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.
If all else fails (like changing the subject), then troll.
Cute.
Oh boo hoo!!! Instead of the race card they play the martyr card. And how many Catholics are still alive from the 1800's even early 1900's? And what, exactly, did the Republicans do to the poor babies?
Your apparent lack of knowledge about your native country keeps astounding me. You have no knowledge about early years of the Republican Party? In spite of the information that we have posted on a regular basis on the reception of Catholic immigrants into the US? The KKK founding on antiCatholicism, not antiblack bigotry? The No Irish Need Apply? The Know Nothings? The false Jesuit oath and the false Knights of Columbus oath that this site has chosen to omit from its threads? The Thomas Nast and other editorial cartoonists, some of which I have posted on FR? You don't know about this? Did you know that 11 out of the original colonies enacted state religions and enforced them upon pain of death? Do you know of the treatment of the Baptists and Quakers, as well as the Catholics in this progressive and tolerant system that you guys keep telling yourselves was so free for religion? Do you know that the 1st Amendment was put into place to stop the persecution and killings by the state religions in the colonies? No? Thought not.
They're still holding a grudge for over a hundred years and that's why they for pro-abortion?
Holding a grudge for over a hundred years? Look at the antiCatholic vitriol published here by you and by your cronies. Now imagine every big city newspaper publishing the same thing. Look at the Presidential candidacy of Al Smith and the filth that he had to endure. Look at what Kennedy had to endure. At the hands of those whose organization that you associate with.
Catholics are less pro abortion than Protestants are - I realize that you miss much of my postings, but I said that Catholics also look at other things as well - and they fell for some of the other things on the Democratic platform. Protestants increased their vote by about the same as Catholics did for the Democrats - it is just that they are slightly on one side of 50% and Catholics on the other side. If you guys voted 80% or 90% against them, you'd have a point. But just scraping past 50% does not make you guys anti Democratic. It just means that more Republican voters in your bloc happened to turn out on election day.
Get over yourselves. Why not put that monstrous intellect to use trying to figure out why nobody in your group is good enough to sit on the Supreme Court?
I don't mind discussing this with rational people, but I have given up arguing with the irrational for Lent.
When and if you become a rational person, get back to me.
May God Bless you.
Well, in the last few years, I have met actually met some Catholics who hold to conservative values.
A first for me.
But it’s not necessarily a given.
Is that your motto?
“Roman Catholics believe the truth of the Gospel is heresy”
Not true.
“They look to Mary for salvation”
Not true
“They insist their own good words (did you by any chance actually mean ‘works’?)are required for justification since Christ’s work on their behalf is not enough”.
Not true.
I do not take or eschew action at the direction of the likes of you. Gregory XVI came up some time ago; it is a pity that you cannot keep up with the discussion.
I didn’t realize that giving another Freeper a “beating” was the purpose of this discussion.
Silly me.
Ah, went back and reread the post. I will accept your point. You are correct. He caused the KJV to come into being and approved it through his committees; he did not actually write it.
You were expecting way too much :)
I'll bet that you cannot name five truly conservative Roman Catholics who are becoming Protestants. Real people that is, not the fantasies that began with the Reformation and continue to this day.
Now that Catholics are established by several recent polls to be at the highest percentage of the American population they have ever been in the country's history and ever increasing, and the numbers of Protestants (at least the ones who believe in the Christian God) are declining at an even greater rate, when will you be changing your unsupported tune?
As for the Gospel, we Christians continue to follow the Gospel of Jesus; not a made up fantasy which puts the Gospel of Jesus for the Jews only, and snippets of Paul and Isaiah make up a doctrine that would be laughingly silly if it weren't so tragic.
They are not Christians - they admit that they do not follow the Nicene Creed as defined by its writers; they make up definitions for the Creed, as they make up doctrine.
That's not Christian
That's the way you do it.
Make up doctrines and go on TV...
That's not Christian
That's the way you do it.
Make up doctrines and it's all tax free......
See the little preacher with the dentures and the makeup;
Yeah buddy, that's expensive hair.
That little preacher has his own jet airplane;
That little preacher is a millionaire.
We've got to install some altar calls now;
Sell hankies and prayer wheel cash.
We've got move this tent and prayer cards;,br> We've got to get a Swiss bank stash....
I want my, I want my, I want my piles of cash
I want my, I want my, I want my piles of cash....
The study I cited had its methology and its figures well done and correct. The Pew study was flawed.
Your telephone booth cult hemmorhaging members is losing. With the Catholic Church bringing men back to God after mankind's disastrous satanic fling with the Reformation, mankind wins.
LOL.
These people accuse the Catholic Church of changing its beliefs, but when they are countered with the Protestant 180 on contraception, it’s all of a sudden changing the subject.
For some reason, they are desperate to avoid the subject. A guilty conscience can be a pain in the butt sometimes.
Very funny. Cathinfo.com is in self declared schism.
And another thing: you have the Washington Times speaking of - and not quoting - the same Pew study that you rave about, and now we find that the Pew study was from some organization called the Landscape Survey (whoever they are), with no data or methodology cited. I am forced to conclude that this study has been pulled from the same orifice as the collected works of Calvin and all his minions has been.
You guys liberally quote the NYTimes as long as they are antiCatholic - not a care in the world as long as the sleaze can be lobbed by them and by you guys at the Christians in this world. Guess what: we Christians have been around for 2000 years and we care nothing for the ruins of the Reformation or the rubble of the Restoration except to snicker at the puerile babble that passes for doctrines, and to feel extreme sorrow for those caught up in such a farce, when they could come to Christ and be welcomed by all the Christians in the world.
And it's not just contraception. A significant majority of Protestants in the US officially approve of contraception. The abortion mills are staffed by Protestants simply because the few Catholics involved are found out and publicly outed with suitable outrage. A nun was recently excommunicated in part for this and because she also repudiated the Faith in several other aspects.
For some reason, they are desperate to avoid the subject. A guilty conscience can be a pain in the butt sometimes.
Same with the death penalty. They looooove to agonize over the Catholic Church's Inquisition with its admittedly torturous executions, yet they have no trouble when practiced in Europe and in the US by Protestants, and most definitely the harsher the death penalty in the US, the better for the bloodthirsty "Christians" among them. I fully expect a Westboro Baptist (not to pick on the Baptists) or other self determined "bible believing" church call for death by snakebite or staked out in the desert on an anthill or being forced to watch the complete TV broadcasts of W. Herbert Armstrong.
I know it is not the actual trial but if such conduct is an indicator of how she will precede at the trial it does not bode well for the outcome.
No everyone is not doing it. Every Catholic is not doing it. The sexual abuse of children is a problem no matter where it occurs. That is what I am saying. That it happens elsewhere does not make it less wrong when a priest does it. In fact his guilt (in my opinion) is greater since he knows Catholic moral teaching and therefore is without excuse.
My criticism is for those who try to paint abuse as a “catholic” problem stemming from Catholic beliefs. I would agree it did and certainly can stem from a Catholic culture that put too much trust in priests as men and not just in the office of the priesthood. But that is true of any person who uses a position of authority to prey on victims.
I read all the profiles. That is not what the profiles showed. Some did but not all by any means. Being literate gives me an advantage over those who fall for any anti-Catholic priest rhetoric.
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