CENTRE COUNTY, PA (RNN) - Thirteen jurors have been chosen to determine the fate of Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach accused of child molestation.
The jurors include five men and eight women, CNN reported. Among them are current and former Penn State faculty, graduates and undergraduates. One juror even works part-time for the Penn State athletic department, according to CNN.
Jury selection started on Tuesday. The group was chosen on the same day it was revealed Sandusky allegedly wrote love letters to one of his accusers.
According to ABC News, the letters to the accuser known as Victim 4 will be read into testimony when the trial begins Monday. ABC reports Victim 4 will also testify about gifts Sandusky gave him.
Sandusky, 68, allegedly abused and raped Victim 4 in hotels where the Penn State team stayed on trips to bowl games in Arizona and Texas, according to the grand jury presentment.
Victim 4, now 28 years old, met Sandusky through Second Mile, the charity the football coach created for troubled youth. The charity is seeking approval from the courts to close and transfer its programs to Texas-based Arrow Child & Family Ministries, Inc. The sex scandal has made fundraising nearly impossible.
Yesterday, the judge ruled the jury will not be sequestered despite extensive media coverage of the case.
The decision was announced on the first day of jury selection. Nine jurors were selected Tuesday while the remaining four were placed today.
Of 225 prospective jurors, 22 of them were found to have ties to principals in the case: Fourteen to the university, four to Sandusky, four to Sandusky's wife and two to Second Mile, CNN reported.
Opening arguments are expected to begin Monday.
Sandusky pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, and has been under house arrest since being charged. He faces more than 50 criminal counts related to the alleged molestation and sexual abuse of 10 boys during the course of more than a decade and could serve life in prison.
The scandal took down legendary football coach Joe Paterno, the university's president, the athletic director and an administrator who oversaw university police.
Prior to jury selection, Judge John M. Cleland said the alleged victims will not have the benefit of pseudonyms at trial, despite the sensitive nature of the abuse allegations.
"While I will make every effort to be sensitive to the nature of the alleged victims' testimony, once the trial begins, the veil must be lifted," Cleland said in his decision Monday.
In his ruling, he said there was not enough evidence to support the claim that harm would come to the victims if their identities were known.
"Only one of the alleged victims who filed such a request in this case supported it with evidence of potential harm, and even that affidavit asserted the kinds of generalized traumatic impact from testifying that would occur to any patient in treatment," he wrote.
He also pointed to Pennsylvania law, which does not provide for anonymity to "an adult witness because the witness is one of a class of victims of a particular form of crime."
Cleland also banned live tweeting or micro-blogging by the media while in the courtroom, pointing this time to rules set out by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
"If reporters are permitted to electronically transmit reports from the courtroom while court is in session and which contain verbatim accounts of the proceedings, it cannot be considered anything other than exactly the kind of broadcasting explicitly prohibited by the rule," he wrote.
He denied a motion by Sandusky's defense to gain access to juror information collected by the Office of Attorney General.
Copyright 2012 Raycom News Network. All rights reserved.
ABC is reporting former Penn State football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, 68, sent one of his victim love letters. (Source: CNN)
