Former Penn State President Graham Spanier has been ordered to begin serving a two-month jail sentence on May 1.
Specially-presiding Judge John Boccabella filed the order late last week in Dauphin County Court, where in March 2017 Spanier was convicted on one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child for his handling of a 2001 report about former Penn State football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky with a boy in a campus locker room shower. Spanier was found not guilty on felony charges of child endangerment and conspiracy.
Boccabella’s order allows Spanier, 70, to serve his sentence at the Centre County Correctional Facility, if he receives the warden’s approval. Spanier also will be permitted to participate in a work-release program during his incarceration, if deemed eligible and approved by the correctional facility.
Spanier has been free on bail as he appealed the conviction. Pennsylvania Superior Court denied his appeal and in February the state Supreme Court declined to hear his case. In March, he filed an appeal in federal court, claiming that the conviction violated his rights under the U.S. Constitution.
His attorneys have argued at the state and federal level that the conviction was based on a statute that was not in effect until six years after he received the report, that the jury was wrongly instructed they could convict on the later statute and that the conviction was later upheld on the basis of a statute-of-limitations exception that state prosecutors did not raise before or at trial.
The federal appeal did not stay his sentence and a judge rejected a petition to expedite the case, which is still pending.
Spanier’s sentence also includes two months of home confinement, a $7,500 fine and 200 hours of community service.
Former Athletic Director Tim Curley and Senior Vice President Gary Schultz both pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment charges in the same case in 2017. They each served short jail sentences later that year in Centre County.
Curley and Schultz informed Spanier of former Penn State football assistant Mike McQueary’s report about Sandusky in 2001. All maintained that they did not believe McQueary had described child abuse, only that it was inappropriate ‘horse play.’ McQueary would later testify that what he saw was sexual in nature.
The former administrators did not report the incident to law enforcement, instead opting to talk to Sandusky, bar him from bringing children to campus facilities and report it to Dr. Jack Raykovitz, the head of Sandusky’s Second Mile charity for at-risk youth where prosecutors say Sandusky found most of his victims.
Sandusky was convicted in 2012 on 45 counts related to child sexual abuse and was sentenced to 30-60 years in state prison. He maintains his innocence and continues to seek a new trial.
Spanier was removed from his position as university president in November 2011, but has remained a tenured faculty member on leave.
