Paterno and McQueary are in agreement that McQueary told Joe about something sexual. McQueary says that he told Schultz and Curley about something sexual. If McQueary didn’t even go into explicit detail with Paterno as to what constituted ‘something sexual’, yet still managed to get his point across, then how did he supposedly tell the more explicit version to Curley and Schultz yet fail to convey ‘something sexual’?

…and you may not ban someone for ‘horsing around’ if you’re sure that’s all that happened, but you do take steps to make sure somebody doesn’t mistake ‘horsing around’ for something more serious in the future.

if that “horsing around” could be viewed in any was as inappropriate but not legally actionable. After all, banning him from bringing kids onto campus would insulate the University from future misunderstandings.

In fact, if you just for a minute forget all of the other allegations and allow that McQueary didn’t give too many details of what he saw (or was not even sure of what he saw), then banning him from bringing kids onto campus is a fairly reasonable response, especially if you don’t think you can do more. It is quite possible that Curley/Schultz both thought that maybe he really was a pedophile, but it is even possible that they knew about the 1998 investigation (at least Schultz did) and didn’t think they could make anything stick given charges were not pressed before. Is banning him from bringing kids onto campus, just to be safe, not a good idea if they felt they really couldn’t do more?

Obviously the argument is that they could have done more, and I’m not going to try to argue against that, but banning him from campus even if you thought you couldn’t or didn’t need to escalate farther is better than nothing. As is reporting the incident to the Second Mile, which again is not something you would do if you were actively covering this up.

And, frankly, JS seems to have actually followed the mandate as I have not seen any word of JS on campus with boys after this… which, in combination with him voluntarily telling the Second Mile that he was under investigation, are the ONLY two things that make me think that maybe Sandusky could be innocent (although really not smart about observing boundaries). If Sandusky is a pedophile, his compliance with PSU’s ban and his notification of the Second Mile are two things that would “voluntarily” limit his access to and influence over children. My take is that kind of self-restraint is just not really in line with grooming his victims or with a person that compulsively commits this sort of crime.

But to get back to the article, I continue to not see a case for perjury against these people. Very odd that they don’t know what they said that was perjury. Very odd that the state would pursue charges when even Paterno’s testimony couldn’t corroborate what MM said to Curley/Schultz since he wasn’t at that meeting. Again, I think the AG needed MM’s story to be strong so that they could pursue charges again JS. I also think the AG probably believed that there was an active conspiracy to bury information about this case and hoped that the perjury charges would “shake something loose” in getting more evidence to come out again PSU. Now, months later, and after most of the outrage has died down, there doesn’t seem to be anyone bringing more cold hard facts and the facts that exist in regard to these perjury charges seem pretty flimsy.

There’s no question in my mind that Schultz/Curley walk from the perjury charges as long as the perjury charges relate to what MM allegedly told them in that meeting. I don’t see, legally, how they can’t. And, if they walk on those charges, I think it really hurts the prosecutions case against JS when it comes to MM being a ‘credible witness.’