Jerry Sandusky jury retires for night; will rehear some testimony - Los Angeles Times
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Jerry Sandusky jury retires for night; will rehear some testimony

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The jury weighing sex-abuse charges against former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky adjourned for the night late Thursday and will resume deliberations in the morning, when members will rehear testimony about what allegedly happened in the shower at the school’s football training facility.

More than seven hours after jurors began deliberations, they asked to rehear testimony from Mike McQueary, a former graduate assistant at the school who said he saw Sandusky abusing a boy in the shower, and from the friend he talked to that night, Dr. Jonathan Dranov. Testifying as a defense witness, Dranov gave a different account of what McQueary told him than McQueary described during the prosecution’s case.

Judge John Cleland told the jurors that McQueary’s testimony was about two hours long and Dranov’s was about 20 minutes.

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“It would be a long night” if they tried to review the McQueary testimony, he said, according to media reports from the courtroom. “My suggestion to you is we address that question first thing in the morning — if that’s OK with you,” Cleland said. “You’ve been at it a little while now. I’ll leave it to your discretion.”

The jurors left the courtroom to discuss the issue. They decided to wait until morning and retired for the night at 9:37 p.m., according to the official notification from court officers in Bellefonte, Pa. Deliberations had begun about 1:12 p.m.

McQueary testified that he returned to the football locker room on a winter night in 2001 and saw Sandusky in the showers with a naked boy, 10 to 12 year old. McQueary told jurors that he saw Sandusky directly behind the boy’s back, moving his body in a way that convinced him that a sex act was in progress.

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Dranov, however, said McQueary gave no such graphic description that night, saying only that he heard sounds he considered sexual.

The case involves the boy known in court papers as Victim 2, whose identity has never been ascertained.

Sandusky is accused of 48 criminal counts of abusing 10 boys over 15 years.

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