SAN JOSE (CA)
Mercury News
By Scott Herhold
The Mercury News mercurynews.com
Posted: 07/05/2012
The trial of Will Lynch offered mirrors within mirrors, ironies within ironies. Nothing made that clearer than the words of juror No. 12, a grizzled, retired accountant who said the turning point came when the jurors were instructed to ignore the testimony of the Rev. Jerold Lindner.
“The thing that struck me was that the victim in this case disappeared, or his testimony did. I had to ask myself, if you don’t have a victim, do you have a crime?” said the burly juror, who explained that jurors were ready to acquit on all charges until Lynch testified to the attack.
In my view, the jury still got it wrong: We don’t operate as vigilantes in America. But you could understand how they got there. In the courtroom, the defendant became Lindner, not Lynch. And the crime happened 35 years ago, not two years past.
How did we get to the place where a man can go to a Jesuit retreat center, bloody the priest who assaulted him years ago, and then emerge to cheers after a near clear-cut victory in court?
The quick answer is that powerful forces and feelings trump a prosecutor’s brief. Emotions, and yes, the memory of years of abuse by priests, matter more than the cold litany of charges. Call it jury nullification, but it is both simpler and more complex than that.
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