Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky appeared in court remotely Tuesday where he said he agreed with his lawyers not to go forward with testimony from an accuser who wants to recant allegations that Sandusky sexually abused him years ago.

The hearing was part of the latest bid by Sandusky's lawyers to secure a new trial for him as his lawyers prepare to go to federal court to seek a new trial after failing repeatedly in state courts.

In court, Sandusky, 82, appeared on a video screen in a spare room in Laurel Highlands state prison, seated at a small table in a maroon-colored shirt looking up at the camera through glasses.

Under questioning, he told Centre County Judge Maureen Skerda he had consulted with his lawyers about the decision not to present the accuser's testimony recanting the allegations from Sandusky's 2012 trial.

"I'm making this decision on advice of counsel," Sandusky said, his arms on the table in front of him, a notepad between them. "Is there anything wrong with that?"

Sandusky, 82, has been serving a decades-long prison sentence since he was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse in 2012, after eight young men testified about what happened to them as boys.

Sandusky's lawyer, Jerry Russo, told reporters later that state courts frown on granting new trials based on a witness recantation, seeing it as "inherently unreliable."

Instead, Russo said, he plans to take Sandusky's broader claims for a new trial to federal court — Sandusky's made at least three attempts in state courts — after one more procedural appeal in state court.

Last year, Sandusky's lawyers had asked for a new trial, claiming there were inconsistencies in the accusers' testimony and that their testimony was driven by the possibility of financial gain, coaching by prosecutors and "therapy intended to (help) them reconstruct memories of alleged abuse."

Skerda months ago had refused to hear the claims, except for the recantation of the victim identified in court documents as R.R.

On Tuesday, Russo suggested that it wasn't worth taking the time for the judge to hear and consider the recantation testimony if it has no chance to win a new trial in a state court.

"If that's the only issue that remains for us to litigate, there's no purpose being served litigating it here in state court," Russo said.

Skerda told Russo and Sandusky that withdrawing the request to present the recantation from the accuser, identified in court documents as R.R., meant that it could not be litigated again in state or federal court.

Russo agreed with that assessment, saying "technically" it is true, but also suggested that the recantation could find its way into federal court, saying that "there are other witnesses that can testify" about R.R.'s recantation.

The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General had said the supposed recantation was "highly suspect" and said it had prepared to rebut the recantation claim with testimony from six witnesses and other evidence.

In a statement, Attorney General David Sunday called Sandusky a "convicted child predator" and said he is making another attempt to "avoid accountability and escape punishment for years of abuse he perpetrated."

Sandusky was the defensive coordinator at one of the country's top football programs under Hall of Fame head coach Joe Paterno. The scandal led to Paterno's firing, and the university paid more than $100 million to people who said they were abused by Sandusky.

Authorities said he found and groomed boys at The Second Mile, a charity he founded for at-risk youth. Sandusky has repeatedly declared his innocence.

R.R., who was 25 years old at trial, testified that when he was 11, Sandusky sexually abused him in the coach's basement in 1998, a transcript shows.

Donald Trump fired the new top federal prosecutor in Seattle on Wednesday less than an hour after the attorney was unanimously appointed by the federal judges in the district, highlighting tensions between the courts and the president over the powerful positions.

Roger Rogoff, a former judge and veteran state and federal prosecutor, was sworn in as US attorney before 8am at the US courthouse in downtown Seattle. In a phone interview, he said he then went to the US attorney's office and asked to meet with Charles Neil Floyd, whose 120-day interim term in the position ended in February.

As he waited in a lobby, Rogoff said, he received an email from the Trump administration informing him he had been removed from the position. He is consulting with other lawyers about suing over his firing, he said.

Presidents normally appoint US attorneys, the top federal prosecutors in each judicial district. The positions require Senate confirmation, except in temporary appointments. When temporary appointments expire before a nominee is confirmed, the judges in a judicial district can name a US attorney.

But under Trump, the justice department has sought to leave unconfirmed prosecutors in their positions indefinitely, often through novel personnel maneuvers.

"District court judges can appoint a temporary US attorney, and [the president] can fire them," the acting US attorney general, Todd Blanche, said in a social media post on Wednesday. He added that the judges who appointed Rogoff "abandoned the time-honored process of consultation with the administration so that the selected US attorney is qualified to serve in the administration".

