Mark Wilson / Getty Images
Jerry Sandusky made no comments as he arrived for court Thursday in Bellefonte, Pa.
By Kimberly Kaplan, NBC News, and M. Alex Johnson, msnbc.com
Updated at 12:14 p.m. ET: "The system" prejudged Jerry Sandusky and "set out to convict him" even though the case against him makes no sense, his attorney told jurors Thursday during closing arguments at the former Penn State University assistant football coach's child sexual abuse trial.
Jurors were expected to begin deliberating later Thursday after hearing prosecutors' final arguments. Sandusky, 68, the former longtime defensive coordinator at Penn State, is charged with 48 counts alleging that he abused 10 boys over 15 years. Two grand jury reports accused him of having used his connection to one of the nation's premier college football programs to "groom" the boys, whom he met through his Second Mile charity for troubled children, for sexual relationships.
"No one wins in this case. This is awful no matter what happens," said Sandusky's lead attorney, Joseph Amendola. "If Jerry Sandusky did this — if he did this — he should rot in jail. Bless his heart, that's my feeling.
"But what if he didn't do this? His life is destroyed."
Amendola repeated the phrases "it doesn't make sense" and "does that make sense?" like mantras throughout his 75-minute closing statement, highlighting what he said were inconsistencies and logical impossibilities in the evidence against Sandusky.
"All these alleged charges only go back to the mid-'90s, so out of the blue, after all these years, when Mr. Sandusky is in his mid-50s, Mr. Sandusky decides to become a pedophile? Does that make sense to anybody? Does that make sense?"
Amendola accused the eight men who testified that Sandusky had abused them as children of seeking to cash in on eventual civil trials against his client.
"We can understand these kids now want to be compensated — the lawyers want to make all these dollars — but it still doesn't mean Mr. Sandusky did this," he said.
Amendola also accused investigators of having coached the alleged victims to say what they wanted to hear because they had already decided to ignore possible evidence that Sandusky was innocent.
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"The system decided Mr. Sandusky was guilty, and the system set out to convict him," he said, focusing on the testimony of two state investigators whose testimony appeared to be contradictory.
Amendola said that from the beginning, Sandusky was determined to fight the charges, which he said explained Sandusky's decision to call NBC's Bob Costas to give a live interview on "Rock Center With Brian Williams" last November.
Jerry Sandusky spoke to NBC's Bob Costas in a "Rock Center" interview in November.
"Jerry has been in sports his whole life. He knows who (Costas) is. He's a tough interviewer — they're tough interviews — (but) Jerry decided he wanted to tell the world he was innocent," Amendola said.
"A reasonable person says, 'Where there is this much smoke there much be plenty of fire. What do you say?'" Amendola said, paraphrasing Costas. "He said, 'I say I am innocent of those charges.'"
Three more charges dismissed
Sandusky originally was charged with 52 counts, but Judge John Cleland, who had previously dismissed one of them, threw out three more Thursday morning.
Two were charges alleging involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with one of the 10 alleged victims, which Cleland said the evidence didn't support. Had the jury convicted Sandusky on those two counts, Cleland said, he would have been required to set the convictions aside.
The third count was a duplicate of another count, he ruled.
Sandusky made no comment as he arrived at court Thursday morning with his wife, Dottie, who testified Tuesday that she never heard or saw her husband engage in any inappropriate behavior with children during their 45 years of marriage.
Sandusky had been widely expected to testify Wednesday before his lawyers abruptly rested their case after a lengthy conference in the judge's chambers.
A source close to Sandusky said "there was no one factor that led to the decision," but NBC News reported Thursday that Sandusky decided not to testify after his lawyers were warned that prosecutors would call his adopted son, Matt, as a rebuttal witness if he did so. The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told NBC News that Matt Sandusky was prepared to deliver damaging testimony about his father.
NBC's Savannah Guthrie discusses why the prosecution didn't call Jerry Sandusky's adopted son as a witness if he was able to provide damaging evidence.
In his final instructions, Cleland told jurors that they had great leeway in determining whether Sandusky's alleged behavior, while possibly troubling, may not have been criminal.
"It is certainly a crime for a man to have oral sex with a boy," he said, but "... other forms of physical contact are more problematic."
For example, he said, "It's not necessarily a crime for a man to take a shower with a boy. It's not necessarily a crime for a man to wash a boy's hair or lather his back or shoulders or to engage in back rubbing."
The bottom line was Sandusky's intent, "not the child's reaction," he told the jurors, who heard eight of the 10 alleged victims testify that they were traumatized by Sandusky's alleged advances.
"Any behavior motivated by sexual behavior was a crime," but if Sandusky "did not act out of sexual desire, then he did not commit a crime, even if he did exercise bad judgment."
In other words, "You must distinguish a display of innocent affection from lust," Cleland instructed.
The trial, which opened two weeks ago, is the culmination of an investigation of Sandusky that led to the firing of head coach Joe Paterno, a college football legend who won more games than any other major college coach in history. Sandusky, who was at his side for many of those victories, was for many years presumed to be Paterno's heir-apparent.
Paterno died in January, a few weeks after the Penn State Board of Trustees dismissed him for not having done enough to stop Sandusky's alleged abuse.
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