PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Legal Intelligencer
Max Mitchell, The Legal Intelligencer
December 29, 2015
The Philadelphia district attorney has asked for reconsideration of an appellate court’s recent decision to vacate the conviction of Monsignor William J. Lynn, the first Catholic Church administrative official convicted of endangering the welfare of children abused by other priests.
District Attorney R. Seth Williams announced Monday that he filed an application to have a nine-member en banc panel of the Superior Court hear reargument of numerous issues on appeal in the case.
Although Lynn, who had served as secretary for clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, had been convicted under an earlier version of Pennsylvania’s law criminalizing endangerment of the welfare of children, a split three-judge panel of the Superior Court overturned that conviction Dec. 22. Along with reversing Lynn’s sentence of three to six years’ incarceration, the ruling in Commonwealth v. Lynn remanded Lynn’s case for a new trial.
The majority opinion, written by Judge John T. Bender, had said the trial court had admitted a “high volume of unfairly prejudicial other-acts evidence.”
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