Jun 02, 2014 10:24 AM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

The judge overseeing the trial against three former Pennsylvania State University administrators is ready to get the case "back on track" by the end of the summer.

According to the Associated Press, Dauphin County Judge Todd Hoover is going to make a huge decision that could even result in the charges being thrown out. Former school president Graham Spanier, former athletic director Tim Curley and former vice president Gary Schultz are accused of covering up Jerry Sandusky's sex crimes against minors.

In Dec., Spanier, Curley and Schultz engaged in an open-court dispute over a grand jury testimony involving Penn State's then-general counsel Cynthia Baldwin three years ago. The three former administrators argued they believed Baldwin was acting as their attorney and her testimony violated their right to legal representation.

"We're going to try to get on track for later this summer," Hoover told the AP, though he said he was not referring to the court date in Dec. "When we're doing these things, everybody will have plenty of notice about what we're dealing with."

Despite interviewing the judge directly, the AP reported it is not clear what Hoover will decide upon, but if the defendant's legal rights to representation were violated, it could be grounds to dismiss the charges.

Sandusky was arrested in Sept. 2011 and went to trial that June, which his defense team argued was far too short. Still, Sandusky, a former assistant coach for the Penn State football team, was convicted of 45 counts of child molestation and was then sentenced to 30 to 60 years in jail. Sandusky also recently lost an appeal, but since his conviction the school has even finalized settlement agreements with every last one of the 10 victims, yet the men who allegedly covered up the crimes are still on trial.

"It does seem unusual to me that it's taken five months to rule on this issue that, in a fairly high-profile case, you'd think would go to the top of the docket," Wes Oliver, a professor at Duquesne University School of Law, told the AP. "If this were the Jerry Sandusky case and it were dragged on for this long, people would be up in arms."

Defense attorneys for the three former administrators told the AP it would not be unusual for this type of case to take as many three years to go to trial, given its complexities and recent developments.

Said Tom Farrell, an attorney for Schultz, "Outsiders and the public and the media want to see a case as a reflection of something larger, but for the most part, it isn't - it's about the very peculiar detailed facts of that particular case, and things happen that outsiders don't understand because they don't know all the details."

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