PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
JOSEPH A. SLOBODZIAN, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
LAST UPDATED: Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Defense attorney William J. Brennan Jr. told the Philadelphia jury last week they’d have to decide who to believe: The Rev. Andrew McCormick or the man who alleges the Catholic priest sexually assaulted him when he was a 10-year-old altar boy in 1997.
Now in their fourth day of deliberations, the Common Pleas Court jury of nine women and three men has announced that some believe the priest and some the altar boy.
“We are still undecided,” said Judge Gwendolyn N. Bright, reading the missive she said she received at 3:15 p.m. Tuesday from the deadlocked panel.
In an apparent effort to break the logjam – the verdict must be unanimous – the jurors spent 90 minutes Wednesday morning listening to the court stenographer read back the verbatim testimony the 26-year-old accuser gave Feb. 27.
The accuser, sitting in court with his family and other supporters, began quietly crying as he heard his own words again describe how McCormick in December 1997 took him to the priest’s bedroom of the St. John Cantius parish rectory in Bridesburg, undressed him and tried to force him commit a sex act.
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