BELLEFONTE, Pa. (AP) — Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky appeared in court remotely Tuesday where he said he agreed with his lawyers not to go forward with testimony from an accuser who wants to recant allegations that Sandusky sexually abused him years ago.
The hearing was part of the latest bid by Sandusky’s lawyers to secure a new trial for him as his lawyers prepare to go to federal court to seek a new trial after failing
repeatedly in state courts.
In court, Sandusky, 82, appeared on a video screen in a spare room in Laurel Highlands state prison, seated at a small table in a maroon-colored shirt looking up at the camera through glasses. Under questioning, he told Centre County Judge Maureen Skerda he had consulted with his lawyers about the decision not to present the accuser's testimony recanting the allegations from Sandusky's 2012 trial.
“I'm making this decision on advice of counsel,” Sandusky said, his arms on the table in front of him, a notepad between them. “Is there anything wrong with that?”
Sandusky, 82, has been serving a decades-long prison sentence since he was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse in 2012, after eight young men testified about what happened to them as boys.
Sandusky's lawyer, Jerry Russo, told reporters later that courts frown on granting new trials based on a witness recantation, seeing it as “inherently unreliable.” Instead, Russo said he plans to take Sandusky's broader claims for a new trial to federal court — Sandusky's made at least three attempts in state courts — after one more procedural appeal in state court.
Judge Skerda told Russo and Sandusky that withdrawing the request to present the recantation from the accuser, identified in court documents as R.R., meant that it could not be litigated again in state or federal court.
The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General had said the supposed recantation was “highly suspect.” Sandusky's lawyers have said in court filings that R.R.’s allegations were “based on suggestive leading questioning, prosecutorial coercion and influence, confirmatory bias and memory manipulation."
Sandusky was the defensive coordinator at one of the country’s top football programs under Hall of Fame head coach Joe Paterno. The scandal led to Paterno’s firing, and the university paid more than $100 million to people who said they were abused by Sandusky.
Authorities said he found and groomed boys at The Second Mile, a charity he founded for at-risk youth. Sandusky has repeatedly declared his innocence.
R.R., who was 25 years old at trial, testified that when he was 11, Sandusky sexually abused him in the coach’s basement in 1998, a transcript shows.
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Follow Marc Levy at http://twitter.com/timelywriter.
