Former Penn State University athletic director Tim Curley, left, and ex-Penn State Vice President Gary Schultz are charged with lying to a grand jury investigating suspected child abuse involving the university's former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky.

ANALYSIS

Many probably thought -- and hoped -- that the verdict in Jerry Sandusky's child sex abuse trial would end a very uncomfortable national conversation. The criminal proceedings still pending against former Penn State officials Tim Curley and Gary Schultz will dash that hope.  

Wes Oliver is a law professor and director of the Criminal Justice Program at the Duquesne University School of Law.

Curley and Schultz are accused of failing to report their suspicions about Sandusky’s behavior with minors to law enforcement authorities in 2001 and lying to the grand jury that investigated Sandusky in 2011.  Both men have pleaded not guilty to all the charges. At a hearing on Thursday, attorneys for both men and prosecutors will argue several pretrial motions, including one to dismiss the charges.

If the charges are not dismissed or pleaded out and the case goes to trial, they will require a judge or jury to determine how complicitous these men -- and perhaps others -- were in facilitating Sandusky's crimes. 

The perjury count in this case is somewhat unusual. At the time of the preliminary hearing, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania argued that Curley and Schultz lied to the grand jury when they characterized Mike McQueary's report of a 2001 incident in a Penn State shower room as "horsing around" that did not involve criminal conduct. Their testimony otherwise matched that of McQueary's father, John, who was called to testify as a corroborating witness. McQueary's father testified that McQueary described inappropriate and possibly sexual conduct. 

Until March 30, 2012, the prosecution's case rested entirely on the legal conclusions these men drew from the facts that the younger McQueary related to them. Unless the prosecution could show that Curley and Schultz believed in January 2011 when they testified before the grand jury that Mike McQueary described a crime to them in 2001 -- a very difficult task -- then this count was doomed to fail. 

Read more legal analysis from Wes Oliver

But in March, the prosecution responded to a defense request to explain exactly the falsehoods it was alleging occurred in the grand jury testimony.  In addition to the legal characterizations about the incident that the prosecution claimed amounted to perjury, the Commonwealth added some new claims. Curley, Penn State’s former athletic director, denied knowing anything about the 1998 incident. Schultz, a former vice president at the university, claimed that both the 1998 and 2001 incidents were reported to a child protective agency and that when he learned of the 2001 incident, he did not look into the 1998 allegation. Email traffic has demonstrated these statements to be false.  

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As the prosecution continues to base the perjury count -- at least in part -- on Curley and Schultz's characterization of the events, however, the trial will turn on the information they had about Sandusky in 2001.  Questions long asked will be renewed.  If Mike McQueary saw, and reported, a very serious and criminal incident in a shower, why did he do nothing to stop it?  If McQueary described molestation to the late Joe Paterno, Penn State’s legendary football coach, why did Paterno not immediately call Curley, Schultz or the police?  What did McQueary -- who described anal sex to the grand jury, but two or three slapping sounds and an awkward moment at the preliminary hearing -- actually say to Curley and Schultz? 

In many ways, the issues in a Curley-Schultz trial will be more compelling than the issues in the Sandusky trial.  With the jury's “guilty” verdict in Sandusky's case, we can now identify him as a pedophile without undermining any presumption of innocence.  He was driven by warped motivations. A psychosexual disorder with a focus on adolescents -- a diagnosis the Commonwealth's expert opined may apply to Sandusky -- is by definition a disorder.  

But what about those rational people who allegedly facilitated him?  What signs were they willing to ignore rather than risk Penn State's reputation? The Freeh Report characterized Curley and Schultz -- as well as then-University President Graham Spanier and the beloved Paterno -- as being fully aware of the threat Sandusky posed to young men on the campus.  The defense of Curley and Schultz will necessarily challenge this characterization and will no doubt be a welcomed voice to this national conversation by staunch Paterno supporters still reeling from the NCAA's invalidation of the school's football victories after 1998.     

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Gary Cameron / Reuters file

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh was hired in November to determine whether Penn State University officials knew about child sex abuse allegations against former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

The results of an internal investigation of Pennsylvania State University’s response to child sexual abuse allegations against former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky will be made public on Thursday.

An announcement Tuesday indicated a report on the investigation led by former FBI chief Louis Freeh would be posted online Thursday at 9 a.m. ET. It said Freeh would hold a news conference an hour later to discuss its findings and recommendations.

“We look forward to seeing the report on Thursday and reviewing Judge Freeh's recommendations,” said Penn State spokesman David La Torre. “The university will provide a response in Scranton on Thursday at a time and location to be announced.”

Sandusky, 68, was found guilty of 45 counts of child sexual abuse last month and is currently in prison awaiting sentencing. He faces a maximum sentence of more than 400 years in prison.

Freeh was hired by the university in November to review of the university's dealings with Sandusky and its response to a 2001 report that he sexually abused of a boy in a Penn State shower room, an incident witnessed by football assistant Michael McQueary.

Former Penn State President Graham Spanier has come under particular scrutiny in recent weeks amid news reports suggesting that he was made aware of suspicious activity involving Sandusky in 2001 and that no report of the incident was made to authorities.

Citing emails obtained by Freeh’s investigators, CNN reported last week that Spanier and two other university officials — Gary Schultz, the former senior vice president of finance and business, and Tim Curley, the athletic director on administrative leave — agreed to take a "humane" approach in dealing with  Sandusky following his alleged sexual encounter with a boy.

Instead of reporting the incident to police, according to the report, administrators instead planned to ask Sandusky to seek counseling and said they would tell officials at the Second Mile, the charity he founded and where he met many of the children he would later abuse, about their concerns.

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Attorneys for Spanier fired back earlier Tuesday, saying their client was never informed about the shower room incident involving Sandusky.

"At no time in the more than 16 years of his presidency at Penn State was Dr. Spanier told of an incident involving Jerry Sandusky that described child abuse, sexual misconduct or criminality of any kind, and he reiterated that during his interview with Louis Freeh and his colleagues,'' Spanier's attorneys, Peter Vaira and Elizabeth Ainslie, said in a written statement.

In addition, Freeh’s report is expected to include information about the actions of former head football coach Joe Paterno in the wake of McQueary’s allegations. Paterno, a legend in college football, died of lung cancer in January at 85.

In a statement Tuesday, Paterno's family also pushed back against the leak of emails to CNN, including one in which Curley stated, "After giving it more thought, and talking it over with Joe yesterday - I am uncomfortable with what we agreed were the next steps."

"The media spin that this is proof of some sort of cover up is completely false," the statment said. "When the facts come out, it will be clear that Joe Paterno never gave Tim Curley any instructions to protect Sandusky or limit any investigation of his actions.

"Joe Paterno did not cover up for Jerry Sandusky.  Joe Paterno did not know that Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile.  Joe Paterno did not act in any way to prevent a proper investigation of Jerry Sandusky.  To claim otherwise is a distortion of the truth.

The Sandusky scandal led to the ouster of Spanier and Paterno and charges against Curley, who is on leave from the university, and Schultz, who has since retired.  The latter two are accused of perjury for their grand jury testimony and failing to properly report suspected child abuse.

Spanier hasn't been charged.

Chip Bell, Tom Winter and Julmary Zambrano of NBC News and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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