The judge who for four years has presided over Jerry Sandusky's case _ through trial, sentencing and the still pending appeals _ withdrew from the case Friday with a withering opinion in which he accused the former football coach's lawyers of ethical violations and launching baseless attacks against him _ and nearly everyone else associated with the case.
Senior Judge John M. Cleland said that after presiding over four hearing days this year he had found little merit to any of Sandusky's arguments that his 2012 conviction on 45 counts of child sexual abuse should be overturned.
However, the judge wrote, groundless attacks on his own impartiality _ launched by Sandusky's lawyers in their final briefs to the court this week _ "created a cloud over these proceedings" that the Disciplinary Board of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court should investigate.
"In the current national environment in which some have chosen to embroil the courts and judges in controversy for less than honorable motives, the reality is that courts must err on the side of demonstrating fairness," he wrote in the eight-page filing in Centre County Court. "Counsel have elected to call into question my fairness and impartiality ... It would be imprudent to allow such a cloud to linger and to permit it to cast a shadow of legitimacy on the court, or any decision I would make."
The decision by Cleland resets the clock on Sandusky's latest push for a new trial _ a bid that so far has played out in court as a presentation of gossip from behind the scenes of the trial, conspiracy theories and acrimonious finger pointing.
Sandusky's appellate lawyer, Al Lindsay, did not immediately return calls for comment Friday. But after the latest hearing in the case earlier this month, he said he thought the proceedings were going well.
Among other claims, he has argued that Sandusky's trial lawyers provided a woefully ineffective defense and lacked the time, expertise and resources to fairly represent him.
His latest dispute with the judge centers on a December 2011 meeting between prosecutors, the judge, and Sandusky's trial lawyer, Joe Amendola, that occurred on the eve of what was supposed to be the coach's preliminary evidentiary hearing.
Amendola testified in August that he informed Cleland during that gathering at the Hilton Garden Inn in State College that he intended to forgo the proceeding over concerns that prosecutors might try to raise Sandusky's bail.
Lindsay now argues that decision was a fatal mistake and cost Sandusky the opportunity to hear testimony from the accusers who would later testify at his trial.
But in a court filing Monday, he also accused Cleland, for the first time, of pressuring Amendola to make that mistake.
Cleland, in his Friday opinion, flatly denied he had any influence and that he arrived at the meeting after the defense lawyer had already made his decision.
"The defendant's attorneys have impugned the competence and integrity of essentially everyone associated with the grand jury's investigation into the defendant's conduct, (his) trial and conviction and these post-conviction proceedings," Cleland said. "These collective accusations directed at attorneys, judges, jurors, investigators and victims, based on what can only be characterized as diaphanous evidence, is a form of advocacy that transcends the traditional boundaries of an honored profession."
Sandusky, 72, is serving a 30-to-60 year prison sentence in Greene County.
