Jerry Sandusky resentencing ratifies 30-60year prison term for sexual assaults
A resentencing hearing on Friday for the former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky resulted in the same penalty he received after his 2012 conviction for sexually assaulting teenage boys: 30 to 60 years in prison, probably the rest of his life.
Sandusky was granted the hearing because of a supreme court ruling that minimum sentencing requirements, such as those on which his original sentence was based, were unconstitutional.
Sporting a faded orange prison jumpsuit, Sandusky smiled broadly to spectators including his wife Dottie as he entered the courtroom at the Centre county court of common pleas in Bellefonte, where his trial was held seven years ago.
His shoulders slumped when he heard Visiting Judge Maureen Skerda reimpose the 30-to-60-year sentence.
“I know you maintain your innocence,” Skerda told Sandusky. “But you have been found guilty by a jury of your peers, and the court must hold you accountable.”
The hearing, ordered in February by Pennsylvania superior court, took place just 10 miles from Pennsylvania State University, where Sandusky was an assistant to the longtime head coach
Joe Paterno.
In June 2012, Sandusky was convicted of 25 felonies and 20 misdemeanors stemming from charges that he molested 10 boys between 1994 and 2009.
A statement by one of boys, identified as Victim 5, was read aloud in court by the Pennsylvania victim advocate Jennifer Storm.
“I was 13 and Jerry Sandusky lured me into the Penn State shower and made me touch him,” the statement said. “Horseplay, he called it. But it was sexual assault.”
Sandusky, who will not be eligible for parole until he turns 98, has sought without success to have his conviction overturned.
“We will continue fighting,” his lawyer, Al Lindsay, told reporters after the brief hearing. “And I think we’ll be successful.”
The same court that ordered the resentencing rejected Sandusky’s request for a new trial based on his claim that he had ineffective legal counsel, a decision the Pennsylvania supreme court declined to review.
Sandusky’s appellate lawyer last month sought to petition a federal court to vacate his conviction, but was told he could not do so until he was resentenced.
Sandusky, who founded the nowdefunct Second Mile charity for atrisk youth, has been held at the state’s Laurel Highlands correctional facility in Somerset.