As my colleague Bison Messink noted yesterday, the Jerry Sandusky trial will be ugly. Former Penn State assistant coach Mike McQueary, a key witness for the prosecution, took the stand today to testify that he witnessed Sandusky and a boy in Penn State showers making skin-on-skin slapping sounds, perhaps the most damning piece of evidence from a source that does not include the alleged victims.
McQueary's grand jury testimony is the most detailed and disturbing non-victim report of the case to date, and the defense will focus on discrediting his testimony and memory of the events in question. Specifically, McQueary changed the year in which the alleged incident occured from 2002 to 2001, which could lead to the defense labeling McQueary as an unreliable witness. Aside from the year, though, McQueary's story remained unchanged: He walked into the Penn State locker room one evening, heard slapping sounds, saw Sandusky, nude, standing behind a naked boy of between 10 and 12, and walked out after slamming his locker loudly.
Defense attorney Joe Amendola has already made it clear he doesn't intend to accuse McQueary of lying, but rather to characterize his memories as a misinterpretation or a bad memory of actual events. Instead, Amendola will focus on the accusers, who he claims have a financial stake in the case. This was clear during Victim Number 1's testimony just before McQueary took the stand, when Amendola apparently attempted to poke holes in the accuser's story and asked about possible financial incentives for making his accusations public.
Like we said, it's not going to be a pretty case.
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[CBS Sports]
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