Hours before Sandusky’s sentencing, his lawyer was drinking with Penn State students
Just 12 hours before Jerry Sandusky was sentenced to 30-60 years in prison and his lawyers held a press conference criticizing the media coverage, lack of preparation time and the overall bias of the proceedings, one of those lawyers was drinking with Penn State students and trying to find a lady of the evening.
Sandusky's co-counsel, Karl Rominger, sent out a tweet Monday evening offering to buy alcohol at Zeno's Bar in State College and added "Coeds appreciated."
Rominger got a few takers, many from the independent student online news site, Onward State, and a reporter from the Daily Collegian, the student newspaper, who happened to be female and was there to get a story, not booze and was quickly rebuffed by Rominger.
What ensued with some of the reporters from Onward State was a night of drinks paid for by Rominger, or Sandusky if you want to get technical, the exchange of information about the trial and Rominger trying to get some tail.
Drew Balis, a reporter with Onward State, who was there to drink and not report, gave Crossingbroad.com the details:
We walked in there. Rominger was sitting there at the bar and we introduced ourselves one-by-one, joked with him that we were covering the trial and probably shouldn't be here, but whatever. He went around and bought everybody a drink.
He was pretty relaxed and we asked him a couple of things about [sentencing], and he pretty much said his job was done and, "Tomorrow, I'll just be praying." And he mimicked the praying motion.
Kevin Horne, Onward State's managing editor, gave play-by-play through his Twitter account:
After the group left the bar around midnight, Horne and some friends ended up sharing Taco Bell with Rominger. Horne recounted the night to Crossingbroad.com:
We sat there and shot the [expletive] for a half an hour, 45 minutes or so. Rominger told us to put our phones away at one point when we were talking. He said he didn't expect to get paid for the case-- he was doing it for publicity for his firm and that's why he took it.
The group left Taco Bell around 2 a.m. and somehow Rominger and his hangover made it to court in the morning. But not before Rominger had this gem:
He also said Sandusky "wasn't going to last long in prison" and that he stood a 50/50 chance of winning his appeal.
I guess you can't blame a guy for wanting to blow off a little steam. He defended one of the country's most hated people and lost. Earlier in the evening he had to listen to his client give a self-serving interview to a local radio station and then had to watch him do it again in front of victims, families and more media.
The whole thing couldn't have been easy to bear. Remember, no matter how you feel about the whole thing, criminals need defense, too.
Still, why advertise your whereabouts and invite students? I guess it's just another misstep in a defense full of them. But hey, it makes for a good story.
Thanks to Crossingbroad.com
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