HispanicBusiness

The defense rested Wednesday in the trial of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

The prosecution offered no rebuttal witnesses, and closing arguments are scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. EDT Thursday.

Sandusky did not testify in his own defense.

Attorneys for both sides conferred with Senior Judge John Cleland behind closed doors for lengthy periods with no explanations given.

Cleland told the court no one will be allowed to enter or leave the courtroom during closing arguments and closing charges to ensure no distractions for the jury.

One of Sandusky's defense attorneys, Karl Rominger, made a motion to dismiss child sex abuse charges 36 to 40, the ones tied to alleged victim No. 8 and an alleged shower incident in Penn State's Lasch Building that a janitor claimed to have witnessed.

Rominger argued that the state's amended bill of particulars lists the incident as having taken place between Nov. 20 and 27, 2000 when the football team was playing an away game.

The last such game was Nov. 18, Rominger said.

Prosecutor Frank Fina said the charging documents say that the incident took place on a Thursday or Friday evening in November 2000.

Cleland said the state can reply in writing. Sandusky faces 51 counts of child sex abuse.

Wednesday morning, the defense called to the stand Jonathan Dranov, the McQueary family friend who was present for a conversation Mike McQueary described about an incident he said he saw in a Penn State shower room.

Dranov testified that McQueary didn't give a graphic description of what he saw and only referenced the nature of the incident by saying he heard "sexual sounds."

Dranov said he repeatedly asked McQueary, whom he described as "visibly shaken," what he saw.

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

McQueary testified last week that he didn't see intercourse between Sandusky and a young boy in a Penn State shower room Feb. 9, 2001, but he was confident it was sexual because of how close Sandusky's body was to the boy's backside. McQueary said he heard "skin on skin smacking sounds" and saw the "extremely sexual" situation three times - once through a mirror and twice with his own eyes.

McQueary's father, John McQueary, testified last week, too, that his son had given him the impression something sexual had occurred in that shower.

But John McQueary didn't remember testifying about the conversation when called to the stand at a preliminary hearing in December for former Penn State administrators Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, who are charged with perjury and failure to report abuse in the Sandusky case.

The incident was never reported directly to police, but Mike McQueary has said he thought he was reporting it to police when he spoke with Schultz, whose duties included overseeing the university police department.

Dranov also testified about something Mike McQueary denied in his testimony last week. Dranov said McQueary told him he made eye contact with the young boy in the shower, and that an arm reached out and pulled the boy back.

But McQueary testified he never saw that.

Meanwhile, a 21-year-old young man from Lancaster County, Pa., said on the witness stand Wednesday morning that Sandusky never did anything inappropriate to him.

David Hilton, called as a character witness, testified that he met Sandusky through The Second Mile, visited his house many times and even went to San Francisco with the former assistant coach.

Also Wednesday morning, juror No. 6, a woman in her 20s who works for a downtown State College property management company, was excused after reporting she was sick. Her spot was taken by the first alternate.