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Jerry Sandusky gets sentence of 30 to 60 years for child sex abuse
Editor's note: Former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky will likely spend the rest of his life in prison, after a judge handed down a prison sentence Tuesday for his convictions on child sexual abuse charges. Judge John Cleland said Sandusky will face no less than 30 years and no more than 60 years, with credit for time served. He was convicted in June of sexually abusing 10 boys over a 15-year period. The 68-year-old had faced a maximum of 400 years in prison. His attorneys have 10 days to appeal the decision. They have already vowed to appeal his conviction. Follow along below as we learn more details.
[Updated at 11:57 a.m. ET] Sandusky attorney Karl Rominger said that should the defense team succeed in getting a new trial, one of the strategies will be to argue that Sandusky may have crossed boundaries by showering with children, but that nothing illegal happened.
Rominger was responding to a question from In Session, after Tuesday’s sentencing, about how Sandusky’s showering with children can be defended.
“I don’t think it was ever couched as normal behavior ... but crossing boundaries may be Sandusky’s best defense,” Rominger said.
Rominger said that in a new trial, a psychologist would testify that crossing boundaries can “create victims that don’t exist."
“Nobody is saying (showering with children) is completely appropriate, but it’s not criminal,” Rominger said.
The defense team said it will appeal for a new trial, contending, among other things, that it was granted too little time to prepare for the case (see 10:45 a.m. entry). Sandusky contends he is innocent of the charges, and his team says he could have been acquitted if his lawyers had more time to examine the case.
[Updated at 11:20 a.m. ET] Here's a little detail of how Judge John Cleland explained his sentence in court:
The law allows a sentence of hundreds of years, the judge told Sandusky, but he called such a sentence too esoteric.
The judge wanted to give Sandusky a sentence that wasn't so “abstract,” something that Sandusky could understand, CNN’s Jason Carroll reported.
The judge effectively gave the 68-year-old Sandusky a life sentence, Carroll reported.
Sandusky will be 98 when he is first able to ask for parole.
A Soldier's Story: The drawdown begins
A Soldier's Story is a project that I've been involved with for the past two years.
It began simply out of desire to re-engage viewers about the ongoing war in Afghanistan.
I sensed many viewers were becoming apathetic to hearing stories about the war partly because the U.S. has been at war for so long.
Watch A Soldier's Story tonight at 10:30 ET on CNN.
I thought one of the best ways to get people interested again was to make it personal.
So we created A Soldier's Story, which is a project where we follow soldiers over a period of time into battle.
[cnn-video url="http://cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2011/08/08/exp.am.carroll.coming.home.cnn"%5DThis weekend's half -hour special is the final installment of our work.
This time, we take a look at some of the critical questions surrounding the drawdown of troops. Is this the right time? Are Afghan security forces ready to take over? We get answers from the experts. Not the pundits or politicians, but from the soldiers on the front line.
People like 1st Sgt. Randy Shorter. Shorter is a combat veteran, who we have followed into his fourth deployment. He has strong opinions about where coalition forces and the Afghan security forces stand.
We'll also show you how soldiers are finding the insurgents who are trying to disrupt peace by planting roadside bombs. Despite 10 years of fighting, it is still a difficult process; one that involves skill and a bit of luck.
The interviews you will see are candid and answer not only questions about security.
The soldiers speak frankly about the second battle they face - the emotional struggle many are expecting to face once their deployment is over and they return home.
Much of what you will hear will be in the soldiers' own words. I hope you will see, as I did. there is much more to the men and women who sign up and risk their lives to defend their country.
New Yorkers weigh in on Rep. Weiner
Rep. Anthony Weiner is under pressure in Washington to resign over his sexting-and-lying scandal, but he still enjoys support among some of his constituents in the New York City borough of Queens.
CNN's Jason Carroll is speaking with New Yorkers on the street Saturday to get their opinions.
"I have a very hard time with the resigning thing," Dale Kaplan told Carroll. "But personally, in a very selfish way, I was crying when I heard about it because he was a voice for things that I strongly believe in, and that voice has now been taken away. Who's going to take his place? Nobody. And I'm so, so incredibly upset about that.
"Should he resign? Yeah, I guess he should; everybody else is resigning," she continued. "I mean, I don't think he did anything so awful, but he's taking away from the party. ... It's just causing so much furor that we shouldn't be talking about. That's the only reason.
"I feel sorry for him as a person," Kaplan added, "because, to see a man's life fall apart right in front of your eyes, it's very, very depressing."
Others in Weiner's 9th Congressional District may be similarly conflicted. A Marist College poll released Thursday showed 56% of registered voters there don't believe he should step down; 33% believe he should. The district covers portions of Queens and Brooklyn.
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