Capitolwire
By Kevin Zwick
Staff Reporter
HARRISBURG (June 5) – Over the next three months, lawyers for two state officials plan to depose NCAA and Penn State officials and obtain records in a search for how the NCAA determined the penalties levied against Penn State in 2012.
Commonwealth Court Judge Anne Covey has set a Jan. 6, 2015, trial date in the lawsuit filed by Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Jake Corman, R-Centre, and State Treasurer Rob McCord against the NCAA. The case has moved into the discovery phase, which needs to be wrapped up by September 8, Covey ordered.
“We’re looking for the inner workings of how they reached the consent decree,” said Matthew Haverstick, a lawyer with the firm Conrad O’Brien, who is representing Corman. Haverstick said he plans to question officials and retrieve documents and emails that would shed light about how the deal was reached.
Penn State does not comment on pending litigation, a spokesman said. The court named Penn State a defendant in the case. The NCAA also had no comment.
The penalties stem from the conviction of Jerry Sandusky, a former Penn State assistant football coach, who was found guilty in 2012 of dozens of counts of sexually abusing children. He’s serving a 30-60 year prison sentence.
In the weeks following the conviction, Penn State’s president at the time, Rodney Erickson, signed a consent decree agreeing to sanctions after the NCAA made a “take-it-or-leave-it proposition”, with the threat of steeper penalties, Erickson said at the time. Erickson reportedly consulted with the executive committee of the Penn State Board of Trustees and legal counsel prior to agreeing to the terms.
The consent decree levied penalties against Penn State for what an investigation found was “an unprecedented failure of institutional integrity leading to a culture in which a football program was held in higher esteem than the values of the institution, the values of the NCAA, the values of higher education, and most disturbingly the values of human decency,” the NCAA stated.
The NCAA imposed a $60 million fine and placed restrictions on the school’s football program, including reduced scholarships, post-season bowl bans, and wiped out the team’s victories between 1998 and 2011 under the school’s legendary football coach, the late Joe Paterno.
Corman said in April he believes Penn State accepted the terms “through fear.”
In an April ruling, Covey questioned the validity of the NCAA’s consent decree. She noted the consent decree itself says “[t]he sexual abuse of children on university campus by a former university official…while despicable, ordinarily would not be actionable by the NCAA.”
“The Consent Decree expressly recognizes the NCAA’s questionable involvement in and its dubious authority pertaining to a criminal action against a non-university official which involved children who were non-university student-athletes,” Covey wrote in April.
Corman and McCord sued the NCAA over control of the $60 million fine, arguing that the fine would ultimately be paid using taxpayer money since the university receives state funds. The NCAA intended to use the money for a national child abuse awareness program. Covey’s April ruling also found a state law that would prohibit the funds from being used out-of-state to be constitutional, despite a challenge from the NCAA.
The case is 1 MD 2013.
