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Sandusky to testify Friday

The testimony will begin at 9:30 a.m.at the Centre County courthouse in Bellefonte.

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Sandusky is now serving 30 to 60 years in state prison.

Sandusky and two defense attorneys who represented him at trial testified Friday during the proceedings in a county courthouse near State College.

Judge John Cleland set aside three days for this hearing and Friday was the first day.

“I wasn’t a pedophile”, Sandusky said.

Former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, center, arrives at the Centre County Courthouse for an appeals hearing about whether he was improperly convicted four years ago, in Bellefonte, Pa. Friday, Aug. 12, 2016.

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.

Although he didn’t testify at trial, Sandusky did speak during his sentencing, denying he committed “these alleged disgusting acts” and hoping that ‘something good will come out of this’.

Sandusky previously lost direct appeals to the state’s Supreme and Superior courts.

Sandusky said the plan had been for Amendola to go to NY for the interview, but after he arrived there he decided it would be better to have Sandusky call in and assert his innocence.

Sandusky did not take the stand at his original trial. “That (sexual contact with children) is disgusting and dirty, and something that I never would have thought of, and something that I never did with anybody”.

His trial attorney team took the stand Friday and said if they could do it all over again, they wouldn’t have asked Sandusky to go through with the Bob Costas interview.

Sandusky, 72, was convicted in 2012 of sexually abusing 10 boys.

He said his lead lawyer at the time, Joe Amendola, told him a preliminary hearing, with testimony from his victims, would add to the public’s negative perception of him.

“This is a story of how the media, overzealous law enforcement, a biased grand jury judge, an abused grand jury process, prosecutorial malfeasance, a discredited and pseudoscientific type of therapy, greed and serial instances of ineffective assistance of counsel resulted in transforming an innocent man into one of this country’s most infamous ‘child predators, ‘” one member of Sandusky’s legal team, Al Lindsay, said in a court filing obtained by CNN.

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Sandusky prepares to testify in bid to overturn conviction