Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Will Father Avery Return to Court In a Jump Suit, Part 2

The issue of whether former priest Edward V. Avery would return to Courtroom 304 in a jump suit was argued again in court Tuesday, and the judge decided to keep all options open.

Avery is the defrocked archdiocese priest who pleaded guilty on the eve of the archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse trial to charges of conspiracy to endanger the welfare of a child, and involuntary deviant sexual intercourse with a 10-year-old boy. The jury in the case was never told why Avery suddenly disappeared from the defense table.

On Wednesday, the former altar boy that Avery raped is scheduled to appear in court as a witness. He's going to tell his story of abuse, and then the defense lawyers in the case will have to decide how hard to go after the witness in cross-examination.

As it stands now, the former altar boy poses all the risks of a suicide bomber. If the defense decides to aggressively challenge the witness's credibility, Judge M. Teresa Sarmina may grant the prosecution permission to tell the jury about Avery's guilty plea.


That brought howls of protest from the defense lawyers, who complained that the news about Avery's guilty plea would be prejudicial to Msgr. William J. Lynn, one of two remaining defendants in the case. That's not fair, the defense lawyers said. Avery's lawyer isn't around to cross-examine the former altar boy. And, "We can't cross Avery," complained Thomas Bergstrom, one of Lynn's co-counsels.

The judge had a simple solution for that problem; let's just haul the former priest into court, and see what he has to say. Avery is now doing 2 1/2 to 5 years. For the defense, the wise move may be to give the witness a pass. After all, even if they blow up the former altar boy on cross, what does it matter? Avery has already pleaded guilty.

The judge also reminded the defense lawyers for Msgr. Lynn that they haven't exactly been ripping any prosecution witnesses apart lately. Last week, when the prosecution paraded three former sex abuse victims through the witness stand, the defense spent a grand total of less than 15 minutes cross-examining all three.

It probably would be wise to continue the trend, as the price of playing poker in Judge Sarmina's courtroom has gotten too high. The four lawyers on Lynn's defense don't want the jurors to see Father Avery in a prison jump suit, because they might automatically assume that Msgr. Lynn is guilty.

Lynn, the archdiocese's former secretary for the clergy, is the first Catholic administrator on trial in the country for his role in the pedophile priest scandal. Lynn is charged with conspiracy to endanger the welfare of children. Prosecutors in the case say that the monsignor knowingly shipped abuser priests from one parish to another, putting more children at risk, without any warning to parents.

Judge Sarmina told the lawyers in the case that if she decides to tell the jury about Avery's guilty plea, the jury will only be told about his guilty plea in the rape case, and not the guilty plea in the conspiracy to endanger children case.

Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington argued that the jury needs to know what happened to Father Avery.

"This jury was picked when another defendant was sitting there," he said, pointing toward the defense table. Blessington said if the defense goes after the former altar boy, and "challenges the events" as if they didn't happen, the prosecution has the right to tell the jury that the accused rapist, namely Father Avery, pleaded guilty to the crime, and is now doing time.

The judge adjourned court early Tuesday so lawyers on both sides could argue the issue of what to do about Father Avery. The judge also asked defense lawyers to submit case law in support of their arguments. The case that got the most discussion time in court was U.S. v. Massino.

 Joseph Massino, AKA "Big Joey," "The Last Don," and "The Ear," was the former boss of the Bonanno crime family who claimed it was prejudicial at his trial to mention some 30 associates who had already pleaded guilty.

So that's where we are in the archdiocese sex abuse case, now in its fifth week of testimony. To get the monsignor off, his lawyers are willing to compare his legal plight to that of a Mafia boss named Big Joey. But they may be overreaching.

The real don in this case, Big Tony, met his demise on Jan. 31, suspiciously on the day after Judge Sarmina ruled him competent to appear as a witness at this trial.

The cardinal left behind a videotaped deposition presided over by Judge Sarmina herself. But there are doubts about whether either side will play the video during the trial, supposedly because the cardinal came off like another Mafia boss, Vincent "The Chin" Gigante.

5 comments

  1. Ralph,

    Massino? really? There the government wanted to use pleas to bolster the credibility of its cooperating witnesses and show how many times, a witnesses cooperation resulted in a guilty plea; and if I recall, it was the plea only that the Justice Department wanted to introduce. In other words, the issue was whether the defendant had the right to confront the witness who made the statement, i.e. the co-defendant that pled guilty, under the 6th Amendment. Here, the trial judge is allowing the DA to call Avery. Why are they arguing about the actual plea, if the court is going to allow them to call the witness? The defense does not have a 6th Amendment claim if Avery actually testifies that he abused the boys and they get to cross examine Avery.

    My best guess is that the judge is not going to simply allow the prosecutor to introduce the plea, but will let the prosecutor have Avery standing by ready to testify (in an orange jump suit) if the defense gets too cute with Avery's victims. She probably will make them get him civilian clothes to appear in court.

    Hard to say what is a more offensive costume in this case. The guy in the orange jump suit, or the guy in the black robes with red piping and a cabinet full of secret archives.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The trial is a sham. WHERE IS RIGALI ? ? ?

    ReplyDelete
  3. If released, Cardinal Bevilacqua's video-taped deposition would be an overnight box office hit. The man has always come across as being imperious and arrogant. Why not let the public see the side of him that was known by the archdiocese in Philly for years? As one of the highest ranking Primates (not to be confused with an over-dressed baboon) in the United States, the video-taped deposition would also give the public a window into his mind and "Vatican Mindset!" Whenever I see a picture of Bevilacqua I'm reminded of Dr. Peter Hull's book, "The Peter Principle." The main premise of the book is that in any hierarchy one rises to the Level of His Incompetence, and then they are no longer promotable. It looks like Cardinal Bevilacqua did a great job in reaching his ultimate "Level of Incompetence!"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I hope we do get to see this. We should push to do whatever we can to make sure that that videotape get shown because it undoubtedly proves that Cardinal Bevilacqua has been lying for decades to hide known child rapists, like the 35 that he hid it and moved into his own diocese.

      Please let me know Ralph, or Jeanne, or anybody, if you have any idea what has to be done to make sure that that tape is shown to the world.

      Delete
  4. It's so appropriate that people are beginning to compare the Catholic Church to the Mafia. The Catholic Church is the organized crime family of the child rape world, except for a few things:

    - the Mafia would never rape child
    - if anyone in the Mafia did rape a child, they would undoubtedly be murdered immediately
    - the Mafia has honor

    After this trial, the FBI should begin to use RICO statutes to infiltrate the Catholic church the way they infiltrate the Mafia. They should go into every diocese and take the “secret archives”, like the ones Cardinal Bevilacqua shredded with the names of 35 known pedophile priests, and determine how many other known pedophile priests the Catholic church is hiding, worldwide.

    ReplyDelete

Thoughtful commentary welcome. Trolling, harassing, and defaming not welcome. Consistent with 47 U.S.C. 230, we have the right to delete without warning any comments we believe are obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.