Handout / Reuters

Jerry Sandusky is seen in a booking photo from the Centre County Correctional Facility in Bellefonte, Pa., on June 22, 2012.

Updated at 11:37 p.m. ET: BELLEFONTE, Pa. — Jerry Sandusky was convicted of 45 counts of child sexual abuse Friday night and faces spending the rest of his life in state prison. His attorney said he would appeal the verdict.

Sandusky's attorney, Joseph Amendola, asked Judge John Cleland to allow Sandusky to be released on house arrest, but Cleland summarily rejected the request, saying: "Bail is revoked. Mr. Sandusky is remanded to the custody of the sheriff."

Sandusky was immediately led out of the courthouse in handcuffs as a large crowd of onlookers cheered. Sentencing was set for late September.

Sandusky, 68, the former longtime defensive coordinator for the Penn State University football team, had denied all 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.

Several of the counts are so-called mandated felonies, meaning Cleland has no discretion in sentencing. NBC News reported that he faces a minimum of 60 years in prison.

NBC News

Jerry Sandusky is led from the Centre County Courthouse in handcuffs Friday night.

Cleland, who is a senior judge in McKean County, was brought to Centre County to oversee the trial after local judges recused themselves.

Reaction to the Sandusky verdict

Amendola, who was interrupted by hecklers outside the courthouse several times, said he had expected the outcome and respected the verdict of the jurors, who didn’t speak to reporters afterward.

Amendola said he believed Sandusky had legitimate grounds for appeal, saying his client had "an uphill battle" because of the extensive pretrial publicity.

"We said we were attempting to climb Mount Everest from the bottom of the mountain. Obviously, we didn't make it," he said.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly, whose office prosecuted Sandusky, said, "A serious child predator ... has been held accountable for his crimes."

Kelly thanked the victims, who she said "came forward to bravely testify in this trial and to finally put a stop to the crimes that were committed."

"We hope that our search for justice will help them and perhaps others looking on nearby and afar," she said.

Grace Gordon, 49, of Bellefonte, also welcomed the verdict but lamented the damage the trial had done to Bellefonte and Centre County.

"It's hard. It really is, to see a small town torn apart like this," said Gordon, who was outside the courthouse with her 23-year-old son and his girlfriend.

Gordon said her father, who worked with Sandusky at Penn State, "would have just been devastated to know about this."

"You'd never, ever have dreamed that he'd be that kind of person," Gordon said. "What he did to those kids is just horrendous."

The university that Sandusky served for decades said in a statement late Friday that "we have tremendous respect for the men who came forward to tell their stories publicly. No verdict can undo the pain and suffering caused by Mr. Sandusky, but we do hope this judgment helps the victims and their families along their path to healing."

The university said it would seek to "fairly ... compensate" the victims and invited them to participate in a program to "facilitate the resolution of claims against the University arising out of Mr. Sandusky's conduct."

It said it intended to get in contact with lawyers for the victims "in the near future."

Sandusky was acquitted on three counts: an indecent assault charge involving "Victim 6", a man who testified that Sandusky had given him a bear hug in the shower but at one point he just "blacked out"; an indecent assault charge involving "Victim 5", who said Sandusky fondled him in the shower; and an involuntary deviate sexual intercourse charge regarding "Victim 2", who former assistant coach Mike McQueary said he saw being attacked in a campus shower.

A trial that riveted the nation
The trial, which opened June 11, culminated months of intense attention that led to the firing of head coach Joe Paterno, who won more games than any other major college football coach in history, many of them with Sandusky at his side.

Paterno died exactly five months ago, a few weeks after the Penn State Board of Trustees dismissed him for not having done enough to stop Sandusky's abuse.

Jurors heard often-graphic testimony from eight of the 10 victims whose accounts were included in two grand jury reports. They told how Sandusky would first win their trust by giving them gifts and taking them on trips with the football team before progressing to hugging, kissing, increasingly sexual touching and, in some cases, oral and anal sex.

In a rare occurrence in an abuse trial, prosecutors also presented the testimony of a corroborating eyewitness — Sandusky's former Penn State coaching colleague McQueary.

McQueary said the boy had his hands against the wall and that Sandusky was standing up against him from behind. He said he heard a "skin-on-skin smacking sound" and that he had "no doubt" that Sandusky was engaging in anal sex with the boy.

Because they were sequestered, without access to computers, phones or any other way to hear news coverage, the jury of seven women and five men wouldn't have heard newer, potentially damaging information from two other accusers that emerged after they began deliberations.

Sandusky's adopted son Matt said he had been prepared to testify that he, too, was a victim of abuse by his father, according to a statement issued Thursday by attorneys who said they are representing the younger Sandusky.

(NBC News and msnbc.com generally do not identify victims of sexual assaults, but Matt Sandusky chose to identify himself in a public statement released through his attorneys.)

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Matt Sandusky: From defender to possibly most damning accuser

Amendola said Friday night that Jerry Sandusky abandoned plans to testify in his own defense because of the prospect of damaging rebuttal testimony by his son.

