Posted on 11/20/2014 5:24:26 PM PST by FlJoePa
In what looks like another key turn in the battle for facts about the foundation of Penn State's Freeh Report, a Potter County judge has ordered former FBI Director Louis Freeh to start complying with former Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno's heirs' requests for its raw materials.
The ruling by Judge John B. Leete comes in the Paterno estate's lawsuit against the NCAA and Penn State, which seeks to invalidate the sanctions stemming from the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.
Penn State's attorneys had objected to the subpoena of Freeh, arguing the work done by Freeh and his firm in examining Penn State's role in the scandal is subject to attorney-client privilege.
Leete dismissed that claim in September, and Penn State is appealing his ruling in Pennsylvania Superior Court.
On Thursday, however, Leete rejected Freeh's request for a stay of the subpoena while that appeal is pending, finding his successor Pepper Hamilton law firm has failed to make a strong showing that Penn State will win its appeal.
Wick Sollers, an attorney for the Paternos, called the decision significant.
"The court's ruling opens the door to the production of materials relating to the Freeh investigation and report that we viewed as improperly withheld under the claim of privilege," he said in an email to PennLive Thursday evening.
"We are proceeding to notice depositions and expect the relevant documents to be produced promptly and in advance of the depositions," Sollers added.
Attempts to reach Freeh for comment were not successful, and it remains to be seen how responsive Penn State's investigator will be to the estate's specific requests.
But with Leete's blessing for the plaintiff's to dig in, the ruling potentially opens a second major information channel this fall for those who feel Penn State and the Paternos' reputations were unfairly savaged by the Sandusky saga.
A number of high-ranking NCAA officials have already been deposed in a separate sanctions case pending in Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Court.
Discovery in that case, brought by state Sen. Jake Corman, R-Centre County, and Pennsylvania Treasurer Rob McCord, has already revealed regular communication between the NCAA and Freeh's team.
The Paterno's case seems to call for a deeper dive into the raw materials mined to craft Freeh's July 2012 report, which asserted in part that former Penn State President Graham Spanier and two of his top aides – quite possibly with Joe Paterno's encouragement - sought to do damage control with respect to early allegations against Sandusky rather than confronting them aggressively at the time.
The original March subpoena seeks, for example, all documents that relate to findings that Joe Paterno "concealed critical facts" about Sandusky from Penn State leadership, or that Paterno believed his longtime defensive coordinator to be a sexual predator at the time of Sandusky's 1999 retirement.
The estate also wants all communications or documents pertaining to the board of trustees' November 2011 decision to fire Joe Paterno, and any documents that might show internal questions or concerns about the report's findings.
The Paterno estate also seeks Freeh's client file on Penn State, which would presumably give them access to interview notes and other reports prepared in conjunction with the board-commissioned investigation.
Just last week, Penn State President Eric Barron told the Penn State trustees that he also intends to review the Freeh record.
Barron, as CEO of Freeh's original client, doesn't have to wage any legal battles to get the information. But he also can be as selective as he wants to be in what he releases.
Freeh's most ardent critics believe his conclusions resulted from a pre-determined strategy to help the university cut its losses and move forward, even at the cost of unfair damage to the reputations of Paterno and others.
The Paterno family has long held that its suit is the best way to get to the truth of how the association, school leaders and Freeh collectively responded to the scandal.
Those answers, they are convinced, are the only way the larger university community can heal from the divisive scandal.
Sandusky was convicted in June 2012 of sexually molesting 10 boys he met through his Second Mile youth charity between 1994 and 2008. He is currently serving a 30-year minimum prison term.
Penn State last year signed off on monetary settlements worth a total $59.7 million with 26 alleged Sandusky victims.
Spanier, former senior vice president Gary Schultz and former athletic director Tim Curley are awaiting trial now on charges that they failed to respond appropriately to early allegations about Sandusky, and then interfered years later with the state attorney general's probe.
I will say that freeh vs. Wick Sollers and Paul Kelly is an astounding heavyweight attorney card.
Spanier, former senior vice president Gary Schultz and former athletic director Tim Curley are awaiting trial now on charges that they failed to respond appropriately to early allegations about Sandusky, and then interfered years later with the state attorney general's probe.
Somehow, Saint JoePa's subordinate Sandusky molested kids, Saint JoePa's superiors are coming up on trial for covering-up, and Saint JoePa, the guy in between, knew nothing about it?
Rot in hell Paterno. Only your family, some sports-obsessed loser on FR who chose to name himself after a coach who was fired for not doing enough to stop a child molester, and a handful of Pennsyltucky hicks think your behavior was anything other than despicable.
Paterno knew! Read his own testimony.
They’ve been awaiting trial for almost 3 years now. The PA OAG is going to have to eventually punt this and they know it.
