AG to push for release of report on Erie diocese, others

By Ed Palattella
Erie Times-News
June 29, 2018

http://www.goerie.com/news/20180629/ag-to-push-for-release-of-report-on-erie-diocese-others

Shapiro says he will ask state Supreme Court to lift stay quickly.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said he is tired of waiting for the release of one of the most sweeping reports of its kind in the United States.

Shapiro said on Friday that he will file a legal motion on Monday to make public the grand jury investigative report on child sexual abuse in six of the state’s Roman Catholic dioceses, including the Catholic Diocese of Erie.

“The people of Pennsylvania have a right to see the report, know who is attempting to block its release and why and to hear the voices of the victims of sexual abuse within the church,” Shapiro said in a statement.

Shapiro said he is taking the action in response to the state Supreme Court’s ruling that halted the release of the report, whose scope is due primarily to the number of dioceses involved. The attorney general’s office conducted the statewide grand jury investigation, which lasted two years and ended with the expiration of the grand jury’s term on April 30.

The justices, in an opinion Monday, said they granted an indefinite stay and put the release of the report on hold to address objections from “many individuals” who are named in the report but who want the grand jury to review their concerns at hearings before the public release of the 884-page document, which remains under seal.

The individuals who have raised objections have not been identified. The Supreme Court gave no timeline for when it would rule on the objections from those who filed petitions seeking to block the report’s release. Grand jury proceedings are secret, and any hearings on the report’s release are expected to be closed.

The Supreme Court in its opinion said the attorney general’s office had no objection to “a brief stay of a matter of days, consistent with the emergency nature of these proceedings.” But the court also invited the office to “lodge an objection to a continued stay on developed reasoning addressing the petitioners’ entitlement to orderly judicial review.” Shapiro said he is responding to that invitation.

“There are legal filings the court must decide. In acting on Monday, we are hopeful the court will expeditiously decide these issues and lift the stay,” Shapiro said on Friday.

Also on Friday, several news organizations, including the Associated Press and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, filed motions asking the state Supreme Court to lift the stay on the release of the grand jury report.

The grand jury report also covers the dioceses of Allentown, Harrisburg, Greensburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton. The bishops of all six dioceses have said they do not oppose the release of the report, with Erie Catholic Bishop Lawrence Persico the first to state that he supports its publication. Persico has led the 12-county diocese since October 2012.

The dioceses on May 25 got the sealed report to review so they could file responses to it by June 22. The attorney general’s office was expected to release the report as early as June 23 until the Supreme Court granted the stay on June 20. The court explained the reasons for the stay in Monday’s five-page public opinion.

Eight Roman Catholic dioceses operate in Pennsylvania. The attorney general’s office in 2016 released a highly critical grand jury report on the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia was the subject of highly critical grand jury reports that the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office released, with the final report made public in 2011.

The current grand jury report is an investigative document rather than an indictment. Pennsylvania law requires notification to a person who is unindicted but named in a critical manner in a grand jury report. The law allows the person to submit a written response that the grand jury’s supervising judge can append to the grand jury report before its public release. The law does not allow for the petitioners to present evidence before a grand jury, which typically hears evidence only from the prosecution.

The supervising judge of the grand jury investigating the dioceses is Norman A. Krumenacker III, of Cambria County. On June 5, he denied the unnamed petitioners’ objections to the grand jury report, calling their requested hearings before the grand jury improper under federal and state law. The petitioners, according to Krumenacker’s ruling, are arguing they are entitled to the hearings and other recourse under the right of reputation in the state constitution.

Krumenacker cited the unprecedented nature of the petitioners’ requests and certified the case for a direct appeal to the state Supreme Court. The petitioners appealed and asked for the stay that the Supreme Court granted on June 20.