PENNSYLVANIA
Big Trial
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2014
By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net
Father Charles Engelhardt was transported by ambulance from prison to a hospital last week after he experienced dizziness.
The 67-year-old priest is an inmate at the State Correctional Institution in Coal Township, Northumberland County, where he’s serving a six to 12 year-sentence. In a case overflowing with reasonable doubt, a jury on Jan. 30, 2013 inexplicably convicted Engelhardt of endangering the welfare of a child, corruption of a minor and indecent assault. Even though the alleged “victim” in the case was Billy Doe, a former altar boy turned heroin addict whose crazy stories of abuse defied logic and common sense, as well as all known evidence gathered by the district attorney’s own detectives.
Just a week before he was stricken, Father Engelhardt’s lawyer, Michael J. McGovern, was in state Superior Court, arguing that his client deserved a new trial because of judicial errors and prosecutorial misconduct.
Last Tuesday morning, doctors at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pa., diagnosed cardiac artery disease and found a blockage in the priest’s heart, said his niece, Tracey Boyle, a registered nurse.
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