Posted on 03/26/2011 12:59:03 PM PDT by Dr. Eckleburg
At an intensely combative and vitriolic hearing Friday afternoon in a sex-abuse case that has shaken the Philadelphia Archdiocese to its core, a state court judge shocked one priest's defense attorney by disclosing that the government thinks he might be a witness as a former seminarian and could be disqualified from the case. The lawyer, who represents one of three current and former Roman Catholic priests charged with raping boys in their parish, fired back that prosecutors were being "anti-Catholic" and had uttered an "abomination."
Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes told defense attorney Richard DeSipio that she's received information that "might make you, in fact, a witness because of events that occurred while you were a seminarian."
The information "stems from the fact that you attended the seminary with a student who asserts he was abused," Hughes said, adding that DeSipio "may possess factual knowledge about abuse that occurred with that student."
She added that the substance of the claim that DiSipio witnessed something is still unclear. "I just don't know if it's true," Hughes said. "I really don't know if it's true."
Yelling and visibly upset, DeSipio demanded that the government, then and there, identify the source of the allegation. "Let them spill it out right now!" DeSipio demanded.
"How dare they send you a letter about that," DeSipio said, referring to the district attorney's office. "That's an abomination."
Prosecutors said only that part of DeSipio's seminary training overlapped with the tenure of a senior clergyman accused of endangering children by failing to protect them from priests with a known history of abuse.
Monsignor William Lynn, now pastor of St. Joseph Church in Downingtown, Pa., is reportedly the highest-ranking member of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States ever to be charged with child endangerment. Between 1984 and 1992, he served as dean of men at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa., according to his biography on St. Joseph's website. As the secretary for clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia from 1992 to 2004, Lynn acted as personnel director for priests. He is accused of ignoring reports of abuse, covering up for them and putting children in danger.
"They are anti-Catholic. I'll say it," DiSipio fumed. "[The district attorney is] attacking me as a Catholic!"
The judge rejected DiSipio's claim. "Attack you? You attacked me! You don't even know me!" Hughes said, referring to a prior argument over the necessity of a preliminary hearing, another hotly contested issue Friday afternoon.
"Mr. DeSipio, I suggest you shut up," Hughes said. "People are coming from out of the woodwork [to provide information to the commonwealth.]"
If the government can prove the allegation is credible in 30 days, DeSipio will be disqualified as the archdiocese's attorney.
"You can change lawyers now, you can change lawyers in 30," the judge warned DeSipio's client, the Rev. James Brennan. "[But] there are some conflicts that are not waivable."
DeSipio argued that the 30-day investigation was "really unfair to Father Brennan," given his mounting legal costs.
Judge Hughes was livid that DeSipio spoke up again. "If you open your mouth one more time I am going to have the sheriff take you out of here," she told DeSipio.
As DeSipio continued to argue, Hughes said she might have him "locked up and held in contempt." Instead she issued a gag order, responding to what she observed as attorneys having "gone to the airways to advocate."
"No more interviews with anyone," the judge ruled.
"Does that include the DA going on Chris Matthews' 'Hardball' and going to the New York Times," defense attorney Michael McGovern asked.
The judge responded affirmatively: "I don't want tweets. I don't want Facebook. I don't want IMs [instant messages]."
Hughes said the court will revisit the gag order on April 15, when defendants are to be arraigned. That date also marks the deadline for the DA to provide the defense with the first batch of discovery, she said.
All but one of the defense attorneys challenged the government's amendment to its case, which added a conspiracy charge that had not explicitly been requested of the grand jury.
"The issue here is that if the DA seeks to amend, it has to be subject to some sort of prima facie determination," the defense argued.
The judge found otherwise, ruling that the commonwealth established "good cause" in its pleadings and that "there is no constitutional right - federal or state - for a preliminary hearing."
It was "a technical error on the commonwealth not to charge conspiracy" originally, Hughes said. "Conspiracy is made," and the defendants will not be afforded a preliminary hearing, she ruled.
Hughes said there was abundant evidence to support the amendment.
"I'm the only person, besides the prosecutors, who has seen every stitch of evidence," she said.
Defense attorney McGovern argued that her admission was precisely the problem.