Nor would they have heard the account of Travis Weaver, 30, of Ohio, who attended Second Mile camps as a youth. Weaver told NBC News in an interview that aired Thursday night that Sandusky performed oral sex on him in the upstairs bedroom of the Sanduskys' home.

Weaver testified to one of the two grand juries but wasn't mentioned in the grand jury reports or called as a witness during the trial.

The end of the trial doesn't mean the case is over.

Two former top Penn State officials, former Athletic Director Timothy Curley and former vice president Gary Schultz, face perjury charges in connection with their grand jury testimony in December, in which prosecutors alleged that concealed what they knew about Sandusky's conduct.

Law enforcement sources have told NBC News that former Penn State President Graham Spanier, who was fired in November, was under investigation for possible similar charges.

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ANALYSIS

The law is pretty clear on a lawyer's ethical duty when he makes statements regarding his clients. The lawyer may neither divulge confidences nor make statements adverse to the client's interests.

Wes Oliver is a professor at Widener University who teaches criminal law and procedure. This fall he will join the faculty of the Duquesne University School of Law as a professor and director of the school's criminal justice program.

The rule is clear enough, but it is violated all the time in innocuous ways. Lawyers go home to their wives and describe the horrifying day they had. They gather with other lawyers in corridors of courthouse or in local watering holes and tell stories about their cases. Arguably, lawyers could be seeking advice from their professional colleagues, thus including them in the attorney-client privilege, but usually they're just telling stories.

In short, lawyers do describe to their friends facts surrounding their cases, and those discussions often evaluate the strength of their cases. Ideally, and most often, they omit the names of their clients, but their listeners are frequently able to identify them. One very famous lawyer routinely jokes about his former client's guilt. Alan Dershowitz said to his criminal law class at Harvard: "If O.J. does it again. ... By that, I mean gets another speeding ticket."

Because few lawyers absolutely observe the prohibition on making statements against their clients' interest, it's often unclear precisely where the practically accepted line is. Part of the reason there's a gap between the categorical prohibition on lawyers' making statements against their clients' interest and the realities of lawyers' lives is enforcement. The odds of a communication between an attorney and his wife ever impairing his client's interest are remote. The odds that a client will ever learn of his lawyer's barroom discussion are slim. So for a lot of lawyers, the rule against making a statement against his client's interest has a practical exception — if the odds are low enough that his statement could harm his client's interest, he or she will often talk.

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It's not appropriate, and I don't teach my students that this is acceptable, but for a lot of lawyers it is the reality. And it would be difficult if not impossible to police the actual rule that forbids any negative statement.

Friday, however, Joe Amendola told a crowd of reporters in the Centre County Courthouse awaiting the verdict that he would be shocked if his client was acquitted of all the counts.

This after months of denying Sandusky's guilt. This after an impassioned and excellent closing argument in which he explained how all the alleged victims had fallen prey to investigators' coaching and then sought to cash in.

And, perhaps most significantly, after the judge issued a gag order expressing forbidding anyone in the case from commenting on Sandusky's guilt or innocence.

This wasn't a comment to fellow lawyers who are unlikely to have any reason to communicate the information to others. This wasn't a private communication to his wife. His statements were made in a mini-press conference in the courtroom where his client had stood trial and where the jury could come and announce its verdict at any time. His comments were made to reporters who have the right — arguably the obligation — to report his words to a national audience that has been captivated by this case.

This wasn't a comment that could never harm his client, in other words. There could be a hung jury, necessitating another trial. And there will surely be civil lawsuits. Amendola's comments, which will be heard throughout Centre County and around the country, could easily prejudice his clients' future interests.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, this isn't a comment for which there is no ready enforcement mechanism. It is unlikely that Sandusky will file a complaint with the ethics board. But Judge John Cleland, who maintained very strict control over this trial, issued a specific order forbidding comments on guilt or innocence.

Certainly, he must have anticipated the prosecution's making disparaging comments about Sandusky, but his order didn't allow an exception for Sandusky's lawyer to suggest his own client's guilt. Cleland may well regard this as a breach of the decorum he has worked so hard to maintain. And unlike an ethics board, he has the ability to act swiftly and the power to hold Amendola in contempt.

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Updated at 7:34 p.m. ET: BELLEFONTE, Pa. — Jerry Sandusky's attorney said Friday that he expects his client to be convicted on some of the 48 child sexual abuse counts against him.

"I would die of a heart attack — shocked — if he was acquitted on all of the charges," Joseph Amendola, the head of Sandusky's defense team, told reporters in Centre County Court.

"It is just statistically unlikely," he said.

Jurors were into their 19th hour of deliberations in the trial of Sandusky, 68, the former defensive coordinator for Penn State University's storied football team and founder of the Second Mile charity for troubled children. He denies all 48 counts in two grand jury reports alleging that he abused 10 boys over 15 years.

Amendola spoke to reporters for a few minutes inside the courthouse before a court official cut him off. Judge John Cleland has issued a gag order prohibiting participants from making public statements "regarding the Defendant's guilt or innocence" (.pdf).

Before he was hustled away, Amendola acknowledged that "it's a daunting, daunting case," but he said Sandusky has "always been optimistic." 

