The Nittany Turkey

Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Judge: Sandusky Trial Starts June 5

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Having been pestered by a plethora of defense motions, Centre County Judge John Cleland was unyielding about changing Jerry Sandusky’s trial date. The show will go on, and it starts tomorrow, June 5, with jury selection. The actual trial will begin approximately June 11, depending on how long it takes to find a jury.

Sandusky is looking at 52 felony and misdemeanor counts for molesting and raping young boys.

Jury selection might be difficult because of Sandusky’s notoriety with respect to the charges, and his previous popularity in Pennsylvania, Centre County in particular.  This Turkey notes that in this year’s most hated Americans list, Casey Anthony was Number One and Sandusky was Number Three. So, obviously the anti-Sandusky bias extends far beyond the county line. You can expect lots of challenges from Joe Amendola, Sandusky’s attorney. Eventually, a jury will be seated. Hopefully, it won’t be like OJ’s.

There will be no television coverage, which will be weird for those of us here in Florida who are trial junkies. We all got into the Casey Anthony trial whole hog. The judge also imposed a ban on Twitter from the courtroom.

Senior Deputy Attorney General Joseph McGettigan will be the lead prosecutor for the Commonwealth. His team has lined up eight witnesses who are expected to testify in detail about their molestation by  Sandusky. They range from 18 to 28 years old now. Other witnesses will include Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, who both are under indictment for perjury with respect to their testimony before the Grand Jury that indicted Sandusky. The pending charges should probably silence them, using the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination.

Amendola is a skilled defense attorney, who can be expected to go for the throat with respect to each of the eight primary prosecution witnesses and, hence, their credibility.

These eight witnesses had petitioned the court to be referred to by pseudonyms (e.g., Victim Two) during the trial. Judge Cleland denied that request, so the victims’ names will be revealed to the media and public attending the trial. There was no objection by the defense, but the motions were filed by the victims’ personal attorneys, not the defense or the prosecution. The judge said that state law didn’t give him the authority to allow adults to protect their identities in open court.

Sandusky, if convicted, will most likely spend the rest of his life in prison.

Pennlive.com has put together a beautiful interactive breakdown of the charges against Sandusky and the likely defense Amendola will mount against them.

 

McQueary Throws the Monkey Wrench

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All of a sudden, the date on which then graduate assistant Mike McQueary witnessed Jerry Sandusky’s alleged criminal act has changed.

The Grand Jury Presentment, which is the basis for the original sexual assault charges against Sandusky and the perjury charges against Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, reflects McQueary’s testimony that the alleged attack occured on March 1, 2002. However, now that his whistleblower suit is at the fore, McQueary changed his mind. The court filing, presumably drafted with McQueary’s participation, shows the date of February 9, 2001.

That’s a bit of a problem for a few reasons.

For one thing, because the perjury charges against Curley and Schultz were based on McQueary’s sworn testimony that the incident occurred on March 1, 2002, the perjury case is at least jeopardized and might wind up being tossed out of court because the earlier date places at least some of the basis for the perjury beyond the statute of limitations. Perjury is not a capital crime.

Another problem is that fooling around with the date casts doubt on McQueary’s credibility. Why should anyone believe him at this point when he has changed his story several times? His meandering, whether it be mendacious or just sloppy testimony could provide an immense bonus to the Sandusky defense.

For example, his initial statement to the police in 2010 states, ” On the Friday before spring break in either the year 2001 or 2002, 2002 I think… bla bla bla…” Look for a bevy of attorneys to tear McQueary limb from limb. Naturally, Sandusky’s attorney, Joseph Amendola, is at the head of the pack.

“I don’t know if it’s a lie as opposed to faulty memory, and if it’s faulty memory, what else has he misremembered? [sic]” stated Amendola.

Pulitzer prize winner Sara Ganim of the Patriot-News has more on the subject.

Sudden Impact, Post BW Style

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We here at the Turkey sure hope y’all enjoyed the Blue-White extravaganza.

Hey, what’s with this “y’all” stuff? Ain’t no boats around here. No, Bubba, this Turkey is way south of the Masonic-Dixonial Line of Grammatical Demarcation. North of it, the word is “yinz”; south of it, we say “y’all.”

Problem is, there’s no separate plural form of “you” in the English language. We just use “you” for second person singular or plural. But if you’re from the South or from da Burgh, you can rectumfy that natural language deficit by creating your own plural, thus “y’all” and “yinz”. In Philly it’s more like “yuz.” But I sanctimoniously digress.

The Monday Morning reactions to the Blue-White Game seem to be concentrated in three major areas:

  1. McGloin is this Turkey’s presumptive starting QB unless Jones or Bolden suddenly develops. Jones looks like he might make it — eventually. Bolden does not. The latter exhibits the same flaws as he did two years ago.
  2. Bill Belton looks like a stud running back. His role will be backing up Silas Redd. Perhaps that’s not enough, given his solid performance.
  3. A hearty good riddance to the soft Sandusky zone, the vaunted BBDB, and the conservative, 1980s defensive schemes.

With the spring classic done, and Monday Morning sophomoric analyses complete, this edition of Sudden Impact takes another look at Paul Jones, assesses Penn State players’ chances in the forthcoming NFL draft, and elucidates the Paterno family’s ire over Penn State’s handling of post-firing details.

 

Jeremy Elliott of the Patriot-News reiterates the obvious: Penn State defensive players have had great success in the NFL, but of late (meaning from the end of the Kerry Collins era), we have seen scant few offensive players get drafted.

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Our old buddy Bob Flounders of the same publication has a more robust take on the NFL’s penchant for selecting Nittany Lions defensive players in the Draft. We all have high hopes for Devon Still this year. Separately, in Flounders’ blog, he lists Penn State’s NFL draft selections since 1992.

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Paul Jones has had a rough time since coming to Penn State. His high school grades and SATs were good enough to get him admitted to Stanford and Duke, but he came to Penn State and languished academically. Why? Rich Scarcella of the Reading Eagle shares the results of his digging into that matter.

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More fallout from the Sandusky scandal: Mark Sherburne, whom you might recall was the first appointee as interim athletic director when Tim Curley was placed on administrative leave, was fired for withholding documents relating to Curley, says Susan Snyder of the Inquirer.

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The Paterno family remains outraged about the University’s attempts to smooth things over, including dangling the notion of renaming Beaver Stadium as an appeasement. Sara Ganim, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, has dug into this story.

 

That’s it for another edition of Sudden Impact. Well, it’s a long, long time, from May to December, but the days grow fun when you reach September. We’ll try to fill in some of the football withdrawal gaps for you with our brainless humor and occasional factoids.