On Jan. 22, 2010, former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Cynthia Baldwin became the first general counsel of Penn State University more than a decade after allegations of child sexual abuse against former university assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky surfaced in the late 1990s.
Yet in the course of Baldwin’s two-and-a-half year term, which ended with her retirement last month, those allegations came to a boil and posed serious tests of her decision-making. As scrutiny of Sandusky’s conduct intensified, she was tasked with deciding how to confront a grand jury investigation that involved Sandusky and other Penn State officials, determining what to share about that investigation with the university’s board of trustees, and considering whether the “Sandusky issue” warranted an independent investigation by an outside group.
