End of Sandusky Trial Nears
The judge tells the court that the jury deliberations could begin as soon as Thursday.
| Posted Tuesday, June 19, 2012, at 10:08 AM
Photograph by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images.
UPDATE: The jury that will decide Jerry Sandusky's fate could begin deliberating as soon as Thursday, Judge John Cleland said Monday.
Once they do, they will be sequestered until they return a verdict on the 51 counts the former Penn State coach faces, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. (Sandusky originally faced 52 counts, but one was dropped because the statute he was charged under didn't exist at the time of the alleged incident.)
While some observers had expected Sandusky to take the stand on Monday, the first day of his defense, it is now unclear if the ex-coach will testify at all. Instead, the defense has so far relied on a series of character witnesses to counter the prosecution's narrative of Sandusky as a sexual predator.
One witness, David Pasquinelli, who worked with Sandusky on a Second Mile fundraising campaign, characterized Sandusky's interactions with children as "a lot of goofing around" during his testimony, Reuters reports. Other defense witnesses, meanwhile, claimed that Sandusky's apparent habit of showering with young boys was not that unusual for a sports locker room.
Monday, June 18: Jerry Sandusky's child sex abuse trial shifted gears Monday, with the prosecution resting its case and ceding the floor to the former Penn State assistant football coach's defense team.
The presiding judge, John Cleland, quickly dismissed a series of motions from Sandusky's lawyers arguing that, among other things, the lack of specific dates for many of the alleged incidents made them impossible to disprove, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
In doing so, Cleland expressed his initial concern over the matter but said that the prosecution had since addressed that. "I've been concerned about this from the beginning," he said. "There were very, very broad representations by the commonwealth as to when these offenses took place. Since then, however, there has been some amended information that I believe now meets the standards."
The judge did make one surprising call in the defense's favor, as CBS News notes: Sandusky's team will be able to call a psychologist to the stand to testify on histrionic personality disorder. The disorder looks to be a key part of Sandusky's defense, which will apparently argue that his motives were not sexual in nature but rather related to his need to draw attention to himself.
The Inquirer reports that Sandusky might take the stand on Monday, prompting a more crowded than usual courthouse and an influx of reporters on the scene.
