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Jerry
Sandusky is taken into custody after a jury found him guilty of
child molestation. Photo by yahoo sports
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Yahoo Sports...
Sandusky found
guilty in child sex case
BELLEFONTE, Pa. – Juror No. 4, the foreman, gray-haired and
middle-aged, stood high in the back row of the jurors’ box, looked down
at some sheets of paper, then at Jerry Sandusky and began to deliver a
verdict a long, sad time coming.
Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
Of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. Of indecent assault. Of
endangering the welfare of children.
Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
Of terrorizing the poorest and most vulnerable of this area’s youth. Of
abusing his fame as a former Penn State defensive coordinator. Of
conducting a charade of charitable work to supposedly help children.
Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
Forty-five times it rang out. Juror No. 4 hammered each one home with
the independent force each one deserved.
There were just three charges Sandusky escaped on. After each of those
not-guilty counts, it seemed that the foreman raised his voice as he
returned to this parade of guilty verdicts.
He seemed to make sure each count was granted its own moment to linger,
to emphasize the torture and pain and shattered innocence it produced.
Oral sex. Anal sex. Fondling. One despicable act worse than the next.
This here was a night of redemption, a predator laid bare with nowhere
to hide, with no more lies to tell, with no one left to save him.
“Mr. Sandusky,” Judge John Cleland said when this dramatic, nearly
eight-minute condemnation was finally, fully read, “you have been found
guilty by a jury of your peers.”
Sandusky, clad in slacks and a brown sport coat, stood mostly
motionless throughout, looking up at Juror 4 as the truth was slammed
down onto him, as the light was finally and irrevocably cast on his
behavior. His left hand was placed casually in his pocket while behind
him his wife, Dottie, three adopted sons and an adopted daughter either
shook their heads at the jury or openly wept.
Moments later, Sandusky gave a quick wave to his family as he was led
out by sheriff’s deputies. Judge Cleland will formally sentence him in
about 90 days.
The 68-year-old faces up to 442 years behind bars, or what might as
well be forever and ever and ever some more. His defense attorney, Joe
Amendola, hinted at an appeal, but it likely would be fruitless.
On the other side of the courtroom, Victim No. 6, who as an 11 year-old
in 1998 was abused by Sandusky in a Penn State locker room shower, an
act that was investigated but never prosecuted, laid his head on the
top of the bench in front of him and sobbed uncontrollably. He was soon
hugging family members who had joined him.
“I’m just overwhelmed,” he said, now a grown man, strong and no longer
timid in the face of an old pathetic coach.
Soon reporters were racing out of the courthouse, set to break the news
of the guilty verdict to a huge throng that had gathered on the steps.
Dottie Sandusky was kneeling by then in front of her family, trying to
provide comfort when the word of the verdict hit the masses.
The roaring cheers and screams of joy swept right through the
courthouse door, up the stairs and into the second-floor courtroom.
They startled Dottie, whose head snapped up at the noise and then sunk
down as she realized the people of Centre County were celebrating her
husband’s demise.
Sandusky will be held at the local jail until he can be evaluated by
the state prison system and assigned accordingly. He is expected to
wind up in protective custody, away from the general population, for
his own protection. That likely means 23 hours a day in a 6-by-8-foot
cell. In other words, a concrete box of hell.
“He was prepared to go to jail tonight,” Amendola said. “Mentally
prepared. He’s not scared. I think given the circumstances of the case
and how the trial was going, he knew this was coming.
“This is not a surprise. This is what everyone expected.”
Amendola said Sandusky’s one regret was not being able to “tell his
story” from the witness stand. His 33-year-old adoptive son, Matt,
determined during the trial that Jerry abused him as a child. He made
himself available as a prosecution witness. Matt couldn’t be called,
however, unless the state had introduced the incidents on a
cross-examination of Jerry Sandusky. It was too much for the defense to
risk.
“Even though Jerry, Dottie and the other kids deny Matt’s allegation,
it would’ve been explosive,” Amendola said. “There was no way Jerry
could testify without Matt being called.”
They walked Sandusky out the back door of the courthouse and to a
waiting sheriff’s vehicle, just 50 yards downhill from where they used
to hang criminals in the courtyard of the old county jail.
Back then they’d invite as many people as they could fit to ring the
gallows and bear witness. Those that couldn’t gain admission would
climb the roofs of local houses to watch the execution from high above
in this old tightly packed, Victorian downtown.
That was the 1800s, but things haven’t changed so much; just five miles
from here, at the Rockview prison, is the state’s execution chamber.
And in Bellefonte tradition, a crowd gathered to jeer and scream Friday
night behind the courthouse, to let their venom ring around Sandusky’s
head for eternity...
Read the rest of this article, and others, at Yahoo Sports
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