As a sequestered jury deliberates the fate of Jerry Sandusky, his adopted son said he was one of the former Penn State assistant coach's sexual abuse victims. NBC News' Michael Isikoff reports from Bellefonte, Pa.
By M. Alex Johnson, msnbc.com
The jury in Jerry Sandusky's child sexual abuse trial resumed work Friday morning by reviewing testimony from two key prosecution witnesses who the defense argued had failed to back up their accounts of an alleged incident in a Penn State University shower.
Jurors worked through the afternoon and evening Thursday in Centre County Court in Bellefonte, Pa., where Sandusky, 68, the former defensive coordinator for Penn State's storied football team and founder of the Second Mile charity for troubled children, is awaiting their verdict on 48 counts alleging that he abused 10 boys over 15 years.
Before they broke for the night, jurors told Judge John Cleland that they wanted to rehear the testimony of former Penn State assistant coach Michael McQueary, who testified that he overheard and saw Sandusky apparently having sex with a young boy in a football locker room shower, and Jonathan Dranov, a family friend who testified that McQueary told him about incident.
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McQueary testified last week that he saw a young boy ? identified in the indictment as "Victim 2" ? in a Penn State shower with his hands against the wall and Sandusky standing up against him from behind. He said he heard a "skin-on-skin smacking sound" and that he had "no doubt" that Sandusky was engaging in anal sex with the boy.
Testifying for the defense this week, Dranov said McQueary described hearing sounds he considered sexual in nature but didn't give a graphic description of what he saw.
"I kept saying, 'What did you see?'" Dranov testified. "Each time, he would come back to the sounds. It just seemed to make him more upset, so I backed off that."
The lead defense attorney, Joseph Amendola, argued in his closing statements Thursday that McQueary "assumed" sex was occurring without having actually seen any.
And he contended that Dranov must not have believed that the incident was as serious as he later said because he didn't report it to police. As a physician, Dranov is required by law to report any indication of child abuse.
The jury of seven women and five men is being sequestered during deliberations without access to computers, phones or any other way to hear news coverage of the trial. That means they wouldn't have heard that Sandusky's adopted son Matt said that he had been prepared to testify the he, too, was a victim of abuse by his father, according to a statement issued by attorneys who said they are representing the younger Sandusky.
(NBC News and msnbc.com generally do not identify victims of sexual assaults, but Sandusky chose to identify himself in a public statement released through his attorneys.)
Sources told NBC News that Jerry Sandusky abandoned plans to testify in his own defense because of the prospect of damaging rebuttal testimony by his son.
Travis Weaver, who alleges that he was abused by former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, tells NBC Bews' Kate Snow, "I'll be OK when he's in prison."
Nor would they have heard the account of Travis Weaver, 30, of Ohio, who attended Second Mile camps as a youth. Weaver told NBC News in an interview that aired Thursday night that Sandusky performed oral sex on him in the upstairs bedroom of the Sanduskys' home.
Weaver testified to one of the two grand juries but wasn't mentioned in the indictment or called as a witness during the trial.
Several of the counts in the indictment are so-called mandated felonies, meaning Cleland would have no discretion in sentencing. Most carry sentences of 10 to 20 years in prison, meaning that even if he is convicted on only a handful of those counts, Sandusky could spend the rest of his life in prison.
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