Clueless, cloistered Paterno never had a real job and faced one major challenge in life, and he failed miserably. How many kids could he have saved if he weren't so concerned about his stupid football program?
Yawn...the lead prosecutor in the js case has always exonerated JVP of anything remotely close to the garbage you two spew. On national television no less.
You stand w/ freeh in all of this, and see where you end up. That’s when you’ll eventually stop posting on these threads I guess.
I see you’re really delving deep into the legal ramifications of the story. The statue didn’t look like JVP anyway. Looked more like Art Modell.
Those plaques behind the statue need to come back though. Those represent the players and their accomplishments that no one had a right to take away. Sorry.
Am I right?!
That’s the most disgusting pic I’ve ever seen on FR....
“Yawn...the lead prosecutor in the js case has always exonerated JVP “
Liar. He said there wasn’t enough evidence for a criminal charge That’s no exoneration.
Paterno is rotting in hell right now, which is just where he belongs for enabling a pedophile monster for decades.
L
The resemblance,if there is one, is irrelevant to the case and I have no dog in this fight.
KETEYIAN: Do you believe that Coach Paterno was a part of the conspiracy to conceal -- to cover up the crimes at Penn State by Jerry Sandusky?
FINA: I do not. And -- and I -- I'm viewing this strictly on the evidence, not any kind of fealty to anybody. I did not find that evidence.
I keep posting facts. You just pile on w/ insults and name calling.
I listened to Fina’s statement on this matter and he sounds credible. That said, prosecutors ARE subject to outside influences.
The bottom line it seems will likely be that Joe Paterno turned the guy in and at that time that was all he was obligated to do.
But, then Joe Paterno himself said “I didn’t do enough, I should have done more”.
Perhaps this upcoming trial of school officials will shed some more light on the entire subject.
Whooaaahhh... JVP said “In hindsight I wish I had done more”. In hindsight, I wish I was at Logan Airport to stop 9-11. See how that works?
Upcoming trial? I think we have a perception problem here. There is no trial scheduled. There will be no trial. There was never to be a trial.
The PA OAG charged those guys (GS/TC) so they couldn’t testify in PA vs JS. They would have riddled McQueary’s testimony. They charged GSpanier later.
Tamba Hali is another piece of JVP's real legacy - not some bull you or some sportswriter want to describe it as.
These are Joe's words as well: “How could they think that? They really think that if I knew someone was hurting kids, I wouldn’t stop it? Don’t they know me? Don’t they know what my life has been about?”
I guess you don't know Joe.
.....well, I’m confused, your post (last sentence) states something to the effect there is a pending trial. Is that not true?
I’m having a hard time understanding exactly what position you are taking.
Do you support the Paterno family or the school or somewhere in between?
My view is that Paterno seemingly came to believe he screwed up by not having done more to stop Sandusky. Doesn’t that pretty well amount to THE END (of story) as far as Joe Paterno’s role is concerned?
On a percentage basis, what do you think the schools degree of fault in the whole affair was? What do you think the degree of fault of Paterno’s is?
I don’t know. You seem to know a lot of facts so I would be interested in your opinion.
Here is basically what I know (not all of it) as posted on another thread asking me why I hate the ncaa - which I do btw.
I hold the ncaa way down the list of culprits here. Way below the PA OAG, PSU’s own b.o.t/administration, freeh, and his fairy tales, ambulance chasing atty’s w/ “memory repression experts”, and many others are probably above them.
I think we’ll find that the PSU b.o.t. themselves crafted the Consent Decree because that’s they way they do things. Frazier (ceo Merck), Peetz (ceo BNY Mellon), and Surma (former ceo US Steel) basically took over the University.
Tommy Corbett jumped in and got Spanier as his prize. Surma wanted Joe. (google Vic Surma Jr.) sometime. Peetz and Frazier went along and then went into corporate defense mode (which Frazier perfected after killing thousands with Vioxx).
They had to stand behind their decisions, so they commissioned freeh, thinking it would justify their decision making. All that worked until people started actually reading the report.
I think it will also come about that the PA OAG used freeh’s flawed report to file charges against Spanier, which I would assume is a big no no. There is a very active Spanier vs. Freeh defamation lawsuit going forward. There are also rumored federal investigations into the second mile as well as the PA OAG.
It’s a mess that if I hadn’t followed it as closely as I have, and someone tried to tell me all the details, I wouldn’t believe them. They want to make movies about this? It will have to be a trilogy, and we’re not even to halftime yet.
Might start to play the Hilary Clinton, "I do NOT RECALL" defense? Because of said accident.
Any news in the way of Freeh going to anyplace to give a speech of any kind, i.e., to show that all of his mental abilities are still firing on all cylinders?
When your that deep in what appears to be a setup of Joe, you reach for anything, if you get my drift.
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