Joe Paterno's death causes key grand jury testimony to be inadmissible

Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno passed away on Sunday, a victim of lung cancer. Paterno’s legacy in the wake of the recent child sexual abuse allegations against one of his long-time assistant coaches, Jerry Sandusky, is still being written, but Paterno’s death may have an immediate impact in one area, The New York Times reports: the ongoing prosecution against former Penn State athletic director Tim Curley and former university senior vice president Gary Schultz.

Curley and Schultz have been charged with failing to report to the authorities what they knew about a specific incident of alleged molestation that occurred in the shower of Penn State’s athletic facility in 2002, and also with allegedly lying to the grand jury. To summarize, Mike McQueary, a graduate assistant in 2002, reported to Paterno that he had witnessed a sexual assault involving Sandusky and a boy in the showers. Subsequently, McQueary testified to the grand jury, he also told Curley and Schultz about the sexual nature of what he had witnessed.