He deserves it, Paterno and all his cohorts did nothing when he witnessed that awful crap and then they ruined his career.
Good for him.
A Centre County jury awarded Mike McQueary $7.3 million on Thursday, finding that Pennsylvania State University defamed him for the central role he played in the prosecution of Jerry Sandusky and three school administrators accused of covering up Sandusky’s sexual abuse of children.
By Jeremy Roebuck / Philadelphia Inquirer STAFF WRITER
BELLEFONTE, Pa. — A Centre County jury awarded Mike McQueary $7.3 million on Thursday, finding that Pennsylvania State University defamed him for the central role he played in the prosecution of Jerry Sandusky and three school administrators accused of covering up Sandusky’s sexual abuse of children.
It took barely four hours for the jury of eight women and four men — including two Penn State employees — to reach its decision on the former assistant football coach's claims of defamation and misrepresentation.
But Mr. McQueary will continue to wait for a judge to rule on whether Penn State's 2012 decision to oust him from his $104,000-a-year coaching job could be considered retaliation. Senior Judge Thomas Gavin, who is required under state law to decide the whistleblower claims, said he plans to issue a ruling in the coming weeks.
"What Penn State has done to Mike McQueary is outrageous," his lawyer Elliot Strokoff told the panel during closing argument. "He should not have been a scapegoat in this matter, and certainly not for five years."
Throughout the two-week trial, university lawyers maintained that its decision had nothing to do with Mr. McQueary's cooperation with Sandusky investigators. Instead, said university lawyer Nancy Conrad, the school simply chose not to renew his contract — along with those of other assistant coaches — in a routine staff shake-up after the firing of head football coach Joe Paterno.
"This is not a case about Jerry Sandusky," she said. "Any harm that Mike McQueary has suffered ... is the result of his own failures."
Whatever the reason for Mr. McQueary's dismissal, it became clear through testimony of dozens of witnesses that the impact of the investigation that put Penn State's football culture under a national microscope continues to ripple five years later. And few, Mr. McQueary testified last week, had felt those effects more than he had.
He quickly found himself a pariah and a target for death threats from some portions of Penn State's avid fan base, which blame him for tarnishing the reputation of the school's storied football program and Paterno, its iconic coach fired days after Sandusky's arrest.
Others questioned why he did not do more to intervene in February 2001, after witnessing Sandusky's sexual assault of a young boy in a campus locker-room shower.
Mr. McQueary has said that he reported what he saw to Paterno and two administrators in the days after the attack. None of them informed police or child welfare authorities.
Now divorced at 42, jobless and living with his parents at their State College home, the 6-foot-5 former quarterback testified last week that he has been unable to find work since Penn State placed him on paid leave, citing safety concerns in the days after Sandusky's arrest, and later decided not to renew his contract.
"He happens to be a very good football coach," Mr. Strokoff told jurors on Thursday. "But much more important than that is that he is an incredibly decent and good person ... Mr. McQueary has endured an awful lot in silence and with dignity."
But throughout the trial, Penn State lawyers pushed back at any suggestion that the university is to blame.
In videotaped testimony shown to the jury, Bill O'Brien — who immediately succeeded Paterno in the head coaching job and has since gone on to lead the Houston Texans — said he came to Penn State in 2012 with a list of his own staff he wanted to bring with him. He never considered Mr. McQueary for a job and his decision had nothing to do with Sandusky.
Matt Rhule, Temple University's head coach and one of Mr. McQueary's longtime friends and former teammates, told jurors he deemed Mr. McQueary too unseasoned to offer him a job when he took over the Owls' program in 2013.
"There was nothing remarkable about Mr. McQueary's resume," said Ms. Conrad, the lawyer for the university. "He stayed at one school, under one head coach. He had not developed the contacts or the resume to land a job in this competitive field of professional college football."
Since 2012, the school has paid more than $93 million to settle claims from 32 Sandusky accusers and university officials have acknowledged the school bears some responsibility to the victims of its former assistant football coach, who is serving a 30- to 60-year prison sentence for the sexual abuse of 10 boys.
Mr. McQueary is still expected to return to a courtroom as a star witness if the still-pending child endangerment case against former Penn State president Graham B. Spanier, ex-athletic director Tim Curley and former vice president Gary Schultz goes to trial.
