PHILADELHIA (PA)
Big Trial
Ralph Cipriano
Defense lawyers today took the 24-year-old sex abuse victim known as “Billy Doe” on a one-way trip back to Catholic grade school, courtesy of what one lawyer jokingly referred to as “the Wayback machine.”
For those of you who missed the old Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, the Wayback machine used to transport Mr. Peabody the time-traveling mutt and his pet boy Sherman back to famous moments in history.
In Courtroom 304 at the Criminal Justice Center, Billy was confronted with blown-up copies of all his report cards from grades five through eight. He was quizzed about his attendance record, the names of his old grade school teachers, and they even handed him a parochial school uniform, with a monogrammed blue short-sleeve polo shirt and pants, just like the one he used to wear back when he was a fifth and sixth grader at the St. Jerome Catholic School in Northeast Philadelphia.
It was all part of a rigorous two-hour cross-examination that found many inconsistencies in Billy’s story, but landed no knockout blows. At the end, a deflated-looking Michael J. McGovern seemed to cut short his questioning prematurely. Prosecutors appeared surprised and elated by how well Billy had held up on cross. And Billy’s supporters left the courtroom saying the defense hadn’t laid a glove on their boy.
Defense lawyer Burton A. Rose, representing Charles Shero, Billy’s former sixth-grade teacher, got things started today by placing Billy’s blown-up report cards on a flimsy easel that would soon collapse.
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