Former Penn State administrators charged with trying to cover up the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal will try again to have their cases dismissed.
Former Athletic Director Tim Curley and former Senior Vice President for Finance Gary Schultz filed notices of appeal to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania on Thursday, Feb. 12. Former university president Graham Spanier will likely follow suit in the coming days, as the trio have acted in accord throughout the pre-trial process.
The motions come in response to Dauphin County Court Judge Todd Hoover’s denial of requests to throw out former university attorney Cynthia Baldwin’s grand jury testimony, which the defendants argue is a violation of attorney-client privilege. The three former administrators are facing charges of perjury, conspiracy, and child endangerment for their alleged roles in the Sandusky scandal.
The legal debate involves whether Baldwin was representing Spanier, Curley, and Schultz as individuals or as university officials.
Hoover’s denial of the dismissal requests came on Jan. 14, when he explained that “Ms. Baldwin made clear on the record at each proceeding that she appeared as general counsel to the University. Such identification neither concealed nor misrepresented her role.”
The notices of appeal filed by Schultz and Curley on Thursday come as no surprise. Attorneys representing the former administrators made their intent to appeal Hoover’s decision clear last month. The filing is not yet available, but it means that the superior court will be charged with reviewing Hoover’s decision, again bringing the issue of privilege into question.
In his denial of the requests, Hoover says in a memorandum opinion that Baldwin solely identified her role as counsel to the university and ruled that the former administrators were represented fairly when they testified before the grand jury.
He says that a university attorney informed the court that “the University has agreed to waive privilege… to comply with the Commonwealth’s grand jury investigation related to Gerald Sandusky.” Because Baldwin only represented the three administrators in their capacity as university officials, Hoover says, she therefore had free reign to testify without violating attorney-client privilege.
It is likely that the same argument will be made and reviewed at the superior court level regarding Baldwin’s testimony and the validity of the charges against Spanier, Schultz, and Curley if it’s thrown out. We will provide updates as specifics on the appeal filings become available. There is no trial date set in any of the three cases.
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