BELLEFONTE, Pa. (MCT) — After seven days of sometimes shocking testimony and more than two hours of closing arguments, the jury in Jerry Sandusky’s child sex-abuse trial deliberated his fate for 8 1/2 hours Thursday before retiring for the night without a verdict.
Presumably the jurors did not know that in the midst of the trial, Sandusky’s adopted son, Matt, told prosecutors that the retired Penn State assistant football coach molested him. It’s unclear why the 33-year-old wasn’t called to the witness stand. A gag order prevents attorneys in the case from speaking to reporters.
Defense attorney Joe Amendola earlier told the jury in his summation that Sandusky isn’t a pedophile but a man who dedicated his life to helping underprivileged children. That life came crashing down last November, he said.
“Everything they fought for, everything they ever believed in was challenged by a group of young men who alleged Sandusky sexually abused them over a number of years,” Amendola said.
He told the jury that he believes his client is innocent.
“If he did this, he should rot in jail,” Amendola said. “But what if he didn’t do these things? His life is destroyed.”
In his closing arguments, prosecutor Joseph E. McGettigan III called Sandusky the perfect serial pedophile and asked the jury to convict him of every count.
McGettigan said that going into the trial, he felt he held fragments of the 10 victims’ souls and childhoods in his pocket.
“Give them back these pieces of their souls that he took,” McGettigan said, standing behind Sandusky as the 68-year-old craned his neck to look at the prosecutor. “Give him the justice he really deserves. Find him guilty of everything.”
Earlier in the day, Judge John M. Cleland dropped three of 51 counts against Sandusky, saying evidence presented did not support two of them, and the third was repetitive of another count. The jury is deliberating on 48 counts.
Testimony did not show Sandusky had anal intercourse with a boy in the shower, Cleland concluded. Nor, he said, did evidence show Sandusky forced Victim 4 to perform oral sex.
The jury of seven men and seven women left the Centre County courtroom to begin deliberating shortly after 1 p.m. EDT. They are being sequestered in a local hotel, cut off from contact with their families or the outside world, until they reach a verdict.
At 7:45 p.m., the jury asked to review the testimony of Mike McQueary and Dr. Jonathan Dranov.
Cleland said the McQueary testimony is about 2 1/2 hours long and Dranov’s testimony is considerably shorter. The court could play a recording of the testimony rather than read the transcript.
But Cleland noted, “It would be a long night if we attempted to do the McQueary testimony tonight.”
The jurors broke for the day at 9:37 p.m. and will resume work Friday morning.
Jurors have to weigh wrenching testimony from eight of Sandusky’s 10 alleged victims, who say they were abused between 1994 and 2009.
Prosecutors also presented the testimony of McQueary, who is a former Penn State assistant coach, and a Penn State janitor to establish that Sandusky assaulted two boys investigators were not able to identify.
The defense presented testimony from a parade of character witnesses, other children who met Sandusky through his charity for at-risk kids, fellow coaches and his wife of 45 years, Dottie.
In a 72-minute closing argument, Amendola laid out reasons for the jury to doubt the alleged victims’ stories and highlighted holes he had found in the mountain of evidence that confronted his client at the start of the trial June 11.
The accusers who told a jury last week that Sandusky performed oral sex on them, bear-hugged them in a locker room shower and fondled them aren’t credible, Amendola argued. The men are seeking financial gain that would come with taking down the Nittany Lions’ former defensive coordinator, he said.
Amendola recalled testimony from an accuser’s former neighbor, who testified the boy’s mother spoke of living in a palatial country home after she was finished suing Sandusky.
“Is that the reaction of a mother whose child has been abused? Would that be your reaction as a parent?” the lawyer asked.
Amendola highlighted the silence of the accusers, who never said they were abused by Sandusky until police confronted them or until the state attorney general’s investigation was brought to light. The police, he said, pressed some of the alleged victims until they admitted that Sandusky abused them.
“In most of the cases, where there were egregious acts — oral sex, anal sex — there was nothing at first,” Amendola said. “The investigators kept going back and saying there’s more to this.”
If Sandusky were guilty, his wife and others in the community would have noticed and authorities would have arrested him long ago, the lawyer said.
“Jerry Sandusky took these kids everywhere. Is that what a pedophile does? Does he parade the kids around?” Amendola asked the jurors.
He also asked them to consider the plausibility of the accusers’ stories. Victim 9 testified Sandusky anally raped him but that other than bleeding, he didn’t suffer any serious injuries.
“If Mr. Sandusky had anal sex with that child … is it conceivable there would be medical problems?”
Amendola pointed to the story of Victim 4, who said he played racquetball or basketball with Sandusky twice a week. He noted that former Penn State assistant coach Dick Anderson, who was also a Lafayette College assistant coach, testified coaches at Penn State worked 17- to 18-hour days.
“How in the world did Jerry Sandusky find time to go play racquetball or basketball two times a week with (Victim 4) and then go fool around in the shower? I submit to you it doesn’t make sense.”
Sandusky requested that the jurors hear the words of Mother Teresa before they leave the courtroom to decide whether he’s guilty, Amendola said, and the attorney read a poem she wrote.
“If you are honest and sincere, people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway,” Amendola read for the jury.
In his 65-minute summation, McGettigan dismissed the defense as a massive conspiracy theory that pulled in everyone — his eight accusers, state troopers, himself and members of the grand jury that last year recommended dozens of child sex-abuse charges against Sandusky.
“The great thing about conspiracy theories that bear no weight … is that they go on and on until they collapse,” McGettigan said.
He urged the jurors, most of whom have ties to Penn State, to look past Amendola’s assertions about the accusers’ motives and consider that they each would have little to gain.
McGettigan also displayed childhood photos of the eight men who testified against Sandusky.
“I told you in my opening you would see young men, but I asked you not to forget when they were boys,” he said, motioning to the photos on the courtroom screen.
He acknowledged that the two victims never identified by investigators are faceless to the jury.
“Two others, known to God but not us. We know about them because adults saw them being abused and came to us,” McGettigan said.
Then he put a blurry video still of Sandusky on the screen.
“That is the man who did it to them,” he said.