"Your Honor, this is patently unfair!" McGovern said. "You know the evidence. They know the evidence. I don't know what the evidence is! I haven't seen any!"
The attorney said proceeding to trial without a preliminary hearing was like saying, "Let's have a dart game in a dark room."
"What kind of country is this where we have this?" he shouted.
The judge yelled back, baring her teeth: "You sit down! Sit, sit, sit!"
DeSipio agreed with McGovern that their clients deserve a preliminary hearing, which could allow them to confront their accusers.
"There's no witness. I know that they [the prosecutors] don't like that he's in jail," DeSipio said. "This accuser says there was an erect penis in his buttocks."
"Was it in your buttocks, or was it in your anus," he asked rhetorically. "If that question wasn't asked [of the grand jury], and he didn't specify anus or butt cheeks, I have a right to ask that."
"What you can't do, and what I submit they're trying to do, is say just because we have a grand jury, we have good cause [to by-pass a preliminary hearing]," DeSipio said.
The judge also addressed a potential conflict of interest concerning Monsignor Lynn, who unlike the three current and former priests, faces child endangerment charges - not rape or sexual assault. Plans for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to pay Lynn's legal costs present "a whole array of conflicts that I can't even imagine at this point in time," Hughes said.
"It's real simple," the judge said to Lynn, who was donning his clerical collar, "your master is the person that's putting bread on the table."
"It may be in your best interest to put forth a defense that attacks other people [or the church]," Hughes said.
She told Lynn he was putting himself in the position of receiving "advice from people who are being paid by people whose interests don't necessarily align with yours."
The stakes of this gamble could amount to "14 years of incarceration versus probation," she said.
Lynn, in a calm voice, declined. "Well, I trust these two men." he said, adding that the church hadn't placed any conditions on the payment of his legal costs.
Hughes was incredulous. "You are making a knowing, voluntary and intelligent decision to place yourself in conflict with your attorneys?" she asked.
"I am," Lynn responded, waiving his right to any future appeal based on the argument that his attorneys had a conflict of interest.
"Then we're moving forward," the judge said.
After arraignments and release of the first batch of discovery, which will include grand jury notes and testimony, on April 15, the government will begin putting together a second batch. The government said that batch would take longer to produce, as it will include roughly 10,000 pages of documentation, much of which will need to be redacted.
Hughes said the government must give the defense a specific timeline for the production of the second batch. "There has to be some finality," she said.
In January, a grand jury returned an indictment for rape and sexual assault against one current priest, one defrocked priest and one man who taught at a Catholic school. Monsignor Lynn, the third cleric who worked for the archdiocese as secretary of clergy, is accused of giving known abusers easy access to minors.
“Sorry for the misunderstanding.”
No problem.
Haste to judgment much?
So are you claiming that I a Catholic lie everytime I recite the Creed in Church. That everytime I pray to God I am faking it? That everytime that I thank Jesus for His mercy and gift of salvation I am trying to pull a fast one? That my claim that I can not take Christianity off and on like a cloak that it is just not a part of me but it is who I am, that I am perjuring myself before the throne of heaven.
What nerve.
FBI REPORT POINTS TO INCONVENIENT TRUTH ABOUT GUNS AND CRIME
A Dec. 21 press release from the Second Amendment Foundation points to an inconvenient truth:
A ten percent drop in murders during the first six months of this year at a time when gun sales were up dramatically is more proof that there is no correlation between gun ownership and violent crime...
You poor misled soul. The Second Amendment Foundation did not use the term 'inconvenient truth. It was the headline and lead written by the Examiner website. You cannot get anything right, can you? Here is the headline of the release from the Second Amendment Foundation:
NEWS RELEASE
Second Amendment Foundation
12500 NE Tenth Place • Bellevue, WA 98005
(425) 454-7012 • FAX (425) 451-3959 • www.saf.org
MURDER DOWN, GUN SALES UP; PROOF THAT GUNS DON’T CAUSE CRIME: SAF
For Immediate Release: 12/21/2009
BELLEVUE, WA – A ten percent drop in murders during the first six months of this year at a time when gun sales were up dramatically is more proof that there is no correlation between gun ownership and violent crime, the Second Amendment Foundation said today.
