Graham Spanier in Dauphin County Court Monday.

Former Penn State President Graham Spanier did the best he could with a bad situation, and he shouldn't be branded as a criminal for it, Spanier's defense attorney argued Tuesday in a concise opening statement.

"Graham Spanier agreed to a plan (to deal with Jerry Sandusky) that he believed to be appropriate in light of the facts presented to him," Sam Silver, Spanier's lead trial lawyer told a Dauphin County jury of seven women and five men.

"This is an effort by the Commonwealth to criminalize a judgment call... We're going to urge you to reject that effort to criminalize well-intended decisions."

Spanier and two of his top lieutenants at Penn State, Gary Schultz and Tim Curley, were charged in 2012 with what amounts to criminal negligence in failing to act on an eyewitness report of sexual misconduct by Sandusky, the former assistant football coach convicted earlier that year of being a serial child molester.

Sandusky is serving a minimum 30-year state prison sentence.

In a long-awaited sequel to that case, state prosecutors have alleged that by failing to take that 2001 report directly to police or child welfare authorities, the three university administrators left Sandusky free to assault at least three more boys over the next seven years, including one in a Penn State shower.

Spanier, once a powerful figure in American higher education who was forced from office in the wake of Sandusky's 2011 arrest, is the only remaining defendant in this week's trial.

The 68-year-old State College resident arrived at the Dauphin County courthouse Tuesday morning accompanied by his wife, Sandra, who continues to serve as an English professor at Penn State.

Both are expected to provide highly anticipated testimony for the prosecution in this case.

But Silver, in his 20-minute opening statement, said that if jurors can put themselves in Spanier's position in 2001, they should be able to see that he did nothing remotely criminal.

For example:

The defense will attempt to defuse eyewitness then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary's gripping account of seeing Sandusky in an apparent sexual situation with a boy in the Lasch Football Building by noting that Spanier never heard directly from McQueary.

As the busy president of one of America's largest universities, he "relied on information that others gave to him" - in this case, Curley and Schultz. And Silver said he expects that the jury will hear that Spanier was never led to believe by those men that what McQueary saw was sexual or potentially criminal in nature.

As the administrators' planned to deal with Sandusky, Silver argued that email threads discovered by investigators many years later will show that the collective decision not to report the former coach to police or child welfare officials - while ultimately a failed decision - was in fact the farthest thing from a coverup.

"They were only considering what would be the right thing to do," Silver said. "It's who should they tell. What should they do... Not: 'Let's do nothing.'"

Spanier, Curley and Schultz did in fact, Silver noted, decide to take the report to The Second Mile, which was Jerry Sandusky's employer at the time, and an organization devoted to the welfare of children.

And they decided to bar Sandusky from bringing Second Mile kids onto campus athletic facilities, though prosecutors have argued there was no meaningful follow through on that edict.

Silver also contended evidence will show that McQueary, head coach Joe Paterno and others who clearly knew about the 2001 allegation were never told by Graham Spanier that they should keep things quiet.

In closing, Silver admonished the jurors against letting the case become some sort of referendum on whether Spanier and his aides handled the Sandusky situation perfectly.

Rather, he said, their sole duty is to determine whether Spanier's "conduct at the time - before anyone knew the end of the story - was criminal behavior.

"Is he a criminal," Silver said, looking back at his client, "for agreeing to a plan to bar Jerry Sandusky from bringing kids on campus, and to tell the head of The Second Mile what had been reported?"

Silver appealed to jurors to let Spanier walk out of court just as he entered - as an innocent man.

A conviction on the child endangerment count could carry the possibility of jail time for Spanier.

The case will resume at 1:30. McQueary is expected to be one of the prosecution's first witnesses.