Pa. Court Refuses to Derail Retrial of Monsignor William Lynn in Child Endangerment Case

By Matt Miller
Penn Live
June 28, 2018

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2018/06/pa_court_refuses_to_kill_child.html

Monsignor William Lynn(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

A high Roman Catholic Church official facing a retrial on charges that he helped hide child-sex crimes by priests failed Thursday to convince a state appeals court to completely dismiss the case against him.

The Superior Court panel, in an opinion by Judge Jack A. Panella, rejected Monsignor William Lynn's claims that Philadelphia prosecutors committed deliberate misconduct at his first trial in 2012 by presenting testimony from an accuser they knew was lying.

Lynn, former secretary for clergy of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, claimed the prosecution concealed from his attorneys the fact that an investigator uncovered inconsistencies in the grand jury testimony of an accuser who said he was molested by another priest when he was in fifth grade at a parish school. Lynn was in charge of investigating sexual misconduct allegations against clergy and determining assignments for accused priests.

The Superior Court's rejection of Lynn's latest plea to kill the case comes 2 1/2 years after the same court granted him a new trial, voiding his original child endangerment conviction and 3- to 6-year prison sentence. In ordering the new trial, the state judges found a Philadelphia County judge improperly allowed prosecutors to introduce at the 2012 trial a "high volume" of evidence of child-sex involving priests that occurred before Lynn's tenure as secretary of the diocese.

In his latest appeal, Lynn sought to derail the case on double jeopardy grounds.

He insisted he shouldn't be tried again because prosecutors didn't disclose to his defense team that a detective had challenged a witness' claims that as a boy the witness had helped to serve early morning mass at the elementary school and had been a member of its bell choir.

In rejecting Lynn's double jeopardy bid, Panella found the monsignor had not shown prosecutors "knowingly" allowed the witness to provide false testimony or that they disbelieved the witnesses' account of being abused by a priest.