There was still no indication when the jurors might reach a verdict. They resumed working after dinner, just as they had Thursday night.

Earlier Friday, the jury asked Cleland for clarification on hearsay and circumstantial evidence, an indication that they were wrestling with secondhand testimony about an incident in which Sandusky was allegedly seen in a Penn State University shower with a young boy.

The question involved the testimony of Ronald Petrosky, a janitor at Penn State, who said that he saw "two pairs of legs" in the shower in November 2005. He said he discussed the incident with a colleague, Jim Calhoun, who told him that he had seen Sandusky performing oral sex on the boy, who is identified in a grand jury report as "Victim 8."

Calhoun is hospitalized with dementia and didn't testify. Cleland allowed Petrosky's secondhand testimony under an exception to rules barring hearsay evidence.

Cleland instructed the jurors that "the statement of Mr. Calhoun as related to you by Mr. Petrosky is not sufficient standing alone to sustain a conviction."

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"You must be satisfied that there is other evidence that supports that a crime had been committed besides Mr. Calhoun's hearsay statement," he stressed.

Thursday night, jurors told Cleland that they wanted to rehear the testimony of former Penn State assistant coach Michael McQueary, who testified that he overheard and saw Sandusky apparently having sex with a young boy in a football locker room shower, and Jonathan Dranov, a family friend who testified that McQueary told him about incident. Both men's testimony was re-enacted Friday morning.

McQueary testified last week that he saw a young boy — identified in the first grand jury report as "Victim 2" — in a Penn State shower with his hands against the wall and Sandusky standing up against him from behind. He said he heard a "skin-on-skin smacking sound" and that he had "no doubt" that Sandusky was engaging in anal sex with the boy.

Testifying for the defense this week, Dranov said McQueary described hearing sounds he considered sexual in nature but didn't give a graphic description of what he saw.

"I kept saying, 'What did you see?'" Dranov testified. "Each time, he would come back to the sounds. It just seemed to make him more upset, so I backed off that."

The lead defense attorney, Joseph Amendola, argued in his closing statements Thursday that McQueary "assumed" sex was occurring without having actually seen any.

And he contended that Dranov must not have believed that the incident was as serious as he later said because he didn't report it to police. As a physician, Dranov is required by law to report any indication of child abuse.

The jury of seven women and five men is being sequestered during deliberations without access to computers, phones or any other way to hear news coverage of the trial. That means they wouldn't have heard that Sandusky's adopted son Matt said that he had been prepared to testify that he, too, was a victim of abuse by his father, according to a statement issued by attorneys who said they are representing the younger Sandusky.

(NBC News and msnbc.com generally do not identify victims of sexual assaults, but Matt Sandusky chose to identify himself in a public statement released through his attorneys.)

Sources told NBC News that Jerry Sandusky abandoned plans to testify in his own defense because of the prospect of damaging rebuttal testimony by his son.

Matt Sandusky: From stalwart defender to possibly his father's most damning accuser

Nor would they have heard the account of Travis Weaver, 30, of Ohio, who attended Second Mile camps as a youth. Weaver told NBC News in an interview that aired Thursday night that Sandusky performed oral sex on him in the upstairs bedroom of the Sanduskys' home.

Weaver testified to one of the two grand juries but wasn't mentioned in the grand jury reports or called as a witness during the trial.

Several of the counts are so-called mandated felonies, meaning Cleland would have no discretion in sentencing. Most carry sentences of 10 to 20 years in prison, meaning that even if he is convicted on only a handful of those counts, Sandusky could spend the rest of his life in prison.

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ANALYSIS

BELLEFONTE, Pa. — If you hadn't seen the evidence and were to be plopped in the jury box of the Sandusky trial for only the closing arguments, you would have to return a verdict for the defense.

Wes Oliver is a professor at Widener University who teaches criminal law and procedure. This fall he will join the faculty of the Duquesne University School of Law as a professor and director of the school's criminal justice program.

In Pennsylvania, the defense goes first. Even though the defense managed to score only modest points during the course of the trial, you couldn't tell it from the closing argument. Joe Amendola told a story about how one of the accusers prompted a perfect storm of investigators coaching alleged victims who were motivated by civil suits.

The first alleged victim, Amendola told the jury, reported to his teacher that Sandusky fondled him outside his clothes. This young man, however, admitted that he wanted to get out of going with Sandusky to spend time with his friends.

When the matter was reported to Children and Youth Services, investigators told the alleged victim that they thought more had happened than the young man was willing to report. Amendola told the jury that once investigators got a more incriminating story from this alleged victim, they began looking for other young men. Investigators then told the other young men that there were other victims out there who had reported an escalating pattern of touching culminating in oral sex, his argument continued.

It didn't hurt Amendola's argument that state troopers denied during the trial that they coached the alleged victims, only to have this revealed to be a falsehood in documents and recordings turned over to the defense during discovery.

Jury begins deliberations in trial of Jerry Sandusky

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Full coverage of the Jerry Sandusky trial

Legal analysis by Wes Oliver

Amendola maintained the theme he presented from the beginning:  Those who cooperated with the police and who testified in this proceeding were coached and can now see a financial payoff.