The FBI released data Monday that shows murders dropped by 10 percent from the same period in 2008. Meanwhile, according to data released by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) shows that during the first six months of this year, gun sales were up. January 2009 background checks rose 28.8 percent over the same month in 2008, February’s NICS checks were up 23.3 percent and in March they were up 29.9 percent over March 2008. The trend continued in April, with NICS checks up 30.3 percent, while May showed a slowdown, up only 15.5 percent, and in June they were up 18.1 percent.
“What this shows,” said SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb, “is that gun prohibitionists are all wrong when they argue that more guns result in more crime. Firearms in the hands of law-abiding citizens are no threat to anyone. Perhaps violent criminals were actually discouraged by all of those gun sales earlier this year, because the media made a point of reporting the booming gun market...
There is no use of the word inconvenient in the ENTIRE PRESS RELEASE. Why is it that you keep getting so many things so bone-achingly wrong time after time after time?
Because practice makes perfect.
1) It sounds like your calling Corapi guilty.
2) Your statement also comes across as hoping women were assaulted by this priest.
Thanks for the info, but many RCs (even some on FR) disagree with tongue-talking RC charismatics, and have many other disagreements, even over who is a true and saved RC, and about what is infallible and what things like Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus means as regards salvation, as well as the officially unresolved theological conflicts in Catholicism, including the freedom of the will?
The point, which you missed or ignored, is that even if one is a steward and teacher of Scripture that does not render infallible. As for unity, you either have a unity of cults which is by implicit assent to “infallible authority” or one based upon identification with a particular church and culture, or which depends upon Scriptural “manifestation of the truth,” but which must allow for disagreement.
And if the issue is unity, then cults (which include the SDA and OPs) exhibit the greatest unity based upon the first model, while on the popular level RCs are more liberal like mainline Prots, and do not overall evidence a greater unity than evangelicals, despite their differences.
I've heard of drug addictions, gambling addictions, and sex addiction, but I think libel addiction is a new one for me.
The only number that counts, to a Christian, and the only thing that matters, is when, as the Nicene Creed says, Jesus will return to Judge the living and the dead that it is your soul on display before Him. You cannot point to 75% of bed-worshippers or 100% of Calvins or any percentage of "well, look I have declared my own salvation because I know I am saved".
Paul speaks often of the hope of salvation. Jesus speaks to Judgement. I hope all men will be brought to the truth of Jesus and therefore to fulfill the will of God that all men be saved. However, I cannot step in for you and you cannot step in for me. Salvation is a personal event between God and myself. Same as any other man.
I do not know about unsaved getting bored. I do not presume on such matters since that is way above my pay grade. I will, like Paul run the race to the end, and buffet my body to try to keep myself on the track that he speaks of, lest he lose his way and therefore his salvation.
Here’s another thread on Corapi:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2691696/posts
No irrational hatred there...
Well unless these people don’t hate the Church but are agents of the left trying to stir up division between Christians.
So it sounds like your the type of Catholic that believes in faith and works for salvation?
Maybe there is a 12 step program.
“What nerve.”
Don’t get too upset. The usual suspects are either sad, strange people or agents of the left.
Either way, I’d fear for their souls.
Catholic teaching is that we are justified both by faith and by charity. We do not believe in justification by faith alone. We do not believe in imputed righteousness but that Jesus truly makes us clean.
I can think of at least two steps:
Judgement and Hell.
Not that I may not be condemned to Hell, myself.
Not upset. Disgusted.
But hey don’t worry you might get a Hail Mary pass.
I for one am counting on my works to get me into heaven.
When I was in the service (Korean War) our dog tags had religous afilliation stamped on them, P=Protestant, C=Catholic, (I have no idea how the others were identified.)
This identification was primarily to allow the "proper" Chaplain to serve the GI if circumstances allowed. In extreme circumstances any Chaplain, any faith, would assist the wounded.
The P Chaplain did not ask a wounded serviceman if he was Baptist, Methodist, or whatever. He was simply a P, a C, or something else.
IMO this preoccupation with "denomination" is a red herring. There are more than twice as many P's in the United States than C's.
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