PENNSYLVANIA RECORD

The judge overseeing the case involving convicted child molester and former Penn State

assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky has given a defense attorney 21 days to specifically outline his appeal issues stemming from a court order involving the release of case materials.

In an Aug. 1 order, Common Pleas Court Judge John M. Cleland, who is specially presiding over the matter, granted a motion by state prosecutors that sought to compel defense lawyer Karl Rominger to submit what is known as a concise statement of matters complained of on appeal pursuant to an earlier ruling by Cleland that involved the leaking of information to media and other outsiders.

Soon after Sandusky was found guilty on 45 of the 48 counts of child sex-abuse against him in June, Cleland ordered the defense team, which included attorneys Rominger and Joseph Amendola, to offer up an inventory of case materials that had been obtained by prosecutors but not used at trial that the defense lawyers subsequently gave to those not directly involved with the case.

The judge’s decision arose from concerns that ongoing secret grand jury proceedings could possibly be jeopardized by the release of some materials to people like members of the press.

The defense attorneys, however, accused the judge of issuing an unfair and one-sided order.

In his Aug. 1 order, Cleland said that any issue not properly included in the concise statement of matters complained of on appeal would be deemed waived.

The order also states that Rominger’s previously filed concise statement of matters complained of on appeal is now stricken from the record.

Cleland had issued his earlier ruling following statements reported on in the media from an adopted son of Sandusky’s who accused the former Nittany Lions defensive coordinator of abusing him as well.

It was later learned that the comments from Matt Sandusky came from a secretly recorded police interview that took place in the middle of Jerry Sandusky’s child sex-abuse trial.