Sandusky seeks State College-area jury for trial

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Jerry Sandusky's lawyer filed court paperwork Wednesday arguing that jurors in his child sex abuse trial should be chosen from the community where he lives and suggesting that a trial delay might be the best way to address the intense publicity generated by the case.

Defense attorney Joe Amendola wrote that the former Penn State assistant football coach is opposed to a request by the state attorney general's office to bring in out-of-county jurors, saying publicity about Sandusky's case has been so pervasive that jurors from other counties will also have been saturated with news coverage.

Sandusky "believes selecting jurors from a county outside Centre County will involve the same difficulties that the parties and the court will face in selecting a Centre County jury, and the jurors from any other county in Pennsylvania will face the same challenges and conflicts in being fair and impartial," a defense filing stated.

The attorney general's office asked for an out-of-county jury last week, calling news coverage of Sandusky's arrest "spectacular in its breadth and intensity."

Prosecutors said in that motion that people who live near Penn State might not be able to "insulate themselves" from the school and would face "a Gordian knot of conscious and even subconscious conflicts and difficulties."

"It would put potential jurors in that county in an extremely difficult if not impossible position, and that is something that does not exist in the same degree in any other county in Pennsylvania," Nils Frederiksen, spokesman for the attorney general's office, said Wednesday.

Frederiksen said the court's deadline to ask that the trial be held outside Centre County has passed without either side making such a request.

Amendola said one solution might be to delay the trial, letting the news coverage "subside" and giving the judge time to determine how to proceed. Amendola said in an email Wednesday that he planned to discuss the idea with prosecutors "to see how everyone feels about it in light of all the media coverage."

Frederiksen declined to comment Wednesday on a potential delay.

Amendola also filed a response in opposition to a request prosecutors made Tuesday to have Sandusky's bail conditions amended so that he would not be permitted outside his home except for medical treatment. Prosecutors said neighbors have raised safety concerns and reported seeing Sandusky watch children on the school playground adjacent to his backyard.