By KRIS MAHER

BELLEFONTE, Pa.—The jury in the Jerry Sandusky trial deliberated for 20 hours before finding the former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach guilty late on Friday of 45 counts related to child-sex abuse, but the verdict was never in doubt, according to one juror.
The deciding factor was the testimony of eight young men, ages 18 to 28, who recounted abuse from the witness stand in graphic and often tear-filled testimony, said Joshua Harper, a 31-year-old high school chemistry and physics teacher who sat on the jury.
Late last year, the attorney general charged Mr. Sandusky with abusing 10 boys over a 15-year period. At trial, the prosecution's case centered on the often graphic and emotional testimony of the young men, who said Mr. Sandusky abused them as boys, and two witnesses who said they saw the former coach abuse two boys who were never identified.
Mr. Sandusky's defense attorneys have indicated that they plan to file an appeal, arguing that the case came to trial too quickly and before they could adequately prepare a defense.
Mr. Sandusky had said no sexual activity took place and pleaded not guilty to the charges. He didn't take the stand himself to deny the accusations.
"I didn't see any hint that they [the young men] weren't telling the truth," said Mr. Harper. Meanwhile, he said Mr. Sandusky's demeanor watching the young men testify about painful abuse appeared almost wistful at times. "It was just completely not the right reaction to the victims," he said.
Defense attorney Joe Amendola had argued that the young men had made false allegations after being coached by investigators and because they were seeking a payday through civil litigation. He made an impassioned closing argument in which he argued that Mr. Sandusky was himself the victim of an overzealous prosecution.
Mr. Amendola also focused on inconsistencies in the young men's testimony about dates and other details. And he played an audio recording in which a state trooper told a young man about allegations others had made about Mr. Sandusky. That showed that the victims had been coached, he said.
"Amendola tried to give us these what-ifs," Mr. Harper said. "They were these little seeds of doubt but no reasonable doubt that was based in evidence."
The jury chalked up inconsistencies in the young men's testimony to the difficulty of recalling events that occurred years ago, and they thought the audio recording showed a reasonable effort to get young men to open up about abuse, Mr. Harper said. He added that he thought Mr. Amendola's closing argument was impressive. But he said, "When you take away the performance and the drama of it, what are you left with? A conspiracy. Not anything evidence based."
Moreover, Mr. Amendola's theory couldn't explain away the testimony of Mike McQueary, a Penn State assistant coach, and an account by James Calhoun, a janitor, said Mr. Harper. Each man had said they saw Mr. Sandusky engaging in sexual activity with boys in separate instances in an athletic-facility shower at Penn State. Mr. Amendola never offered a persuasive motive for the two men to lie, Mr. Harper said.
Shortly after the verdict was announced, Wes Oliver, a professor at Widener Law school, said he thought the victims had a range of credibility but that the jury viewed the case as one where "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts."
Mr. Harper largely agreed, and said that some victims were easier to believe in all details. "We all appreciated these inconsistencies. Some jurors gave it more weight than others and had stronger reservations about them," he said. "When it came down to looking at it and the overall pattern of Sandusky's behavior, and how he would groom the kids, that was enough to look past those inconsistencies."
The deliberations stretched over two days partly because the jury needed time to carefully review four-dozen criminal counts, sometimes using a white board to get timelines straight, and relying on extensive notes taken by jurors during the trial, Mr. Harper said.
The jury largely disregarded expert testimony about whether or not Mr. Sandusky had a personality disorder that could have offered an alternative explanation for why he wrote intimate letters to a young man known as Victim 4, because a personality disorder wouldn't have excused the behavior, Mr. Harper said. "These are still weird letters," he said. "It was still inappropriate communication between a middle-aged man and a young boy in our eyes."
During jury selection, there was speculation that many jurors' close links to Penn State could have some effect on their judgment of the case. But Mr. Harper, who has a bachelor's degree and a master's degree from Penn State, said the implications of the verdict on the local community only struck jurors once they finished deliberating.
"We just had the sense that, OK, wow, we are making this decision. It has implications," he said. "It doesn't matter if there is this big university and this head of a great charity. If what was done was wrong then we need to find him guilty and that was it."
Justine Andronici, a State College attorney who represents the young men known as Victim 3 and Victim 7, said they were "greatly relieved" by the outcome.
"One said, 'Thank God he's in jail,' " Ms. Andronici said. "The other said, 'It's a long time coming.' "
Write to Kris Maher at [email protected]