ABC NEWS/AP: Pennsylvania appeals court on Friday dismissed several of the more serious criminal charges against three former Penn State administrators over their handling of the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal.
The Superior Court ruled that Cynthia Baldwin, the university’s then-general counsel, should not have testified against Gary Schultz, Tim Curley and Graham Spanier during grand jury proceedings, a violation of attorney-client privilege.
The three-judge panel threw out perjury, obstruction and related conspiracy counts against Spanier, the school’s former president, and Schultz, a former vice president. It also tossed charges of obstruction and a related conspiracy count against Curley, the school’s former athletic director… (more)
EDITOR: We thought this would occur. In fact we believe this entire prosecution is ill advised. Ever since Gov. Tom Corbett tried to distract attention to his “slow walking” of prosecution of Jerry Sandusky by leading the charge to fire Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, efforts have been underway to somehow treat errors in judgment by top officials at Penn State as some form of crime.
If blame is merited, it is for the failures of the criminal justice system, not Paterno and not officials at Penn State.
To make things even worse was the baseless and unauthorized penalties inflicted on Penn State by the NCAA and the self-serving and craven acquiescence to the NCAA by Corbett and the other Penn State directors.
It is time to end this witch hunt.
