During a post-sentence motion hearing today, Jerry Sandusky’s defense attorney Joe Amendola testified that although the defense team was overwhelmed by the amount of material given to them before trial, there was nothing he would have done differently to prepare Sandusky’s defense.
Amendola said none of the material he was unable to review before the the trial would have affected the way he defended the former defensive coordinator.
Amendola said during his approximately 45 minutes of testimony at the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte that the defense was given over 12,000 pages of discovery material from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office, beginning in January 2012.
Amendola said that he didn’t have enough time to review much of the material and said that he “glanced over” most of it. Amendola said he didn’t have enough time to analyze the material before the trial date.
Amendola said that because he was not able to read all of the material, he couldn’t adequately represent Sandusky. Amendola said he filed a petition before the trial began to be released from representing the former coach.
He said that he filed the petition “totally out of frustration” because he didn’t have enough time to be thorough in reading the documents.
Amendola also admitted during his testimony that to this day, 6 months after the trial took place, he has not read all of the material given to the defense before the trial.
Senior Judge John Cleland did not rule on any of the post-sentencing motions at today's hearing.
Sandusky was convicted on 45 counts of child sex abuse involving 10 boys he met through his charity, The Second Mile. He is currently serving a 30-to-60 year prison sentence.
