Pennsylvania’s public-employee pension system announced last week that it has revoked the $59,000 annual retirement payment for former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, reports the Associated Press.

The State Employees’ Retirement System notified Mr. Sandusky in a letter that his conviction on sexual-abuse charges triggered a forfeiture of his retirement benefit. The ex-coach was sentenced Tuesday to 30 to 60 years in prison for molesting 10 boys, many of whom he’d met through The Second Mile, the youth charity he founded in 1977.

The state’s law on pension forfeiture, adopted in 1978, originally applied to public employees convicted of financial crimes related to their office. It was amended in 2004 to cover public-school workers found guilty of sex crimes against students.

Karl Rominger, an attorney for Mr. Sandusky, said the pension agency had no legal grounds for the revocation. “It’s my inclination to believe that they are just going through the motions to try to throw some red meat to the public, but they know they are going to lose,” he said.