The prosecution should have had an easy response. There were eight alleged victims. Could so many people fall under the spell of police coaching? There were two independent witnesses, Mike McQueary and the janitor whose colleague claimed to have seen Sandusky performing oral sex on a young boy. Finally, there were Sandusky's own words in the Bob Costas interview and in love letters he apparently wrote to one of the victims, copies of which he kept in his Penn State office.

But the prosecution didn't start with that story in its closing. Joe McGettigan spent the first 35 minutes of his hourlong closing addressing the defense's closing statement. He was well into his argument before he even began to talk about the heart of the case.

McGettigan spent two or three minutes explaining how leading questions are permitted on cross-examination. He explained that some of his witnesses may not have performed so well because they were nervous or tired because they had to testify at the end of the day.  He did all of this before he even began summarize the very powerful evidence that had been presented in the case.

When he finally got around to talking about the facts of the case he had very effectively presented, the bulk of his argument was over, and he spoke in a very summary fashion about the pattern of the predatory pedophile he believed Sandusky to be. He observed that later alleged victims described more serious conduct than others but didn't describe the testimony that made them so credible. He didn't observe that all but one alleged victim described Sandusky's earliest inappropriate touches as a hand on the knee or thigh in a car headed for Sandusky's house.

Perhaps most significantly, he didn't reintroduce the jury to some of the compelling evidence in the case — the letters in Sandusky's own hand to one of the victims or the bizarre contract for one victim to spend time with Sandusky.

McGettigan was on the defensive during this entire closing. He even spent time defending McQueary's performance on the stand. By all accounts, the defense didn't dent McQueary's testimony at all. Yet McGettigan explained that while the defense made McQueary out to be confused or a liar, he was an honest witness who didn't act as he should have the night he found Sandusky in the shower that night in 2001 with a young boy.

If there is any doubt in the jury's mind about McQueary's testimony at this point, it is only because McGettigan put it there in closing. 

McGettigan seemed disorganized throughout this presentation.  Shortly before he closed, he said to the jury that he thought he was done but needed to check his notes. He did so and then decided to close the argument with a dramatic moment. He walked behind Sandusky and pointed at him as he made his final points. There were a variety of opinions on the effectiveness of this tactic, but Sandusky turned, looked him in the eye and then looked at the jury.

The defense theory of the case is somewhat implausible, but Amendola presented his theory in a very coherent and believable fashion that accounted for all the evidence. In spending most of his time addressing Amendola's theory, the prosecutor may have telegraphed to the jury that the defense presented a reasonable interpretation of the facts.

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Updated at 9:24 p.m. ET: Jurors in the child sexual abuse trial of former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky deliberated for more than seven hours Thursday without reaching a verdict.

Deliberations were scheduled to resume at 9 a.m. ET Friday in Centre County Court in Bellefonte, Pa., where Sandusky is charged with 48 counts alleging that he abused 10 boys over 15 years. Three other counts were dropped early Thursday.

Judge John Cleland said the jurors had asked to rehear the testimony of two key prosecution witnesses: former Penn State assistant coach Michael McQueary, who testified that he overheard Sandusky having sex with a young boy in a football locker room shower, and Jonathan Dranov, a family friend who testified that McQueary told him about incident. Those arrangements were to be worked out Friday morning.

The jury began its deliberations about 1:30 p.m. ET and worked straight through the afternoon and early evening, for nearly 7½ hours, following closing arguments in which they heard two starkly different descriptions of the case against Sandusky.

The prosecution and the defense clashed over defense attorney Joseph Amendola's suggestion that the entire case was a conspiracy among police, prosecutors and the alleged victims and their lawyers, in hopes of a big payday in future civil trials.

"The system" prejudged Sandusky and "set out to convict him" even though the case against him makes no sense, Amendola said.

But Deputy Pennsylvania Attorney General Joseph McGettigan, the lead prosecutor, argued that it defied common sense to believe the police and court systems would have conspired to bring down a figure as beloved in the community as Sandusky, the former longtime defensive coordinator for Penn State's nationally famous football team and founder of the Second Mile charity for troubled children.

"What would we gain?" he asked.

Sandusky, 68, was charged in two grand jury indictments that accused him of having used his connection to one of the nation's premier college football programs to "groom" the 10 boys for sexual relationships.

Eight of the 10 alleged victims testified during the trial. Another whom the jury never heard from was Sandusky's adopted son Matt, whose lawyers said Thursday afternoon — after deliberations had begun — that he, too, had been abused by Sandusky.

Sources told NBC News that Matt Sandusky's potential rebuttal testimony was why Sandusky chose not to testify in his own defense. (NBC News and msnbc.com generally do not identify victims of sexual assaults, but Sandusky chose to identify himself in a public statement released through his attorneys.)

Sources: Adopted son as possible witness helped keep Sandusky silent

Legal analysis: Sandusky's attorney hits home run in closing argument

"No one wins in this case. This is awful no matter what happens," Amendola said during the closing defense argument. "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.

