Jerry Sandusky’s Attorney Admits Defense Was Unprepared

Jerry Sandusky’s defense attorney Karl Rominger took to the airwaves on his personal radio show just one day after his client’s conviction and reiterated that he and his co-counsel, Joe Amendola, were simply unprepared for trial. Rominger went so far as to say both he and Amendola tried to get off the case the morning of jury selection.

Both Rominger and Amendola have made a series of perplexing and odd statements since their client was found guilty on 45 of 48 counts. On Friday, shortly before a strangely gregarious exchange during an interview with CNN, Amendola praised his counterparts who prosecuted his client as “exemplary.” He was also effusive in his praise of Judge John Cleland, who he said ran a fair trial, save for one minor quibble about the judge’s denial of their request for a continuance.

On Saturday, Rominger’s statements to Sara Ganim shed some light on a state of affairs that one would think would provoke more than a minor quibble with Cleland. Rominger described just how woefully unprepared he and Amendola were as the trial began, articulating that they simply cobbled together every name they could think of when putting together their witness lists. Via Ganim of The Patriot-News:

“Our witness list was every name we could possibly think of, or that anyone else could possibly think of, because we had no idea ... we had no time to figure it out,” he said.

[...]

“Sue Paterno’s name was only on that list because he name came up on one of the police reports, for no important reason whatsoever,” Rominger said. “We would have taken her off the list if we had actually had time to read the report where her name showed up.”

It’s a pretty candid and remarkable statement to utter publicly, but not necessarily surprising from the attorney who was tweeting Friday night that he had successfully cross-examined Mike McQueary to not sustain the one charge against Sandusky that he said cost Joe Paterno his job.

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