The hearing is about whether he was improperly convicted four years ago.
Advertisement
“That would be dirty and foreign to me”, Sandusky replied Friday when his lawyer asked about his guilt.
The 72-year-old is arguing he wasn’t properly represented by his legal team during his 2012 trial. They also said their biggest downfall leading up to the trial was time.
Sandusky told the court that he was “not in a very good emotional state” when he Amendola pressed him on short notice to give an interview to NBC’s Bob Costas.
Sandusky had no comment Friday as he was taken into the Centre County Courthouse near State College.
Among the points argued on appeal is that Sandusky was denied an opportunity to take the stand in his own defense at trial.
Sandusky is seeking a retrial under Pennsylvania’s Post-Conviction Relief Act that applies to cases in which new evidence surfaces, constitutional rights have been violated, or the defendant can claim gross negligence by his attorney.
The accusations against Sandusky raised questions about whether some Penn State officials, including the now-deceased Paterno, looked the other way for years and failed to alert authorities about Sandusky’s behavior.
Sandusky was convicted of 45 counts of child abuse in 2012, and was sentenced to 30 to 60 years at the Pennsylvania’s supermax prison.
Sandusky said he was caught off guard when he was asked in the NBC interview about whether he was sexually attracted to children, to which he responded, “sexually attracted, you know, I enjoy young people”.
Lindsay says Sandusky should have had a preliminary hearing, and Rominger agreed.
Friday’s hearing was the first of three to determine whether Sandusky received a fair trial.
Amendola decided against allowing the former coach to take the stand in his own defense when Matt Sandusky made his disclosure, a decision that Jerry Sandusky and Lindsay now contend was ill-advised.
In a filing this week, his attorneys said Sandusky would describe conversations with his lawyers concerning the identity of the young man called Victim 2 in court records and about allegations of abuse made at the time of trial – but outside court – by his adopted son Matt Sandusky.
Sandusky previously tried to appeal his sentence to the state’s supreme and superior courts but lost.
Advertisement
“Sandusky [made] a forceful denial of the child molestation charges”, said the AP of the former coach’s hour-long testimony before a judge,”[saying] it wasn’t his idea to waive his right to testify”. If Sandusky is successful, his charges could be dismissed, but that’s less likely than the chance the judge could order a new trial. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