But McGettigan contended that the holes the defense poked in the case were, in fact, proof that there was no collusion.

"Everybody would have had to have been on the same page. Not so," he said.

McGettigan said it was easy for the defense to claim a conspiracy when "you don't name them. You just say 'the system.'"

But he said "the system" is made up of real people, in this case dozens of them who all wopuld have had to be in collusion for the last 15 years: the 10 alleged victims, the 24 grand jurors, the investigators, the arresting officers, corroborating witnesses like Sandusky's former colleague Michael McQueary, social services professionals, and McGettigan and his co-prosecutors themselves.

"If you conclude there's a conspiracy, someone bring handcuffs in for me and ... anyone else involved," McGettigan said, before concluding:

"What you should do is come out and say to the defendant that he molested, abused and assaulted (the alleged victims). He knows he did it, and you know he did it.

"Give him the justice he really deserves. Find him guilty of everything.

Three more charges dismissed
Sandusky originally was charged with 52 counts, but 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.

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.

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.

In other words, "you must distinguish a display of innocent affection from lust," Cleland instructed.

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Gene J. Puskar / AP

Jerry Sandusky leaves court Wednesday in Bellefonte, Pa.

ANALYSIS

The defense ended with a whimper Wednesday in Jerry Sandusky's trial in Bellefonte, Pa.

At one point, it appeared as though the defense might get some traction. It called investigators to the stand who testified that they never informed victims about complaints from other victims. Recordings of the investigators' own interviews revealed that the victims had been coached.

Wes Oliver is a professor at Widener University who teaches criminal law and procedure. This fall he will join the faculty of the Duquesne University School of Law as a professor and director of the school's criminal justice program.

It would likely not seem unreasonable to most jurors for police to let victims know that there are others. Jurors may even have little problem with letting victims know some specifics of other complaints.

Jurors, however, should wonder why investigators tried to hide their methods of making alleged victims comfortable speaking. They should ask themselves what else the investigators told those men and didn't report. The defense scored some real points when the state's investigators denied techniques that they were revealed to have used in documents that were turned over to the defense before trial.

Other than that, the defense case was marked by missteps and largely tangential testimony.

There was a parade of witnesses who knew Sandusky as a neighbor, a colleague or a mentor. The rules of evidence place strict limits on the testimony of character witnesses. Formally, they are limited to addressing the defendant's reputation for honesty, peacefulness and law-abiding character. In introducing character witnesses, lawyers are able to describe how the witnesses know the defendant.

That process of introduction gave Sandusky's lawyers an opportunity to tell the jury that his colleagues never knew of any misconduct with children. It also gave those he mentored an opportunity to tell the jury that he hadn't molested them as children.

Character witnesses don't hurt the defense, but they can add only so much. The fact that there are people who never saw Sandusky do anything inappropriate isn't inconsistent with his guilt.

Defense abruptly rests without calling Jerry Sandusky

Full coverage of the Jerry Sandusky trial

Legal analysis by Wes Oliver

And there were missteps during the defense case that really hurt.

Dr. Jonathan Dranov — who met with one of the prosecution's star witnesses, former assistant football coach Michael McQueary, after an alleged incident in a Penn State University locker room shower — had been expected to undermine McQueary's account. But the opposite happened. Dranov bolstered McQueary's testimony, describing him as having been very upset in describing the incident.

More damning, however, was that Dranov testified that McQueary reported hearing "sexual sounds" in the shower that night. At a preliminary hearing in December in a separate but related perjury case against two for top university officials, a lawyer cross-examining McQueary got him to admit that he heard two, at most three, "slapping" sounds. The defense's cross-examination of McQueary last week didn't confine his testimony to two or three slaps, and its examination of Dranov left the jury with testimony that "sexual sounds" were heard that night.

Finally, in calling an expert who testified that Sandusky had a personality disorder that could explain away some of his behavior, the defense had to let a prosecution expert examine Sandusky.

The defense expert's testimony was worthless at best and harmful at worst — he testified that he himself may suffer from the disorder, a disorder that he was unable to differentiate from the personalities many people have seen in their friends and colleagues.

By contrast, the prosecution's expert — a very sharp, impeccably credentialed, well-spoken psychiatrist — discounted the defense expert's theory and concluded that Sandusky's personality profile was consistent with a psychosexual disorder, with a focus on adolescents.

In exchange for raising the possibility of "histrionic personality disorder," the defense got a prosecution expert who said the defendant fits the profile of a pedophile, in other words. This was not a good trade.

The defense had quite the task facing it when it started presenting its case. It doesn't seem to have raised a reasonable doubt. On the whole, it seems to have aided the prosecution.

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Updated at 6:55 p.m ET: Lawyers for Jerry Sandusky abruptly rested their case Wednesday morning without calling the former Penn State University assistant football coach to the stand.

It was an unexpected end to the defense phase of Sandusky's trial on 51 counts alleging that he abused 10 boys over 15 years.

Without explanation, defense attorneys requested a recess during testimony from one of their own witnesses. Then — after an unusually long break during ,which both legal teams joined the judge in his chambers amid speculation over whether Sandusky would take the risky step of testifying — defense attorneys said they were done.

