Court Rejects PSU Administrators Appeal in Abuse Case

The state's highest court on Friday turned down appeals by two of the three former Penn State administrators facing criminal charges alleging they covered up child abuse complaints against former football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.
 
The state Supreme Court issued a pair of unsigned orders that denied petitions for review filed by former university vice president Gary Schultz and former athletic director Tim Curley.
 
The court orders say the justices were not preventing the two men from raising the same issue during their criminal prosecution.
 
Curley and Schultz filed the sealed appeals after the grand jury supervisory judge ruled in April that he did not have jurisdiction to consider their request to have charges thrown out. At issue was the role played in their prosecution by Penn State's then-general counsel, Cynthia Baldwin, who accompanied them to grand jury appearances.
 
Precisely what they argued is unclear, however, because all of the documents in the Supreme Court appeal were sealed.
 
A spokesman for the state attorney general's office and Schultz's lawyer Tom Farrell declined to comment, while a message left for Curley's legal team was not immediately returned Friday.
 
Curley and Schultz's co-defendant, former Penn State president Graham Spanier, has asked a county judge to throw out the charges against him, a matter that appears to be pending, according to the online docket. His lawyers did not offer any immediate response to the latest Supreme Court ruling.
 
Sandusky, the university's former longtime defensive football coach under head coach Joe Paterno, was convicted a year ago of dozens of counts of child sexual abuse. He's serving a 30- to 60-year state prison sentence. He denies guilt and is appealing.
 
Curley and Schultz were first arrested with Sandusky in November 2011, but more charges were added against them when Spanier was charged late last year. Preliminary hearings have not been held for the 2012 charges, and the high court's decision could clear the way for those proceedings to be scheduled.
 

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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