Bob Costas is Good at Cross Examination. Jerry Sandusky Gave Bob a Live Interview on Television. That was a Bad Idea.

Seriously, I was just going to leave the Jerry Sandusky-Penn State-Joe Paterno-child abuse allegation-scandal alone.  I was.  Honestly.  I wrote the post about whether failing to report child abuse is a crime, and as far as I was concerned, I was finished.

But then something stupid had to happen.

Last night, Jerry Sandusky went on live television wherein he and his attorney allowed Bob Costas to conduct an interview on NBC’s Rock Center.  Sandusky's attorney, Joseph Amendola, verified Sandusky's voice and later piped up to assert his client's innocence.  Chances are you have never heard of Joseph Amendola.  And if you had, it was probably because you heard the allegations that Joseph Amendola fathered a child with a 16 year old girl.  Around the same time he was representing the 16 year old girl for her emancipation.  When Joseph Amendola was nearly 50 years old.

But you sure have heard of him, now.  Now he’s no longer known as that lawyer who fathered a kid by an underage girl when he was nearing retirement age.  Now he’s Jerry Sandusky’s lawyer.  And apparently he LOVES the media attention for himself.  Because nothing about Jerry Sandusky giving a live TV interview could have possibly been good for Jerry Sandusky’s best interests.  And it went about as well as you would imagine.

"We were showering and horsing around and he [the boy] actually turned all the showers on and was actually sliding across the floor and we were, as I recall, possibly like snapping a towel," Jerry creepily stated to Bob.  Then Jerry contended that he was not a pedophile, but that he did love children and awkwardly said that he used to touch them but that he wasn’t sexually attracted to them.

When asked by Costas to concede any wrongdoing, Sandusky said, "I shouldn't have showered with those kids."

Basically the interview was ripe with disturbing awkwardness, incriminating statements, and Sandusky stumbling around his words to try to convince Bob Costas that he wasn’t a pedophile.  Then Bob Costas put on a tutorial on how, when cross examining a defendant, the question is often much more important for the jury to hear than the answer.  Take notes:

BOB COSTAS:  Shortly after that in 2000, a janitor said that he saw you performing oral sex on a young boy in the showers-- in the Penn State locker facility. Did that happen?

JERRY SANDUSKY:  No.

BOB COSTAS:  How could somebody think they saw something as extreme and shocking as that when it hadn't occurred, and what would possibly be their motivation to fabricate it?

JERRY SANDUSKY:  You'd have to ask them.

BOB COSTAS:  It seems that if all of these accusations are false, you are the unluckiest and most persecuted man that any of us has ever heard about.

JERRY SANDUSKY:  (LAUGHS) I don't know what you want me to say. I don't think that these have been the best days of my life.

Wow.  If the prosecutor in Jerry Sandusky’s criminal case has been sitting around with a pen and a pad thinking, “I wonder how I can ask some seriously damaging questions that make Jerry look like a child molester regardless of the answer to those questions,” said prosecutor can look no further.

In summary, if you are charged with a criminal offense, don’t talk to the police and don’t give a live interview to Bob Costas.  Nothing good can come of either.  They are not your friends.  They are not trying to help you.  Don’t help them build a case against you.

Gruner & Simms

Results.  As fast as the law will allow.


Questions answered in this blog post:  Why did Jerry Sandusky give a live interview with Bob Costas; who is Jerry Sandusky's lawyer; what are the allegations about Jerry Sandusky's lawyer fathering a child with a 16 year old girl; what are the allegations that Joseph Amendola fathered a child with a 16 year old girl; give me an example of a media attention seeking attorney putting his own career advancement above his clients best interests; how can I find a good Louisville sex crimes lawyer?