Jury gets case in trial of Penn State’s ex-president

Attorneys for Penn State ex-President Graham Spanier on Thursday declined to call any witnesses to counter accusations that he acted illegally in handling a 2001 complaint about Jerry Sandusky showering with a boy, sending the case to jurors for deliberation.

Spanier attorney Sam Silver argued there was “no evidence at all,” saying the case involved judgment calls by high-ranking university administrators in dealing with the complaint that Sandusky, a retired assistant football coach, had been seen naked with the boy in a team locker room.

“They made judgment calls,” Silver said. “They did not engage in crimes. They did not enter in a conspiracy.”

Laura Ditka with the state attorney general’s office said Spanier, former athletic director Tim Curley and former vice president Gary Schultz took actions to preserve the school and their own reputations, at the expense of children.

“They took a gamble,” Ditka told jurors. “They weren’t playing with dice. They were playing with kids.”

Spanier faces two counts of endangering the welfare of children and a related conspiracy count, all felonies. Curley and Schultz struck plea deals last week to a single misdemeanor count of child endangerment and testified against Spanier on Wednesday.

Spanier was forced out as president in 2011, after Sandusky was charged with child molestation and Curley and Schultz were first charged over their handling of the matter. Spanier was charged a year later.

Sandusky has been in prison since his 2012 conviction on 45 counts of child sexual abuse, and is due in a courthouse near campus on Friday for an appeal hearing.

After about three hours of deliberations, the panel of seven women and five men asked the judge to clarify the legal elements of the conspiracy charge and to define what reckless means.

Judge John Boccabella told them to take into account the companion charge of endangering the welfare of children when evaluating the conspiracy charge. He said conduct is reckless when someone consciously disregards a substantial and unjustified risk, far beyond what a reasonable person would do.

Jurors asked for dinner, a sign their deliberations are not on the verge of a verdict.

The scandal sent shockwaves through the Penn State community, led to the firing of Hall of Fame coach Joe Paterno — who died of cancer in early 2012 — and ultimately led the school to pay out more than $90 million to settle civil claims.

Silver called Spanier, Curley and Schultz “good men” who took seriously the 2001 complaint by thengraduate assistant coach Mike McQueary.

“It’s not enough for you to find that Graham could have or should have done something differently,” Silver told jurors.

He urged them to focus on testimony by Schultz and Curley that they never told Spanier that McQueary had reported seeing something sexual in 2001, although McQueary’s own testimony was that he did tell the two of them it was sexual in nature.

“Mr. Schultz made clear — he, Gary Schultz, told Graham Spanier that it was horseplay,” Silver said.

A key piece of evidence was an email exchange in which the three debated what to do.