Whether prosecutors knew the identity of Victim 2 and if the state had been responsible for leaking grand jury information were the topics of testimony Monday in Centre County Court at the second of three days of appeal hearings for Jerry Sandusky.
The former Penn State football assistant coach and founder of The Second Mile charity for at risk youth is seeking to have his 2012 conviction on child sex abuse charges overturned and gain a new trial. Sandusky is arguing he received ineffective counsel before and during his trial.
Among the issues Sandusky’s appeal attorney Al Lindsay is trying prove is that both prosecutors and his own trial attorneys knew the identity of the boy former Penn State assistant Mike McQueary said he saw Sandusky abusing in a locker room shower in 2001. That person, identified as Victim 2, did not testify at the trial.
In closing arguments at the trial, lead prosecutor Joe McGettigan stated that some of Sandusky’s victims were ‘known only to God.’ Victim 8 also was not identified. But Sandusky claims that his attorney, Joe Amendola, failed in not objecting to the statement because a man had come forward and identified himself as Victim 2. Amendola testified earlier this month that the man had spoken to his investigator and said he was never abused by Sandusky.
Amendola was surprised, then, when he learned that the man hired attorney Andrew Shubin and was claiming Sandusky did abuse him
Shubin testified on Monday that he had sent multiple letters and an email to McGettigan and Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina prior to the trial stating that the man who said he was Victim 2 was willing to speak with them. He claimed McGettigan showed little interest.
‘He didn’t do anything to show me this is something he wanted to pursue,’ Shubin testified, saying that there was no follow up from the attorney general’s office.
The man was interviewed by investigators — twice by postal inspector M.J. Corricelli in February 2012 and again by Corricelli and Office of the Attorney General investigator Anthony Sassano that March.
Sassano testified and said that the man’s accounts of what happened changed and contained contradictions, and that he wouldn’t disclose specifics of the abuse to investigators.
He said that the man’s account had made a ‘180-degree turn’ from when he was first interviewed by Pennsylvania State Police in September 2011, two months prior to Sandusky’s arrest. He had come to the attention of investigators by that time as someone Sandusky had devoted considerable attention to while he was involved in The Second Mile. He said then that nothing inappropriate had happened.
Retired Pennsylvania State Police Corporal Joseph Leiter testified about that interview earlier in the day and said the man claimed at the time that no abuse had occurred and that he remained close with Sandusky into adulthood. He did not mention having been seen by McQueary in a shower with Sandusky. He also said Sandusky called him, told him he may be asked about allegations, and to answer truthfully.
Sassano said some victims of child sex abuse, including some at Sandusky’s trial, are first in denial before opening up about what happened. But the eight other victims at trial first testified to a grand jury without knowing what each other was saying, Sassano said, whereas the man claiming to be Victim 2 did not come forward as a victim until after details of other victims’ accusations were made known.
The man told Sassano and Corricelli that Sandusky had abused him about 10 times in the Penn State locker room and Sassano had him draw a diagram of the locker room.
‘He drew the completely wrong locker room, which led me to believe he was never in that locker room,’ Sassano said. He added that Shubin had labeled his client as being one of Sandusky’s worst victims, alleging he was abused more than a hundred times and citing specific acts of abuse. The man told the investigators that he had not told anyone, including his attorneys, anything specific about the abuse.
He also told Amendola’s investigator he was certain the shower incident had occurred on March 1, 2002. Investigators later discovered that the incident actually occurred in February 2001.
Though Shubin testified that he had offered prosecutors the opportunity to speak with the man and they declined, Sassano said state investigators asked to interview him multiple times. At the preliminary hearing for two Penn State administrators who had been charged with perjury and failure to report child abuse, Sassano said he approached Shubin’s partner at the time, Justine Andronici, and told her that the state wanted to speak with the man. Her response, Sassano said, was ‘Crickets. Silence.’
Sassano also said he was told by prosecutors that Shubin had hidden the man away at a hunting camp so that he could not be interviewed outside of Shubin’s presence, a charge Shubin declined to answer citing attorney-client privilege. Shubin said he was insistent that he be present for all his clients interviews with prosecutors because abuse victims have difficulty establishing trust.
Sassano, however, said it was standard practice that the victims not have civil attorneys present when being interviewed by the state and Shubin ultimately relented. Sassano said investigators and prosecutors believed that the man was not credible.
‘We all came to the same conclusion,’ he said.
Lindsay disagreed on the credibility issue.
‘We think there is substantial evidence it was this individual,’ Lindsay said outside the courthouse after the hearing. He argued that Victim 2 drove the rest of the charges, and that without his case prosecutors would only have had one claim, from Victim 1.
‘It’s the fulcrum on which this whole thing turns,’ Lindsay said.
Amendola testified earlier that because of his changing stories, the man claiming to be Victim 2 could not be used as a witness. Sandusky has claimed that Amendola and prosecutors made a deal not to acknowledge at trial that the man had come forward. Lindsay said he was unsure if they would be able to call the man to testify in the appeal hearings because they have not been able to find him.
Victims 1 and 2 are at the heart of Sandusky’s claim that the state leaked secret grand jury information.
Psychologist Michael Gillum testified Monday morning about passages in a book he co-authored with Victim 1, who has publicly identified himself as Aaron Fisher, and Fisher’s mother, Dawn Daniels.
Gillum treated Fisher, and in the book they wrote that state prosecutor Jonelle Eshbach informed them a Penn State employee — who turned out to be McQueary — would testify he had seen Sandusky abusing the boy later known as Victim 2.
Then, in February of 2011, Gillum wrote, Harrisburg Patriot-News reporter Sara Ganim knocked on the door of Daniels’ home asking about her son Aaron, with Ganim stating that she knew about Fisher’s allegation and that it had kickstarted an investigation into Sandusky. That Ganim knew both Fisher’s name and Daniels’ home address was evidence of ‘a major leak from the top,’ Gillum wrote, and that she must have acquired the police report.
On Monday, Gillum testified that he later learned she could have received the information from Central Mountain High School, where Gillum said Fisher’s accusations were known well enough that he had to transfer to a private school because of threats. Or he, said, she could have gotten the information from Children and Youth Services at the local or state level.
Gillum also wrote that ‘There was a definite leak somewhere,’ when he learned Ganim had attempted to interview Penn State President Graham Spanier about his grand jury testimony in the case. On Monday, Gillum said he did not know where she would have gotten that information.
In questioning Leiter, the retired state trooper, Lindsay pointed to a report that said Debra McCord, the mother of a suspected potential Sandusky victim, and that Ganim provided her the name and phone number of an agent for the attorney general’s office who would be interested in hearing from her.
Lindsay said after the hearing that his position is that the issue of a grand jury leak is a matter that stands apart from the ineffective counsel arguments. He said the state Supreme Court has ruled that if there is a justifiable claim of a grand jury leak, a special prosecutor must be appointed.
The hearings continue on Tuesday morning. Lindsay said he is hoping to call McGettigan, Fina and Esbach — the team of prosecutors at the 2012 trial.
