HARRISBURG, Pa. — Prosecutors on Friday filed a document listing 33 statements made by two Penn State administrators to support the perjury charges against the men, accused of lying to a grand jury investigating child sex abuse allegations against a former assistant football coach.
A second document defended the case and said a judge should not dismiss the charges.
Sandusky
The statements laid out by the state attorney general’s office are from January 2011, when athletic director Tim Curley and former vice president Gary Schultz appeared before a secret grand jury investigating Jerry Sandusky. Their lawyers’ spokeswoman, Martine Charles, offered no immediate comment about the filings, which The Associated Press obtained late Friday.
Many of the statements downplay the seriousness of a report Curley and Schultz fielded from graduate assistant Mike McQueary, who said he saw Sandusky in the football team shower with a boy a decade ago.
Curley, 57, is quoted saying the report by McQueary was not sexual in nature, while Schultz, 62, is quoted saying he was not told anything more serious than perhaps that Sandusky grabbed the boy’s genitals.
Prosecutors wrote, in an answer to the defense attorneys’ motion for more detail about the allegations, that the state “identifies these statements with the understanding that any or all of these statements will support the charge of perjury, and that it is not required to prove the falsity of every identified statement.”
Curley, now on leave from the university, and Schultz, who has retired, were charged in November with perjury and failure to properly report suspected child abuse. They have denied the allegations and have asked a Dauphin County judge to throw out the charges.
Sandusky, 68, awaits trial on dozens of child sexual abuse charges involving 10 boys over a 15-year period. He has denied the allegations and is on house arrest awaiting trial in early June.
Examples of what prosecutors call Curley’s lies include that McQueary told him “they were horsing around, that they were playful,” “I didn’t think it was a crime at the time,” and “I was not aware of anything sexual.”
In regard to Schultz, the examples prosecutors cite include: “I believe that he said that he saw something that he felt was inappropriate between Jerry and a boy,” “the allegations came across as not that serious,” and a series of statements regarding whether the 2002 matter was referred to child protective services to investigate.
“My recollection would be in 2002 that they were asked to look into this allegation,” Schultz is quoted as saying.
In a 28-page answer to the defendants’ pretrial motions, prosecutors said ample evidence was presented during a December preliminary hearing for the case to proceed to trial.
The prosecution said Curley, in his effort to have the charges thrown out, was attempting to “take advantage of the death” of longtime football coach Joe Paterno, who died of complications from lung cancer in January at age 85.
“At the time of the preliminary hearing, the parties stipulated that the grand jury testimony of Paterno would be presented in lieu of live testimony, as Paterno then was undergoing treatment for the cancer,” prosecutors wrote. “Curley does not argue that stipulation was invalid, but that Paterno’s testimony cannot be presented at trial, and so the evidence presented at the preliminary hearing becomes retroactively insufficient.”
McQueary first contacted Paterno to report what he had seen, and the coach brought in Curley and Schultz, who later met with McQueary.
Prosecutors said Paterno’s testimony was properly allowed as evidence in December and corroborated McQueary’s testimony sufficiently to meet the relatively low legal standard required at a preliminary hearing to send the case to trial.
Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press
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