Oct 10, 2012 3 min read

Our prisons are full of “innocent” people, to hear the inmates tell it. No doubt, some small percentage of them are correct. They are the victims of prosecutorial misconduct, botched investigations, eyewitness misidentifications and the like. But the difference between those folks and Jerry Sandusky is that in proclaiming their innocence, they generally don’t blame the victims of the crimes for which they were sentenced. Sandusky’s performance in court Tuesday at his sentencing, and in a statement made a day earlier, was cringe-worthy, tone-deaf, arrogant and horribly misguided. The former Penn State defensive coordinator, who got a minimum of 30 years for his heinous crimes against children, blamed the victims of his vile actions for putting him behind bars. In Sandusky’s warped mind, his problems stemmed from one bad kid who decided to tell a lie about the coach, which led to other money-hungry fake victims climbing on the bandwagon, aided and abetted by the news media, police, the university – pretty much everybody except President Obama, Mitt Romney and Big Bird. “We lost to speculation and stories that were influenced by people who wanted to convict me,” Sandusky said in a statement released Monday to the Patriot-News of Harrisburg. “We must fight unfairness and consistency and dishonesty.” And in court Tuesday, he said, “In my heart, I did not do these alleged disgusting acts.” It boggles the mind to think that anyone cited in Sandusky’s paranoid ramblings had any reason to conspire to bring down a man who, until this scandal broke, had been a respected former college football coach known for his work with underprivileged kids. Sandusky is certainly entitled to appeal his conviction, but he’ll have to pardon the vast majority of the populace who think that the jurors who convicted him on scores of counts involving sexual abuse of children came to the correct conclusion. Sandusky might have more people in his corner had it been just one youngster who came forward alleging sexual misdeeds, but when 10 of them exhibit the bravery needed to walk into a courtroom and tell the stories of how they were abused by Sandusky, and their testimony is virtually unimpeached by the defense, it stretches credulity for anyone to believe that the former coach was the victim of a conspiracy so intricate and unlikely that it would make the Gunpowder Plot look like a middle-school prank. Sandusky has zero chance of winning now in the court of public opinion, and fortunately, his chances of winning in the appellate courts are roughly that of the prospects of an ice cube plunked down in equatorial Africa. And if the previous allegations weren’t enough, were Sandusky to win an appeal granting him a new trial, prosecutors have at their disposal even more alleged victims willing to testify, including one of Sandusky’s adopted sons. Prosecutor Joe McGettigan had a pretty fair summation of Sandusky’s remarks in court Tuesday, calling them “a masterpiece of banal self-delusion, completely untethered from reality and without any acceptance of responsibility. It was entirely self-focused as if he, again, were the victim.” Sandusky said in court that he hoped “as a result of our hardship and suffering, that somehow, some way, something good will come out of this.” For his victims, the good that came out of Tuesday’s sentencing was the realization that Sandusky will almost certainly never again be a free man and will draw his final breath in a prison cell. It’s known as justice being served.