But if these email exchanges are true, it could prove that Paterno’s testimony to the grand jury was false, a complete lie and that he was indeed involved in a cover up after the fact, after his initial report.
While Patnerno is dead and can’t be prosecuted for it, if true, it could have serious legal consequences for Curley and Spanier. If they admitted in their email exchanges that they knew that a crime was committed and they had initially admitted they had an obligation to report it to the proper authorities, and then changed their minds based on a conversation with Paterno, that convinced them to treat Sandusky “humanely” and that it should not be reported for whatever reason, and that they furthermore discussed the potential legal fallout of not reporting it should it ever become public, it would seem they weighed that bad outcome against the bad outcome of the bad publicity and deemed it was the lesser of those risk of not reporting it and keeping it “quiet”.
It would be really nice to have the whole story.
Yes it would. And I think when the whole story comes out, Sandusy is not the only one to face criminal charges.
I have thought from the beginning that many people should be charged criminally - Spanier, Curley, and Schultz at a minimum. There’s also Corbett and Ray Gricar, whose mysterious disappearance certainly doesn’t make things any clearer. The University and perhaps the state are in this up to their eyeballs.
I do not know whether Paterno told Curley not to pursue anything. My initial reading of those e-mails was that Paterno wanted them to pursue notification and Curley was the one who changed his mind. Logically I have not been able to wrap my mind around the fact that Paterno would’ve simultaneously reported it to his superiors (no matter how incompetent or symbolic, still his superiors), set up contact with the witness (McQueary), and still try to cover it up. You’d have to believe that he changed his mind after the initial meeting, which is certainly possible. It just seems more likely that Curley, Spanier, and Schultz were the ones involved in this.
I think that a passing reference to Paterno in the e-mails doesn’t clear anything up regarding what role he played in the aftermath. I’d have to check back to what he said initially, but I remember it being reported that there were at least two meetings with Paterno, Curley, and Schultz, so this could have come after that.