PA Court Orders New Sentence For Jerry Sandusky

Convicted child abuser Jerry Sandusky will be resentenced following an appeals process which determined that the structuring of his original sentence was illegal, the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled on Tuesday.

Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach, was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison in 2012 after being convicted of 52 counts of sexual abuse of young boys. However, that punishment relied on an improper use of mandatory minimum sentences, the Superior Court found.

Sandusky has been engaged in the appeals process for years. His attorneys put forward several claims in their latest efforts to the Superior Court, arguing that he was not provided with appropriate representation by his lawyers, a charge which as dismissed by the court.

Attorneys also unsuccessfully argued in the appeal that he was not given a fair trial due to a series of errors made in the cases.

However, the Superior Court did "affirm in part" the claim made in Sandusky's appeal that the way his 30 to 60 year prison sentence was designed was not legal.

The problem lies in the fact that Sandusky's sentencing included the use of mandatory minimums. The minimums were improperly used in the design of the sentence based on Pennsylvania Supreme Court rulings from 2013 and 2016, according to the opinion handed down on Tuesday.

In that opinion, the Superior Court rejected the appeal's ask for the sentence to be overturned, and simply said Sandusky must be resentenced without the use of mandatory minimums.

The case will now be returned to Centre County court. A date has not yet been sent.

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