PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial
By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net
After declaring “I am fallible,” the Hon. M. Teresa Sarmina today announced she would reverse course, and grant bail to Msgr. William J. Lynn.
It was Judge Sarmina who denied Lynn bail twice in 2012, before and after she put him away for three to six years after a jury found the monsignor guilty of one count of endangering the welfare of a child.
A three-judge panel of Superior Court appeal judges on Dec. 26th reversed that conviction, saying the “plain language” of the state’s original child endangerment statute plainly didn’t apply to Lynn. It only applied to adults who had direct contact with children, such as parents, teachers and guardians, the Superior Court judges said. It did not apply to the monsignor, who never even met the alleged victim in his case. [The state’s original 1972 child endangerment law was amended in 2007 to include supervisors such as Lynn.]
The Superior Court judges went one step further, labeling Sarmina’s handling of the law in the Lynn case as “fundamentally flawed.” So no wonder Judge Sarmina looked like she was sucking on lemons today when she read a legal soliloquy from the bench that basically amounted to: I may have screwed up the case, but I really don’t think so; I’m still the trial judge and you’re not; and I bet I’m going to be upheld when the state Supreme Court takes this up on appeal.
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