Bill Cosby, Bill Lynn and undue process

PENNSYLVANIA
Philly.com

JANUARY 3, 2016

PROSECUTIONS ARE like snowflakes, no two the same. Sometimes, you have a low-profile drunken-driving case where the defendant is a first-time offender, the district attorney doesn’t have too much skin in the game and is willing to offer a plea deal, and no one except the parties involved will ever know about it.

And then there are those cases that catapult a prosecutor into the cable-news firmament, cementing his or her status as a legal and political superstar for years to come (assuming, that is, the prosecutor ends up winning).

It’s not a good thing to become famous as the district attorney who screwed up a slam-dunk conviction, like Marcia Clark, who will forever be known as the woman who let O.J. Simpson try on a glove.

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams is aiming to be one of those prosecutors who don’t end up as the laughingstock on a future Nancy Grace marathon.

He has taken on the prosecution of Monsignor William Lynn, who is forced to answer for a hierarchy’s perfidy and absorb the vengeance of unleashed ex-Catholics and an ambitious prosecutor who is aiming either for a halo or higher office.

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