Professor John Burkoff commented on the latest twist in the legal tangle at Penn State. The supervising judge of the grand jury investigating senior Penn State official has offered his opinion about whether the defendants’ motions to dismiss the case should be granted, but only after finding that he had no jurisdiction to reach the issue. Thus his opinion on the dismissal apparently has no legal significance. Professor John Burkoff told the Legal Intelligencer that this unusual situation creates real confusion. What the judge has done, Professor Burkoff said, “is rule without ruling. This puts both sides, particularly the three defendants, in a very strange and disadvantageous position, i.e., there's been no ruling, but they lost anyway."
