First, to the extent that Coach_May's primer/reminder on the limitations of grand juries is directed to me, I am well aware of what grand juries do and how they do it. I went to law school and practiced law for nearly 20 years before moving on to other things in the business world.
It is true that a grand jury is presented only one side of a case, and the defendant has no right to testify or put on a defense, and the standard is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but probable cause for an indictment (as I pointed out earlier in this very thread). It is a grand jury's job to "find fact" and then decide based on those facts if there is probable cause to indict (not whether there is guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, based on the same facts). But the fact-finding mission is the same as it would be in a trial, with the obvious exception that it is not informed or challenged by a defense.
It is also statistically true that grand juries are very rarely impaneled that do not return a bill of indictment, but it is ALSO true (at least in states where indictment by grand jury is only one option for a prosecutor seeking to bring charge) that grand juries are rarely impaneled unless the prosecutor has all his ducks - his proof, his case - in a row. This was one reason I criticized the early analogy of this case to the Duke lacrosse case, where a politically ambitious prosecutor was clearly over-reaching, filing (or threatening to file - I can no longer remember exactly) charges when he had no real proof. In a system where prosecutorial discretion allows charges to be filed independently, that can happen, as the prosecutor has no need to "lay his cards on the table." With a grand jury, you do.
I am not saying that everything that can be known has already been revealed to the grand jury, or is even completely accurately portrayed in the grand jury's presentment of their FINDINGS OF FACT (not conclusions, which are legally two different things), but I am saying that the basic substance of testimony characterized as FINDINGS OF FACT are pretty well known, and serve as a pretty firm base for making some preliminary judgments.
quote:
Originally posted by 3FingeredGlove:
quote:
"'We know for a fact that McQueary witnessed what he described, under oath, as an*l rape of a 10-year-old.'
"EdgarFan: In fact, we don't know what McQueary said under oath. The GJ report doesn't quote any testimony, and it doesn't purport to do so. Instead it is the conclusions drawn by the GJ after listening to multiple testimonies."
I don't mean to be argumentative, but I don't really know how else to say this. On the whole, that's just false. While it is technically true that we don't know EXACTLY what McQueary said under oath and the report "doesn't quote any testimony" and grand jury testimony is sealed, that does not mean that we cannot draw reasonable conclusions about what the substance of that testimony was from the grand jury's VERY DETAILED "findings of fact" regarding McQueary's testimony.
I am pretty sure you've read the grand jury's report by now. If you haven't, you really should before saying as "fact" that I have misreported the grand jury's "finding of fact" that McQueary described what he saw as the an*l rape of an approximately ten-year-old boy. Please review pages 6-8 of
the grand jury report and explain exactly how anything I wrote or that you quoted is inaccurate. The report, in fact, goes into MUCH more specific detail than I did.
Bottom line: Based on the grand jury report's detailed findings of fact, it is perfectly reasonable to say, truthfully, that McQueary testified under oath that he witnessed a rape. It is also reasonable to say, truthfully, that the grand jury found that McQueary "was shocked but noticed that both Victim 2 and Sandusky saw him," that he "left immediately, distraught," then "went to his office and called his father, reporting to him what he seen" after which he met with his father at his father's home and together they decided McQueary needed to tell Joe Paterno what he had seen, which he did. Finally, it is accurate to say, truthfully, that other than meeting(s) with Paterno, AD Tim Curley, and VP for Finance and Business Gary Schultz, McQueary "was never questioned by University Police and no other entity conducted and investigation" until McQueary testified before the grand jury last December. And even though Schultz "oversaw the University Police as part of his position, he never reported the 2002 incident to the University Police or any other police agency, never sought or reviewd a police report on the 1998 incident and never attempted to learn the identity of the child in the shower in 2002.
No one from the University did so. Schultz did not ask [McQueary] for specifics. No one ever did."
Again, I must emphasize: these are findings of fact, based on testimony under oath, not e-mails to ex-teammates. Is it possible that there are omitted details? Sure. Do I think it is likely that those omitted details change the picture much? No. I think that is highly unlikely.
quote:
"As an example, consider a hypothetical case involving theft from an ATM machine. Suppose that a witness (Bob) testifies that he saw person A standing at the ATM, seemingly having trouble getting it to work. Bob makes no claim to have seen anything untoward. But the GJ concludes on the basis of other testimony and evidence that person A was actually robbing the ATM. The report may simply say that Bob witnessed the robbery. It is the GJ's conclusion that Bob witnessed a robbery rather than Bob's actual testimony."