The prosecution offered no rebuttal witnesses. Court was adjourned until Thursday morning, when closing arguments were scheduled.

The defense decision came after the witness, David Hilton, 21, reacted with surprise when he was asked whether he knew that his uncle had called the defense team Tuesday night. Sandusky attorney Karl Rominger then asked for a recess.

Hilton was testifying that he spent a lot of time with Sandusky as a youth. He said he spent many nights at the Sanduskys' home but that nothing inappropriate ever happened.

It wasn't the only surprise on the seventh day of Sandusky's trial in Bellefonte, Pa. Judge John Cleland announced as court opened that one of the jurors had taken ill and was being replaced by an alternate.

Then, he announced that lawyers for both sides had agreed to stipulate that the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who broke the Sandusky story had helped the mother of one of Sandusky's alleged victims find an investigator. The defense contends that investigators and journalists in Pennsylvania started with the premise that Sandusky was guilty of abusing young boys and ignored evidence of his innocence.

The reporter, Sara Ganim of the Harrisburg Patriot-News, who broke the news that a grand jury was investigating Sandusky, was called under subpoena by the defense. The newspaper sought to quash the subpoena, citing Ganim's right to protect her sources, but Cleland turned down the motion.

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After a conference at the bench at which lawyers for the newspaper sought to keep her off the stand, Cleland told jurors that Ganim had been called to answer questions about whether, "prior to charges being filed in the case, she contacted the mother of an alleged victim and provided her with contact information for an investigator in this case."

Cleland said the legal teams had stipulated that "the answer would be yes."

Ganim remained in the courtroom, where she could be heard vigorously disagreeing with the stipulation agreement between the prosecution and defense teams.

Ganim later told her newspaper: "For the record, I would not have answered yes to that question. I would have declined to comment under the Pennsylvania Shield Law.''

The revelation that Ganim — who won widespread acclaim and journalism's highest honor for her pursuit of the Sandusky allegations — may have interjected herself into the story as a participant goes to the heart of one of the defense's primary arguments: that Sandusky was being steamrollered by institutional forces oblivious to evidence that he might not be guilty.

"There are a lot of forces at work pushing this forward," Sandusky attorney Joseph Amendola told Cleland during the subpoena arguments Tuesday.

The defense has already demonstrated, through testimony and audio of a police interview with one of the alleged victims, that investigators at times told potential witnesses that there were other victims in the case, which the defense contends tainted their testimony.

Jurors also heard from Jonathan Dranov, a friend of the family of Michael McQueary, the former Penn State assistant coach who testified last week that he saw Sandusky in a football locker room shower with a young boy.

McQueary testified said he didn't explicitly see any intercourse, but he said he had "no doubt" that it was occurring because of the relative positions of Sandusky and the boy and the sounds they were making.

Dranov said he was present at a conversation at which McQueary recounted the alleged incident, concurring that McQueary didn't describe having directly seen any sex act.

"I kept saying, ‘What did you see?'" Dranov testified. "Each time, he would come back to the sounds. It just seemed to make him more upset, so I backed off that."

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Updated at 6:54 p.m. ET: Jerry Sandusky's wife, Dottie, took the stand Tuesday as a defense witness in her husband's child sexual abuse trial, saying she never heard or saw her husband of 45 years behaving inappropriately around children.

The Sanduskys took a deep interest in the welfare of children because the couple were unable to have children of their own, she testified on the sixth day of her husband's trial in Bellefonte, Pa., on 51 counts alleging that he abused 10 boys over 15 years.

"We had been trying for a while, and nothing happened," Dottie Sandusky said under questioning from lawyers for her husband.

At first, the couple, who are the parents of six adopted children, took in foster children. But "we knew we couldn't take any more kids into our family, and Jerry felt there was a need to start a home or foundation like that," she said.

Prosecutors depict Sandusky, the former longtime defensive coordinator for the Penn State University football team, as 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.

Although speculation has swirled around the case from the beginning about whether Dottie Sandusky knew of her husband's alleged behavior, she hasn't been charged with a crime. She said Tuesday that she had never seen or heard her husband engaging in anything inappropriate.

Once or twice a month, other parents' children — including some of the men who testified against Jerry Sandusky — would stay overnight with the Sanduskys, she testified, apologizing several times for not being able to remember when.

Some of the alleged victims testified that Jerry Sandusky would almost always take them to the basement. One of them testified that he cried out for help as Sandusky raped him but that no one came to his assistance.

But Dottie Sandusky testified that when children stayed over, they were given a choice of where to sleep: in the basement or on the first or second floors. She said, in contradiction of testimony that the room seemed to be soundproofed, that she was able to hear sound coming from the basement while upstairs and that she never heard anyone calling out for help.

Asked why so many witnesses would want to tell the same lie about her husband, she said, "I don't know."

Psychologist: Mental disorder could explain behavior
Dottie Sandusky testified for about an hour, following a psychologist who told jurors that her husband has a personality disorder that leads him to behave in grandiose ways that observers might consider inappropriate.

