Victim 5's Attorney: This Was All About Justice
BELLEFONTE (KDKA) – A Centre County jury delivered a guilty verdict on 45 of 48 counts against Jerry Sandusky in a child sex abuse trial Friday night.
Immediately following the verdict, Sandusky's bond was revoked and he was taken into custody.
KDKA-TV's Harold Hayes spoke with attorney Tom Kline outside the courthouse to get his reaction to the verdict.
Kline represented Victim 5 in the case and said this was all about justice.
"Well, I texted him and I said one word – justice. That's what this was all about. This investigation came to his door when the police knocked on his door. He was trying to live a normal life with this horrible incident that happened to him as a child tucked way back in the recess of his mind and his memory, but the scars and the pain came forward during this trial," Kline said.
Kline had not spoken directly with his client after the verdict, but had checked in on him on Thursday.
"I asked him how he was doing just yesterday. The phone lines are jammed today after I texted him so I didn't hear back, but I said to him, 'Gee, how are you doing?' He said, 'I'm getting through this with my family, my girlfriend my friends, I have a lot of good people to support me.'" Kline said.
Kline described the amount of evidence against Sandusky as a "mountain" and applauded the jury's efforts in this case and in reaching a guilty verdict on the majority of the charges.
"This was something that was brought onto these young men. There was a mountain of evidence. I heard the lawyer for Mr. Sandusky on the courthouse steps get booed off the courthouse steps when he suggested that some people are convicted of crimes and then it's found out later that they didn't commit them. The fact of the matter is that what we had here was a defense which was essentially a clarion call for nullification to a Penn State jury and these folks were too good, too smart, too honorable to do that," Kline said. "The justice system – I had my doubts and my questions like many of us – but the justice system worked. We had a trial that was in State College and we had a jury who found him guilty."
Hayes asked Kline about what it said of the jury to convict Sandusky on all charges related to Victim 8, despite him not testifying and the jury only having the testimony of a janitor with dementia to consider.
"I thought that his testimony actually corroborated the young men's testimony that did come forward. The evidence was overwhelming in that case. You had a shaken man, a shaken grown man who said he saw a trembling co-worker and that he himself had seen the bare man's legs, the young boy's legs. He had seen a lot of actually what happened except the horrible act that the now man who is disabled saw. And he described in vivid detail this grotesque sexual act that you couldn't make up," Kline said.
"A lot of this case was about no corroboration, but things you couldn't make up. How could eight men have come to this courthouse and say these dastardly things happened when they didn't happen? It just can't happen that way."
In the case of unknown Victim 2, the victim identified by Mike McQueary, Sandusky was found not guilty of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, but guilty of indecent assault, unlawful contact with minors and endangering the welfare of a child with regard to victim.
Sandusky will now be sentenced in the next 90 days, but is expected to spend the rest of his life in prison.
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