Former Penn State administrators who were charged for their alleged handling of reports of child sexual abuse by Jerry Sandusky are getting closer to a trial.
Dauphin County President Judge Richard Lewis on Tuesday issued an order setting pre-trial motion deadlines for former Penn State President Graham Spanier, Vice President Gary Schultz and Athletic Director Tim Curley.
The three defendants were ordered to submit pre-trial motions and supporting briefs by July 1, and prosecutors must file their answers by July 31.
Each faces misdemeanor charges of failure to report suspected child abuse and child endangerment. In January, a panel of Pennsylvania Superior Court judges quashed felony charges of conspiracy and obstruction against all three and perjury charges against Spanier and Schultz.
PennLive.com reported on Thursday that prosecutors also will drop the perjury charge against Curley in order to end Curley’s appeal for review by the state Supreme Court and put the three men on track for trial.
‘It is my understanding this decision was made to move the case forward at the trial level toward a final disposition,’ a spokesperson for the Office of the Attorney General told StateCollege.com.
The defendants argued that they believed former university counsel Cynthia Baldwin had been representing them, and that her testimony would not be admissible in a trial. Baldwin said she was representing the university, not the individuals, in their preparation for and testimony at the grand jury that led to child sex abuse charges against Sandusky. The court ruled even if that were the case, the university would have to waive its attorney-client privilege for her testimony to be admissible. Schultz and Curley were initially charged at the same time as Sandusky, and Spanier was charged a year later.
After the Superior Court denied the state’s petition to reinstate the charges in March, the the Attorney General’s office announced it would not pursue further appeals. Solicitor General Bruce Castor issued an opinion that said another appeal was unlikely to be successful.
The charges against the three men ultimately stem from whether they were told and failed to report, and later disclose to investigators, that Sandusky had been seen abusing a boy in a locker room shower. What then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary saw and reported to the defendants and late Penn State coach Joe Paterno has been at the center of the dispute. The incident was described graphically in the initial grand jury presentment, but the administrators and Paterno denied they had been told a sex act occurred, each saying it had been described to them as inappropriate ‘horseplay.’
Sandusky was subsequently told not to bring boys into the locker rooms and the executive director of his Second Mile charity was told about the incident. Sandusky was arrested in November 2011 and convicted in June 2012 on 45 counts related to child sexual abuse. He is currently seeking a new trial under the Post-Conviction Relief Act
