed as part of a group of state prosecutors and judges who had exchanged pornographic emails on government computers on government time. Fina shared his collection of pornographic images, fat jokes, gay jokes, race-based jokes, and domestic-violence jokes with accompanying porn.
The media that once supported him when he leaked grand jury material turned against Fina and “Porngate.”
Fina resigned from his job with the Philadelphia DA on June 7, 2016, four years after he started the Sandusky trial. The collateral damage of ‘Porngate’ extended to two State Supreme Court Justices — Seamus McCaffery and Michael Eakin. Both were forced to resign.
These two judges were not the only ones who lost their positions.
When Judge Feudale got caught leaking grand jury minutes and other sealed documents, the state removed him from the bench for unethical misconduct and having his judicial objectivity “clouded” by his relationship with prosecutor Fina.
Attorney General Kathleen Kane said about the leaks, “Make no mistake, Judge Feudale’s overriding concern was how to leak sealed documents without getting caught.”
He did get caught.
Hilton Revisited
Judge Cleland
Judge Cleland’s Hilton Garden meeting remained a secret for four years; then it came out. Cleland was removed from hearing anything related to Sandusky’s appeals for a new trial.
Sandusky is still in prison and still trying to get someone to listen to how he was railroaded into prison by a strange assortment of unethical and self-interested people.
I have yet to begin to reveal the vast body of evidence I have accumulated that points in one direction — Sandusky’s innocence. The time has come to revisit this case, rife with corruption, to set an innocent man free before it is too late.
The Victims
Aaron Fisher, victim #1, provided this photograph as an answer to those who think he lied about his abuse.
Here is what the “victims” received from Penn:
Aaron Fisher, $7.5 million
Jason Simcisko, $7.25 million
Brett Swisher-Houtz, $7.25 million. (Frank Report needs an adult photo of Houtz – and if anyone has one, please send it frankreport76@gmail.com.)
Michal Kajak, $8.1 million
Zachary Konstas, $1.5 million
Dustin Struble, $3.25 million
Sabastian Paden, $20 million
Ryan Rittmeyer, $5.5 million
And just to conclude on the “fair trial” that Allan Myers, (AKA “Shower Boy”) $6.9 million (did not testify)
Acknowledgments
Several people have been instrumental in uncovering the truth about the Sandusky case.
Former chair of English at UC Berkeley and author Dr. Frederick Crews has written numerous articles on the Sandusky case.
Filmmaker/podcaster John Ziegler, who created the important website framingpaterno.com,
Investigative reporter Ralph Cipriano who has written comprehensive stories for bigtrial.net
.Author Mark Pendergrast wrote the book, The Most Hated Man in America: Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment.
John and Patti Galluppi, friends of the Sandusky’s, who created the document-rich website Justice for Jerry,
NCIS, Special Agent John Snedden investigated and reported on the case.
In the story above, I made extensive use of work prepared by R. Christopher Barden, a lawyer and psychologist, who has researched repressed memories and their use in the Sandusky trial.
