The following is the first of a many part series I call ‘Vignettes from the Sandusky Trial.’
Bob Costas was a premier sportscaster with NBC-TV from 1980 to 2019.
He broadcast for Super Bowls, World Series, and Olympic Games.
He won 29 Emmy Awards, including one under the ‘News and Documentary’ category for his Nov. 14, 2011 interview with Jerry Sandusky on NBC’s newsmagazine program “Rock Center.”
It was just a week after the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania charged Sandusky with the sexual molestation of ten men, who were boys at the time of their alleged abuse.
The interview was unplanned.
Costas was expecting only to interview Joseph Amendola, the lawyer for Sandusky, who was with Costas at the studio.
“About 10 or 15 minutes prior to the start of the interview,” Costas later explained, “Amendola says to us, on his own: ‘What if I could get Sandusky on the phone?’”
As Amendola sat on stage next to Costas, adding a bizarre nature to the interview, Costas conducted a phone interview with Sandusky.
One of Costas’s questions was whether Sandusky was sexually attracted to underage boys.
BOB COSTAS: Are you sexually attracted to young boys, to underage boys?
JERRY SANDUSKY: Am I sexually attracted to underage boys?
BOB COSTAS: Yes.
JERRY SANDUSKY: Sexually attracted, you know, I — I enjoy young people. I — I love to be around them. I — I — but no I’m not sexually attracted to young boys.
Costas’s interview, and particularly Sandusky’s answer to the question above, received considerable attention after it was broadcast.
Because the media strongly reinforced the presumption of guilt, Sandusky’s answer was not interpreted literally – which was that he was not sexually attracted to boys, but rather the opposite: as an admission of guilt.
At the 2012 trial, the Costas interview was admitted into evidence by the prosecution and played to the jury.
The following day, Judge John Cleland told the jury, “Yesterday you heard audio of a TV interview. There were some errors in that audio.”
Cleland said he would not tell the jury what the errors were, and would not replay the correct version of the audio to them.
Instead, he told the jury, “There will be a transcript of the correct version of that audio that you heard,” and that jurors needed to base their deliberations on the transcript of the Costas interview, rather than the audiotape.
The reason there were some “errors” in that audio was that the prosecution team of Frank Fina, Jonelle Eshbach and Joe McGettigan altered the audio to have Costas asking Sandusky to answer twice (instead of once) whether he was sexually attracted to young boys.
The prosecution cheated so many times that I am to call them collectively “Legion.” However, instead of hammering the prosecution for their deception, Judge Cleland protected them. He did not want the jury distracted from the guilty verdict he was doing everything in his power to secure.
Step by step, I will introduce overwhelming evidence that Sandusky did not get a fair trial, that the prosecutors were dishonest, the media not only got it wrong, but their bias helped ensure the unfair trial, and that all eight accusers at trial told false stories, knowing that they would be rich men.
They all became millionaires.
And I will present overwhelming evidence that Sandusky is innocent.
