PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Newsweek
BY RALPH CIPRIANO ON 1/6/17
In the latest twist in the rapidly unraveling “Billy Doe” sex abuse case, a lawyer for one of the four men sent to jail by the testimony of a former altar boy says prosecutorial misconduct should clear his client from further legal jeopardy. Thomas Bergstrom, a lawyer for Monsignor William Lynn, said in court that the lead detective in the case told the District Attorney ’s office he didn’t find the boy credible but that his warning was ignored.
Billy Doe’s claims that he had been brutally and repeatedly raped over a period of several years put three priests and a former Catholic school teacher in jail, where one of the men died.
In a pretrial hearing on January 4, Bergstrom charged that when Detective Joseph Walsh told a top prosecutor about his grave concerns, she didn’t want to hear it. “You’re damaging my case. You’re hurting my case,” he claimed former Assistant District Attorney Mariana Sorensen replied.
“You can’t turn a blind eye to that,” Bergstrom told Judge Gwendolyn Bright, arguing that this was prosecutorial misconduct. He then asked the judge to invoke the ultimate penalty for that malfeasance by dismissing the pending retrial of Lynn.
Walsh met with Bergstrom in November and December and provided what Bergstrom described in court as exculpatory evidence regarding possible misconduct in the prosecutor’s office. While Bergstrom and ADA Patrick Blessington battled over what Walsh and Sorensen said and did, the detective, now retired, paced in the hallway outside the courtroom.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.