With all due respect, this is not at all an apt analogy to McQueary and his testimony before the grand jury, even if it supports the point you are trying to make.
Your analogy fits better the testimony of the second janitor (Petrosky) and his supervisor (Witherite). Petrosky saw two pairs of feet in the shower, waited to clean that shower and saw the two (an older man he could identify as Sandusky and a boy) exit hand in hand, with wet hair. His testimony was filled in, in a way similar to what you describe, by the testimony of the first janitor (Calhoun) who actually witnessed the assault, and Calhoun's testimony was bolstered by the testimony of Witherite, since Calhoun did not know Sandusky and had to rely on Witherite's identification of Sandusky after Calhoun pointed him out. So, Petrosky could only place Sandusky and a young boy in the shower facility, but not in the shower; Calhoun contemporaneously witnessed an assualt by an older man on a boy, but could not independently identify the man, and Witherite could identify the man, based on Calhoun pointing him out, as Sandusky. Together, they might be characterized (though never were so characterized, other than just as I have described their actions) as "witnesses to an assault."
McQueary is far different: he is an eyewitness to a sexual assault that he clearly and specifically described as a sexual assault, by a man known to him and specifically identified by him as Jerry Sandusky. There is nothing vague about his testimony in the grand jury's description, and it did not rely on the testimony or identification of any other witnesses. McQueary's testimony stood alone.
quote:
"Clearly McQueary did witness something that was very disturbing. But it isn't necessarily true that he described the act in your quote above."
Yes, it is. There is no other way to reasonable read or interpret the grand jury's findings of fact.
quote:
"Nor is it reasonable to believe that McQueary could have determined that any kind of penetration was taking place."
For the most part, yes, it is. The description of McQueary's testimony is very detailed and specific, presenting more than sufficient evidence from which a reasonable person could conclude - as McQueary did, and the grand jury believed - that he was witnessing a rape.
quote:
"Please read McCann's article linked 10 posts above yours."
I did. It is one
opinion and based heavily on the assumption that McQueary would not say in an e-mail something that might come back to bite him in the a*s at trial, which in turn assumes that McQueary was smart enough to know that his friends would leak the e-mail or it might be discovered, and that he could be at some risk of being cross-examined as to why his statements to the grand jury and in his e-mail are seemingly contradictory. I don't know that I find those assumptions to be true or even likely, especially given McQueary has been told repeatedly that he is not a target of the investigation.
McCann explains pretty well how certain details that may be be important to McQueary now, in defense of his own reputation, may not have been the focus of his questioning before the grand jury. I get that. But if you really read the (detailed and specific) descriptions of the jury's findings of fact, they are simply inconsistent with what McQueary is now saying in unsworn, casual e-mails to friends. I find McCann's first explanation - that McQueary was trying to rehabilitate his image and reputation among his friends, and may not have been entirely truthful - to be far more likely. He probably did not expect that to get out, and probably never thought it could or might have any legal consequences for him. [His subsequent clamming up indicates to me he now understands that, though.]
Now that we've seen
it, McQueary's e-mail, to me, is a portrait of spin. He says he "stopped" the assault, but "not physically but made sure it was stopped." He doesn't explain how, or what he means by this. He talks about going to the police, but when you read what he actually wrote in context, it is clear to me that could be referring to nothing more than speaking to Schultz (whose job it was to oversee the University Police, but who himself was not police and did not make any report to the police) and still believe that his statement is truthful.
I will stand by everything I said.
I am not going to judge McQueary for anything he did or did not do in the moments immediately after he witnessed this. I am not even going to judge McQueary for his decision not to (or to, doesn't matter) immediately go to the police, choosing first to go to Paterno. I
am willing to judge him - preliminarily, and keeping an open mind to the slim possibility that he did something more - for failing to act over the next 8-9 years, knowing nobody ever asked him for any specifics as part of any investingation, and knowing Sandusky had free reign over the PSU campus and unfettered access to children, despite what he saw and knew of Sandusky. Nothing in his e-mail changes that.
GED10DaD
