Court of Common Pleas judge Thomas Kistler is defending his opinion that the statue of limitations have not expired for an alleged Jerry Sandusky victim.
Anthony Spinelli first spoke out in June, filing a private criminal complaint in hopes that new charges would be filed against Sandusky.
Spinelli attended a football camp sponsored by the university and run by Sandusky in 1988 where he claimed he was abused by the coach.
In late October, Kistler ruled on an appeal of the attorney general’s decision not to press charges, in which the office ruled that the statute of limitations had expired. He said that various exceptions to the statue of limitations can be used to allow for charges to be filed if the Office of Attorney General deems there are legal grounds to do so.
Kistler issued a legal filing earlier this week backing up that ruling in the wake of the OAG’s appeal of his decision. That appeal will be heard by the Superior Court, but will now take into consideration Kistler’s reiteration of the legal basis for his ruling.
The first matter that the OAG took issue with in its appeal was Kistler’s statute of limitations “stacking.” In this instance, the attorney general’s office pointed to a new ruling in which Sandusky was awarded his pension because the crimes he was convicted for took place after he was a university employee, not during. The official date that Sandusky ceased being a university employee used in that ruling would throw a wrench into his stacking.
“This court’s current and former application of the statute of limitations and its exception is premised on the holdings of both the State Employees’ Retirement Board and the Commonwealth Court with respect to Mr. Sandusky’s employment status for purposes of the Public Employee Pension Forfeiture Act,” Kistler responded. “Without guidance or authority from either party to this case, this court found no reason to otherwise define or apply the term “public employee” for the purposes of applying the statute of limitations.”
The second issue raised by the attorney general’s office involved Kistler’s order that it transmit Spinelli’s criminal complaint to “the issuing authority” if the office determines that the allegations establish a “prima facie case.” In layman’s terms, this is a certain standard of evidence needed to file charges and launch a criminal investigation. The OAG took this to be an order on the judge’s part to do just that, but Kistler responded that he was simply asking them to follow the normal procedure they would for an alleged crime that falls within the statue of limitations.
“After reviewing the letter to Mr. Spinelli, this court believed the evaluation of the complaint has not even reached the point where the OAG determined a prima facie case did or did not exist,” Kistler wrote. “This court’s intent was to remand the case for such a consideration, and it in no way intended to steer the evaluation in a specific direction.”
The decision to either uphold or overturn Kistler’s ruling on a very complicated statue of limitations stacking issue now falls on the Superior Court, which will be tasked with hearing the OAG’s appeal.