Prosecutors presented a string of witnesses — including eight of the alleged victims — who described attentive behavior that progressed to inappropriate advances, oral sex and, in some cases, rape.

But the defense expert, Elliot Atkins, a psychologist in private practice in the Philadelphia area, said "histrionic personality disorder" could explain the alleged grooming behavior, a conclusion he said he reached after interviewing Sandusky for six hours and reading his autobiography, "Touched," and intimately personal email messages Sandusky sent to some of his alleged victims.

Histrionic means "dramatic" or "theatrical." People with the disorder desperately seek the approval of others and behave dramatically or inappropriately to get attention, according to the Cleveland Clinic, one of the nation's leading medical centers.

Atkins provided a similar description, saying people with the disorder "might do something dramatic to draw attention to themselves," including behaving in a way that is "inappropriately sexually provocative."

Does it matter if Sandusky has a personality disorder?

"Someone would likely, under those circumstances, desperately attempt to maintain or re-establish that relationship" with someone who had dropped out of his or her life, as Sandusky appeared to do in his email messages, Atkins said.

As part of his ruling allowing Sandusky to present the psychological evidence, the judge ordered that he also undergo an examination by a prosecution expert. Atkins acknowledged that the prosecution examiner disagreed with his assessment.

Gail Saltz, an associate professor of psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill-Cornell School of Medicine, said the diagnosis was highly controversial in her field.

"This would be an incredible stretch — so much that it disturbs some of my colleagues that they are bringing it up," Saltz said in an interview Tuesday on NBC's TODAY.

"This diagnosis has no bearing on your moral compass, your ability to understand what's legal," she said. "It has nothing to do with being a pedophile. it has nothing to do with sexual behavior toward children."

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A string of character witnesses, meanwhile, described Sandusky him as a good and caring man with a stellar reputation in the community.

Lance Mehl, who played for Sandusky at Penn State before spending eight years in the National Football League, called Sandusky a "class act." Kelli Simco, who attended Second Mile for much of her childhood and wrote a newspaper column defending him last year, told how Sandusky arranged to pay her college tuition. Tennesa Inhoof, another woman who attended Sandusky's camps, called him "a very respected man in the community for Second Mile and all the other things he did for the kids."

Another witness said one of the men who testified against Sandusky, describing multiple incidents of alleged abuse, was unreliable and dishonest.

Megan Rash, an Army veteran who said her late brother was close friends with the man, identified in the indictment as "Victim 4," said he "was a dishonest person and embellished stories."

On cross-examination, Rash acknowledged that she had suffered a brain injury in the service and said she couldn't remember where she was deployed.

Another character witness, Jack Willenbrock, a former Penn State professor, called Sandusky "a father figure" who was "respected for what he did professionally."

On cross-examination, Willenbrock said he refused to believe the allegations against his longtime friend and had told acquaintances never to discuss them in his presence.

Defense: Police coached witnesses
Sandusky's attorneys also strongly suggested that state investigators "tainted" the investigation by telling alleged victims that there were other victims and by "refreshing" their memories after they initially said little about Sandusky in police interviews.

Pennsylvania State Police Cpl. Scott Rossman responded that it wasn't unusual for victims of sexual assaults to be reluctant to tell their stories at first. He said that at no time did investigators ever tell potential witnesses what to say.

But Sandusky's attorneys repeatedly indicated that they believed Rossman and retired state Trooper Joseph Leiter coached witnesses, zeroing in on an audiotape of their interview with alleged victim No 4.

In the tape, Benjamin Andreozzi, the attorney for alleged victim No. 4, was heard giving Leiter suggestions on how to get his client to give specifics of his relationship with Sandusky.

"Can we at some point in time say to him, 'Listen we've interviewed other kids, and other kids have told us there was intercourse and that they've admitted - is there anything else you want to tell us?'" Andreozzi was heard having said.

"Yep, we do that with all the time with other kids," Leiter was heard responding.

Andreozzi, who was called to the stand to verify the authenticity of the recording, said his client was "clearly emotionally distraught by having to go in and speak with the authorities" and that it took some time for the man to open up.

As part of their attempt to prove that the alleged victims were seeking to cash in on the case, Sandusky's lawyers also questioned Andreozzi about a possible civil suit for damages.

After lengthy discussion about what he could say under attorney-client privilege, Andreozzi reluctantly acknowledged that a guilty verdict "could have an impact, yes," if the man filed a lawsuit.

John Q. Kelly, a former New York prosecutor who specializes in high-profile criminal defense cases, said the defense had few other options unless they take the risky decision to put Sandusky on the stand. CBSNews reported Tuesday that Sandusky would testify, but his lead attorney, Joseph Amendola, refused to confirm the report.

"I think they just have to say none of it is factual, didn't happen, never went on," Kelly said in an interview on NBC's TODAY show.

"They have to do that by showing the times, the events, the places were all sort of vague and they couldn't nail down the details," Kelly said. "Therefore you have to ignore it."

Closing arguments are expected Thursday, and the jury could begin deliberations as early as Thursday afternoon.

