BELLEFONTE - After more than eight hours of deliberations, the jury called it a night late Thursday in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse trial in Centre County Court.
They asked Senior Judge John Cleland to rehear testimony from former Penn State assistant coach Mike McQueary and Dr. Jonathan Dranov about an alleged shower incident McQueary saw at the Lasch Football Building. They will hear that testimony again on Friday morning.
In his one hour, 10-minute closing argument, lead prosecutor Joseph McGettigan told the jury that the defense team's theory that Jerry Sandusky's accusers were money grubbers and that there was a conspiracy to get Sandusky would collapse under its own weight when considering the evidence.
Following his closing, the jury was given the case to begin deliberations.
McGettigan quoted defense attorney Joe Amendola's opening arguments when he said, "The commonwealth has overwhelming evidence against Mr. Sandusky."
He said when faced with overwhelming evidence, defendants often do as Sandusky has done - admits what he can, denies what he can, paints people as liars, makes countercharges against the accusers and claims a conspiracy.
McGettigan talked about the victims and how each responded to testifying in different ways but it didn't diminish the truth of what they said.
For the first time in the trial, McGettigan called Sandusky "the perfect serial predator pedophile" and said that the way he treated his victims matched the patterns of a pedophile.
He said that the victims' childhood had been ravaged by a pedophile, as he walked behind Sandusky.
He pointed to the defendant and said, "Give him the justice he deserves. Find him guilty of everything."
As the jury left to deliberate the case, one of the remaining alternates was dismissed and the other two will be sequestered separately in case they would be called in.
Earlier today, Amendola said in his closing argument that the accusers basically were coached by the police investigators.
"The system decided Mr. Sandusky was guilty, and the system set out to convict him," he said in his hour and 20-minute closing.
Amendola criticized the police for coaching the alleged victims, getting them to implicate Sandusky in serious crimes like anal sex and oral sex.
He spent a lot of time going over the Bob Costas interview, pointing out that Sandusky denied the charges, which he said was all that his client could do.
Amendola kept asking during the closing argument how his client could answer the charges, particularly when there was no physical evidence.
He was critical of Mike McQueary's testimony, noting that he was the one man to testify who supposedly witnessed a sexual offense, yet he was not able to say that he saw a sexual offense occurring.
"All (Sandusky) ever wanted to do was help kids. He helped thousands of kids since he was a kid. Jerry ... he's touchy, he's feely, he's sensitive, he loves kids," Amendola said.
Prior to Amendola's closing, Cleland explained the charges to the jury and went over some of the evidence. He told the jury that taking a shower with a child is not a crime, nor is putting soap in their hair. He said what would be a crime is if there was intent on the other person's part to satisfy their own sexual desires.