Trump named Floyd, who previously served as an immigration judge, interim US attorney last October but never forwarded his nomination to the Senate. When Floyd's time as interim US attorney expired, Trump simply shifted his title, a tactic the administration has also tried in other federal judicial districts: he named him first assistant US attorney, while the top post was left empty.

In May, a US appeals court panel expressed skepticism that the maneuver was legal. The federal judges in the city decided to take applications for the position, and they appointed a bipartisan panel to review the applications.

On Wednesday morning the court – comprising 17 active and senior judges appointed by five presidents – issued its unanimous order naming Rogoff the US attorney for western Washington.

Patty Murray, a US senator from Washington, who had opposed Floyd for the US attorney job, blasted Rogoff's quick firing.

"Throughout his career, he has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to public service, and he was appointed legally by the federal judges in the western district of Washington," the senator said in a written statement. "This administration doesn't want to deal with advice and consent – they just want to install cronies to carry out a corrupt political agenda."

In December, Alina Habba resigned as the top federal prosecutor for New Jersey after an appeals court said she had been serving in the post unlawfully.

Lindsey Halligan, who pursued indictments against a pair of Trump's adversaries, left her position as an acting US attorney in Virginia after a judge concluded her appointment was unlawful and that indictments she brought against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, and the former FBI director James Comey must be dismissed.

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that states can count ballots that arrive after Election Day, a persistent target of President Donald Trump.

The 5-4 decision rejected a Republican-led attack on laws in more than half the states and the District of Columbia that permit mailed ballots to arrive and be counted some number of days after the election, provided they are postmarked by Election Day. The outcome spares officials the headache of changing their ballot rules just a few months before the 2026 midterm congressional elections.

In just over half those states, the more forgiving deadlines apply only to ballots cast by military and overseas voters.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the court's majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberal justices.

Federal laws setting a single Election Day "leave open when those votes must be received," Barrett wrote.

Congress could change the law, she said. "If varied deadlines for ballot receipt similarly call for a national solution, the American people must choose it through their elected representatives," Barrett wrote.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the dissent for four justices. "Not only is today's decision inconsistent with statutory text, legal context, historical practice, and precedent; it also threatens to produce lamentable consequences," Alito wrote. "The majority's holding spawns a slurry of troubling election-law questions and risks further undermining Americans' confidence in election integrity."

The legal challenge was part of Trump's broader attack on most mail balloting, which he has said breeds fraud despite strong evidence to the contrary and years of experience in numerous states. Trump has repeatedly claimed that his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 resulted from fraud even though more than 60 court decisions and his own attorney general said that argument had no merit.

Trump called the court ruling a "tremendous loss" and renewed his call for Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which has made it through the House of Representatives but not the Senate.

The court heard arguments in March in a case from Mississippi pitting the state against Trump's Republican administration and the Republican and Libertarian parties. At issue was whether federal law sets a single Election Day that requires ballots to be both cast by voters and received by state officials.

The federal appeals court in New Orleans struck down a Mississippi law allowing ballots to be counted if they arrive within five business days of the election and are postmarked by Election Day.

The outcome is a "sigh of relief" for a lot of election administrators, said Stephen Richer, a Republican and the former top election administrator in Arizona's Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.

A ruling in favor of the Republican National Committee "would have created a whole host of administrative challenges for the affected states," said Richer, who is now a legal fellow at the Cato Institute.

A Texas teenager who fatally stabbed a 17-year-old track athlete from a rival team during a high school meet was convicted of murder and sentenced to 35 years in prison Tuesday in a case that drew wide attention beyond the booming Dallas suburb where they were students.

A jury rejected Karmelo Anthony's claims of self-defense during a confrontation with Austin Metcalf in stadium bleachers last year. Most people who testified were students who described a heated exchange over Anthony's refusal on a rainy spring day to leave a tent that belonged to Metcalf's team.

Anthony, now 19, did not testify at trial and only his mother took the stand during the sentencing phase, telling jurors her son was sorry.

Notoriety about the case spread, in part, because of a flood of social media posts that amplified the killing in racial terms. Anthony is Black; Metcalf was white. Lawyers on both sides, however, told jurors the tragedy had nothing to do with race.