Good for him.
A Centre County jury awarded Mike McQueary $7.3 million on Thursday, finding that Pennsylvania State University defamed him for the central role he played in the prosecution of Jerry Sandusky and three school administrators accused of covering up Sandusky’s sexual abuse of children.
By Jeremy Roebuck / Philadelphia Inquirer STAFF WRITER
BELLEFONTE, Pa. — A Centre County jury awarded Mike McQueary $7.3 million on Thursday, finding that Pennsylvania State University defamed him for the central role he played in the prosecution of Jerry Sandusky and three school administrators accused of covering up Sandusky’s sexual abuse of children.
It took barely four hours for the jury of eight women and four men — including two Penn State employees — to reach its decision on the former assistant football coach's claims of defamation and misrepresentation.
But Mr. McQueary will continue to wait for a judge to rule on whether Penn State's 2012 decision to oust him from his $104,000-a-year coaching job could be considered retaliation. Senior Judge Thomas Gavin, who is required under state law to decide the whistleblower claims, said he plans to issue a ruling in the coming weeks.
"What Penn State has done to Mike McQueary is outrageous," his lawyer Elliot Strokoff told the panel during closing argument. "He should not have been a scapegoat in this matter, and certainly not for five years."
Throughout the two-week trial, university lawyers maintained that its decision had nothing to do with Mr. McQueary's cooperation with Sandusky investigators. Instead, said university lawyer Nancy Conrad, the school simply chose not to renew his contract — along with those of other assistant coaches — in a routine staff shake-up after the firing of head football coach Joe Paterno.
"This is not a case about Jerry Sandusky," she said. "Any harm that Mike McQueary has suffered ... is the result of his own failures."
Whatever the reason for Mr. McQueary's dismissal, it became clear through testimony of dozens of witnesses that the impact of the investigation that put Penn State's football culture under a national microscope continues to ripple five years later. And few, Mr. McQueary testified last week, had felt those effects more than he had.
He quickly found himself a pariah and a target for death threats from some portions of Penn State's avid fan base, which blame him for tarnishing the reputation of the school's storied football program and Paterno, its iconic coach fired days after Sandusky's arrest.
Others questioned why he did not do more to intervene in February 2001, after witnessing Sandusky's sexual assault of a young boy in a campus locker-room shower.
Mr. McQueary has said that he reported what he saw to Paterno and two administrators in the days after the attack. None of them informed police or child welfare authorities.
Now divorced at 42, jobless and living with his parents at their State College home, the 6-foot-5 former quarterback testified last week that he has been unable to find work since Penn State placed him on paid leave, citing safety concerns in the days after Sandusky's arrest, and later decided not to renew his contract.
"He happens to be a very good football coach," Mr. Strokoff told jurors on Thursday. "But much more important than that is that he is an incredibly decent and good person ... Mr. McQueary has endured an awful lot in silence and with dignity."
But throughout the trial, Penn State lawyers pushed back at any suggestion that the university is to blame.
In videotaped testimony shown to the jury, Bill O'Brien — who immediately succeeded Paterno in the head coaching job and has since gone on to lead the Houston Texans — said he came to Penn State in 2012 with a list of his own staff he wanted to bring with him. He never considered Mr. McQueary for a job and his decision had nothing to do with Sandusky.
Matt Rhule, Temple University's head coach and one of Mr. McQueary's longtime friends and former teammates, told jurors he deemed Mr. McQueary too unseasoned to offer him a job when he took over the Owls' program in 2013.
"There was nothing remarkable about Mr. McQueary's resume," said Ms. Conrad, the lawyer for the university. "He stayed at one school, under one head coach. He had not developed the contacts or the resume to land a job in this competitive field of professional college football."
Since 2012, the school has paid more than $93 million to settle claims from 32 Sandusky accusers and university officials have acknowledged the school bears some responsibility to the victims of its former assistant football coach, who is serving a 30- to 60-year prison sentence for the sexual abuse of 10 boys.
Mr. McQueary is still expected to return to a courtroom as a star witness if the still-pending child endangerment case against former Penn State president Graham B. Spanier, ex-athletic director Tim Curley and former vice president Gary Schultz goes to trial.
