PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By John P. Martin
and Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
Keep the jurors late.
Order them to do their job.
Give them what they want.
Those were options defense lawyers and prosecutors asked Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina to consider Wednesday as jurors took a day off from deliberations in the landmark clergy-sex abuse trial.
The panel of seven men and five women asked for the break because of graduations and family commitments. On Thursday, they are due to begin an eighth day deliberating child-endangerment and other charges against Msgr. William J. Lynn, the former secretary for clergy in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and the Rev. James J. Brennan.
The shape of those talks remains unclear. No one could be sure whether the stream of questions from the jury room since it got the case June 1 came from one juror or 11. After she sent jurors home Tuesday, Sarmina told the lawyers she was reluctant to grant the panel’s latest request: to have days’ worth of testimony read to it.
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