Jeff Metcalf, Austin's father, had also denounced those who sought to stoke racial divisions after his son was killed. A year later, he said again in a Collin County courtroom that it was never about race while his voice swelled with anger over the death of his son.

"You failed your parents, you failed yourself and you failed society," said Metcalf, looking at Anthony after the teenager was sentenced.

Jurors, who deliberated for less than three hours, had the option of a lesser charge, manslaughter, but didn't choose it.

Prosecutor Bill Wirskye had asked for a lengthy prison term.

"Mercy to the guilty," he said, "is cruelty to the innocent."

Earlier Tuesday, during the trial's closing arguments, the jury heard dueling narratives from Wirskye and defense attorney Mike Howard about what happened in April 2025.

Several schools were competing when Anthony sat under the Memorial High School tent that was perched in the bleachers. Austin Metcalf and others had repeatedly told Anthony to leave, witnesses testified, leading to an escalating confrontation.

Howard told jurors that Metcalf had "no legal right to put his hands on Karmelo."

"Texas law does not require that you wait until you get hit," Howard said. "In that split second of chaos, you must put yourself in his shoes."

During the nearly weeklong trial, prosecutors said Anthony provoked Metcalf, and witnesses testified that Anthony was the aggressor.

"This is not self-defense, folks. It's murder plain and simple," Wirskye said.

Anthony at one point reached inside a bag and replied: "Touch me and see what happens," according to a police report.

Metcalf pushed Anthony, according to witnesses, who said Anthony then pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the chest.

"You don't get to meet a shove with a stab, especially if you provoke the shove," Wirskye said.

The teens, both from Frisco, didn't know each other.

"He's very sorry for what he did. Please, have mercy on my son," Anthony's mother, Kala Hayes, pleaded to jurors shortly after the verdict.

The trial drew lines of spectators hoping to find seats in the gallery and unfolded amid heavy security at the Collin County courthouse. As police officers watched Tuesday, dozens of people stood outside the courthouse in 90 degree Fahrenheit heat (32 degrees Celsius) to await the verdict. There were wails of grief from one woman — "This isn't real!" — when the result became known.

Frisco is one of Texas' fastest-growing cities and is dotted with dozens of modern school campuses and gleaming athletic facilities. The parents of Anthony and Metcalf have said they were good students who planned to go to college.

Several students testified that Metcalf, after ordering Anthony to leave his team's tent, scoffed before Anthony reached into a bag and pulled out a knife.

Linda Sun, a former aide to New York governors, was accused of selling her influence to the Chinese government. Sun pleaded not guilty to charges that she failed to register as an agent of a foreign government, conspired with her husband to launder money and helped people commit visa fraud to enter the U.S. illegally. A December trial ended in a mistrial when a federal jury could not reach a unanimous verdict.

Charles Burnham, Pauken's defense lawyer, said in a statement that, by his guilty plea, Pauken "has accepted responsibility for working as an agent of the People's Republic of China without first completing certain required U.S. Government forms."

Burnham said Pauken had hoped his work would "promote peaceful relations and advance the cause of religious freedom in China."

Pauken was arrested in February after arriving in Washington from China. He met with someone who had sought a job in the Trump administration to provide that person with a SIM card and offer $10,000 to write reports to be read by Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to the affidavit.

He appeared to see himself as a middleman between Chinese agents and "human resources" who could provide classified information to Beijing, according to the affidavit. His lawyer didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Since at least 2019, Pauken had been working with Chinese agents, including "Cathy," who he believed to be working for China's security apparatus. Between 2019 and 2025, Pauken received $100,000 for the reports he provided to Cathy, in addition to paid trips to the U.S., the affidavit says. Cathy told him the reports were to be read by Xi.

Pauken was stopped by Customs and Border Protection agents when he returned to the U.S. in January 2025. In interviews with CBP and FBI agents, Pauken said he was meeting a person who was seeking a job in the Trump administration and would provide that person with a Samsung phone and a laptop computer. He said he was "80% sure" that person, if hired by the new administration, would provide classified information to Beijing, according to the affidavit.

U.S. agents let Pauken go and instructed him to carry on with his plans. Pauken's contact said in an interview that Pauken asked for open-source information but also indicated his clients in China frequently asked for more secretive information. That person indicated having no intention of working with Pauken, the affidavit said.