A federal judge overturned former Penn State University president Graham Spanier’s conviction on a child endangerment charge a day before he was supposed to start his prison sentence, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. Spanier, 70, was convicted of a misdemeanor in 2017 for his handling of allegations of child sex abuse against former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. Lawyers for Spanier, who was to begin a two-month prison sentence Wednesday, asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Karoline Mehalchick last week to overturn the conviction. She agreed after finding that Spanier was charged under a 2007 version of the child endangerment law even though his conduct occurred when a different statute was in place six years earlier.
The state has 90 days to retry Spanier under the 1995 version of the statute or it could appeal Mehalchick’s ruling. Spanier’s lawyers argued that the application of the law to acts that occurred years before the measure was passed violated the U.S. Constitution. Spanier, who was president of Penn State for 16 years, remains a tenured faculty member on paid administrative leave. He was found guilty of child endangerment after prosecutors said he failed to report allegations that Sandusky had sexually assaulted a young boy in a campus locker room shower in 2001. Spanier has said the abuse of the boy was characterized to him as horseplay. Two of Spanier’s top lieutenants have served time behind bars in the case.