PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial
By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net
Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams is asking Judge M. Teresa Sarmina to deny bail to Msgr. William J. Lynn, on the basis that Lynn is a “flight risk” who may seek refuge in the Vatican.
A panel of three Superior Court judges on Dec. 26th reversed Lynn’s “historic” 2012 conviction on one count of endangering the welfare of a child, and said that the monsignor should be “discharged forthwith.” But the D.A. isn’t going along with the higher court’s opinion at a bail hearing scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday before Judge Sarmina.
Lynn was labeled a “flight risk” in a six-page answer to a petition for a bail hearing filed by Hugh J. Burns, Jr., chief of the D.A.’s appeals unit. The monsignor is a “high ranking official [in] a worldwide organization, the Roman Catholic Church, that has both diplomatic and non-diplomatic facilities in many nations,” Burns wrote.
The evidence presented at Lynn’s trial “established that numerous individuals within that organization are closely associated with [Lynn] and may be willing to improperly assist him out of personal interest without proper sanction,” Burns wrote.
In response, Lynn’s lawyer, Thomas A. Bergstrom, said, “The whole thing is idiotic. These guys [in the district attorney’s office] are the most unprofessional lawyers I’ve ever run across in my life. They simply ignore the law and they’re gonna continue to do it. But that [Superior Court] order applies to them as well.”
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