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Updated at 6:57 p.m. ET: Jerry Sandusky's attorneys began their defense Monday in Sandusky's trial on child sexual abuse charges, calling witnesses who testified that it wasn't unusual for football coaches to share showers with young boys at football and youth camps.

Sandusky, 68, the former longtime defensive coordinator at Penn State University, denies having abused 10 boys over 15 years as alleged in two grand jury reports and the indictment. Prosecutors argued over the past week that Sandusky 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.

Sandusky was originally charged with 52 counts in the indictment, but prosecutors dropped one count, a misdemeanor, on Monday, acknowledging that the alleged offense wasn't yet a crime when it was believed to have occurred. Judge John Cleland denied defense requests to dismiss many of the remaining counts.

Closing arguments are expected Thursday, and the jury, which will be sequestered during deliberations, could get the case as early as Thursday afternoon or Friday, Cleland said.

Defense attorneys opened their presentation after jurors heard from the mother of an alleged victim of Sandusky, who broke down on the stand as she described her son's withdrawal and health problems after he began spending some weekends at Sandusky's home.

Although Sandusky's accusers are being identified by name in court, NBC News and msnbc.com do not identify victims of sexual assaults.

The boy, identified in the indictment as "Victim 9," who is now 18, testified last week that Sandusky repeatedly raped him during the visits, sometimes with such force that he would bleed.

He said he didn't seek medical attention; instead, "I just dealt with it." He didn't say how.

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Legal analysis by Wes Oliver

But the man's mother testified Monday that she thought it was odd that her son would often come home from the sleepovers with no underwear.

"He'd say he had an accident and threw them out," she said.

When her son complained that stomach hurt him and he "couldn't use the bathroom right," she took him to a doctor, who she said diagnosed acid reflux and "nerves."

Through tears, the woman said she felt responsible for what happened because she encouraged her son to continue seeing Sandusky even though he told her he didn't want to. She said she believed at the time that Sandusky was doing good work.

Prosecutors may use unaired portions of NBC's Sandusky interview

The defense then began by calling former coaching colleagues of Sandusky, seeking to demonstrate that as a famous football coach with many public commitments, he wouldn't have had the time to plan and carry out the sex crimes he's accused of.

Dick Anderson, a former Penn State assistant coach who went on to be head football coach at Rutgers University and an assistant coach in the National Football League, testified that coaches at prominent programs "all had those responsibilities where we had to recruit, which meant getting on the road."

"There were clinics that all of us did at one time or another at various locations, so those were things that we had to do," he said. "There were banquets, dinners, various places we were asked to speak at that went on regularly."

"Jerry had probably more than us, being defensive coordinator and being a national name," Anderson said. "He did a lot of things with speaking engagements — not just Second Mile, but things he did for banquets" and other events around the country.

Anderson and another former Penn State assistant coach, Booker Brooks, testified that it isn't unusual for coaches to share showers with their players and youth camp charges after a day of hard physical work, saying he had done so himself many times.

"Throughout my life as a football coach, I've showered with younger men than myself — throughout my life and even currently right now, since I am a grandfather I take my grandchild to the local YMCA. Since she's not old enough to go into a room by herself, we go in and we shower together," Brooks said.

Sandusky enjoyed stellar reputation
Asked about Sandusky's reputation, Brooks said it was "exemplary, topnotch — other words like that come to mind."

Other witnesses also testified to Sandusky's reputation, including a former fundraising consultant for Second Mile and a local schoolteacher, saying he was widely respected in the community and appeared to have a special rapport with troubled children.

"Jerry had a very unique way, and many of us were inspired by this, how he could relate to youth of all ages and really get to their level and communicate," said David Pasquinelli, the fundraising consultant.

The teacher, Brett Whitmore, a former social worker, said he learned from Sandusky the importance of trying to help hard-to-reach children.

"As I went on to social work and teaching now, I've kind of carried that with me — that people who are going to go on and do great things will always go a step further to make sure the best interest of kids is being served," Whitmore said. 

One count dropped
Before testimony resumed Monday in Bellefonte, Pa., the defense asked Cleland to dismiss many of the counts, arguing that prosecutors and the alleged victims had failed to establish specific dates and times when the offenses occurred, making it impossible for Sandusky's lawyers to investigate possible alibis.

Cleland questioned the "very broad representations made by the commonwealth" about when many of the alleged incidents occurred, but he denied all of the motions. He said he believed further information developed during the trial "now meets the standards of due process, though early on I was not persuaded that was the case."

Sandusky now faces 51 counts after prosecutors dropped the misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child, an allegation that involved a man identified in the indictment as "Victim 7." He testified last week that the offense happened in 1995 or 1996, but the statute, which addresses unlawful contact with a child, didn't apply until 1997, prompting prosecutors to withdraw it.

Three other counts involving alleged victim No. 7 remain.

Cleland last week granted a defense motion to permit testimony from a psychologist that Sandusky has histrionic personality disorder, which might have led him to behave dramatically or inappropriately to get attention. They argued that that could raise reasonable doubt in jurors' minds that Sandusky's unorthodox statements and public actions are manifestations of the disorder, not seeking illegal sex with minors.

Does it matter if Sandusky has a personality disorder?

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