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Judge Throws Out Spanier Conviction, Pa. Attorney General Will Appeal

Matt Rourke
/
Associated Press

Updated Wednesday, 12:11pm

Pa. Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced today he intends to appeal the judge's decision to overturn Spanier's conviction.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A federal judge has thrown out former Penn State President Graham Spanier's child-endangerment conviction, less than a day before he was due to turn himself in to jail.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Karoline Mehalchick in Scranton, Pennsylvania, issued a decision late Tuesday that gave state prosecutors three months to retry Spanier.

She agreed with Spanier's argument he was improperly charged under a 2007 law for actions that occurred in 2001, when he was responding to a complaint about Jerry Sandusky showering with a boy on campus.

Spanier had been due to report to jail early Wednesday to begin serving a minimum sentence of two months.

The 70-year-old Spanier was forced out as president shortly after Sandusky's 2011 arrest.
 

Kristine Allen is Program Director of WPSU-FM. She also files feature stories for WPSU on the arts, culture, science, and more. When she's not at WPSU, Kris enjoys playing folk fiddle, acting, singing and portrait-sketching. She is also a self-confessed "science geek." Kris started working in public radio in college, at age 17, and says she "just couldn't stop."
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