5 day forecast
Sandusky juror says defendant appeared calm when guilty verdicts were read
-
In this courtroom sketch, Judge John Cleland, second from left, defendant former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, right, and his lawyer Karl Rominger, second from right, listen as the verdict in Sandusky's child sexual abuse trial is read by the jury foreman at the Centre County Courthouse last night.
Share with others:
One of the jurors in the Jerry Sandusky case told a television audience today that Mr. Sandusky didn't seem surprised when he was found guilty late Friday of 45 counts in his child abuse case.
"I looked at him during the reading of the verdict, and the look on his face, no real emotion, just kind of accepting, you know, because he knew it was true," juror Joshua Harper said on the NBC "Today" show.
The jury acquitted him on three counts. Mr. Sandusky will be sentenced in about 90 days and faces a maximum sentence of more than 400 years in prison, meaning the 68-year-old former Penn State assistant football coach could spend the rest of his life there.
Mr. Harper said there had been disagreement before the jury reached its decision.
"We looked at some inconsistencies in some of the testimony and we wanted to reconcile those and make sure that wouldn't discredit the testimony. And so we worked through those things systematically as a jury," he told NBC.
He said jurors did not learn until after their verdict that Mr. Sandusky's adopted son Matt, 33, claimed through an attorney that Mr. Sandusky had abused him, too.
"We were all basically told at the same time, we heard about it at the same time, and we were just looking at each other like we had suspected that but we had no evidence of it. It just solidified our decision," Mr. Harper told NBC.
First Published June 23, 2012 2:00 pm
