HARRISBURG, Pa. — A federal judge threw out former Penn State president Graham Spanier's misdemeanor child-endangerment conviction on Tuesday, less than a day before he was due to turn himself in to begin serving a jail sentence.
The decision by U.S. Magistrate Judge Karoline Mehalchick in Scranton, Pennsylvania, gave state prosecutors three months to retry Spanier under the state's 1995 child endangerment law, the version in place in 2001.
Joe Grace, a spokesman for the attorney general's office, said the decision was under review. Spanier's defense lawyer, Sam Silver, declined to comment.
Mehalchick agreed with Spanier that he was improperly charged under a 2007 law for actions that occurred in 2001, when he was responding to a complaint about former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky showering with a boy on campus.