Jerry Sandusky will return to Centre County Court on Monday to request an evidentiary hearing as he seeks a new trial. On Wednesday, his attorneys submitted a list of witness certifications for Monday’s arguments.
The Second Mile Founder and former Penn State football assistant coach was convicted on 45 counts of child sexual abuse in June 2012. He is seeking a new trial under the Post-Conviction Relief Act.
Among the witness certifications submitted by attorneys Al Lindsey and Andrew Salemme are Sandusky’s former attorneys, Joseph Amendola and Karl Rominger, who represented Sandusky at trial. The filing states that Amendola is expected to testify he did not adequately prepare Sandusky for a nationally televised interview with Bob Costas following Sandusky’s arrest, nor did he tell Sandusky the interview could be used against him at trial.
It also states the Amendola is expected to testify that his team did not interview key potential witnesses or present evidence that could have been beneficial to Sandusky’s case. That includes an alleged recording of a Penn State janitor saying he did not witness a boy being molested in a shower by Sandusky. That boy was identified in the charges as Victim 8 and by the time of the trial, the janitor, James Calhoun suffered from dementia and could not testify. His co-workers testified what they said Calhoun stated had happened.
Rominger, who has since been disbarred, is expected to testify that Amendola was overwhelmed by discovery and generally unable to provide an adequate defense.
Also on the witness list is the man who attorneys say was the individual identified as Victim 2, who former Penn State football assistant Mike McQueary testified he saw being assaulted by Sandusky in a locker room shower. The filing states that he is expected to testify that no misconduct occurred.
Former Harrisburg Patriot-News reporter Sara Ganim, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the case, is on the list, as are members of the attorney general’s office prosecution and investigative teams, experts who are critical of repressed memory therapy, former Penn State assistant coach Dick Anderson, attorney for several victims Andrew Shubin, and others.
Judge John Cleland, who has been specially presiding in the Sandusky case since 2012, sealed a witness certification of former Senior Judge Barry Feudale, who supervised the grand jury that led to Sandusky’s arrest.
Sandusky’s attorneys state in the filing “the overwhelming majority of these witnesses are hostile witnesses,” and “the exact testimony they will offer is difficult to predict.”
Sandusky is scheduled to appear in court at 11 a.m. Monday. The public will not be admitted before 10 a.m. and cell phones, computers and recording devices are prohibited.
In the petitions for a new trial, Sandusky’s attorneys present hundreds of pages of documents, allegations and arguments for him to be granted relief. Sandusky has maintained his innocence. His second amended petition calls the case ‘a story of how the media, overzealous law enforcement, a biased grand jury, and abused grand jury process, prosecutorial malfeasance, a discredited and pseudoscientific type of therapy, greed, and serial instances of ineffective counsel resulted in transforming an innocent man into one of this country’s most infamous ‘child predators.”
