Tuesday, Joseph Amendola—the often unorthodox lawyer representing former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky—announced to a packed house that Sandusky would waive a preliminary hearing in which many were expected to testify. By skipping the preliminary hearing, Sandusky can say he spared his purported victims the trauma of having to publicly take the stand, the thinking goes. That might work in his favor in a plea deal, said Edward Ohlbaum, a professor at Temple's Beasley School of Law and a former public defender: "Otherwise, he's given up . . . the chance to cross-examine those folks and use their testimony to challenge them at trial."