PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philly.com
by Jeremy Roebuck, Staff Writer.
Msgr. William J. Lynn, the first Roman Catholic Church official convicted in the United States for covering up child sex abuse by priests, wants out of prison and to have his case assigned to a new judge.
A day after a Pennsylvania Superior Court panel overturned – for a second time – the 64-year-old’s 2012 conviction, his lawyer, Thomas A. Bergstrom, sought an emergency bail hearing for his client and the removal of Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina from the case.
In court filings Wednesday, Bergstrom cited Sarmina’s “previous harsh sentence and other rulings,” as well as her decision to admit evidence at trial of decades worth of child-abuse complaints involving Philadelphia area priests, some of which predated Lynn’s tenure as secretary for clergy for the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
Superior Court called that evidence “unfairly prejudicial” in its ruling Tuesday and sided with Lynn’s argument that it effectively turned him into a scapegoat for the wider sins of the church. Prosecutors had argued it offered insight into Lynn’s decision-making, and shed light on the archdiocese’s historic practice of covering up abuse to protect the interests of the church.
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