NEW JERSEY
Daily Recod
Peggy Wright, @PeggyWrightDR May 12, 2016
The murder conviction and life sentence for a custodian who stabbed the Rev. Edward Hinds to death in 2009 in the rectory of St. Patrick Roman Catholic Church in Chatham was upheld Thursday by a state appeals court.
Jose Ramon Feliciano, now 71 and incarcerated at New Jersey State Prison, had claimed after the Oct. 22, 2009 murder that he repeatedly stabbed the 61-year-old pastor to end unwanted sexual overtures. But the Morris County jury believed that Hinds had learned that the parish custodian was a fugitive for 21 years from a Pennsylvania allegation of improper conduct with a female child and intended to fire him.
The appellate court panel, in a 70-page decision released Thursday, rejected multiple claims of an unfair trial by Feliciano. He alleged that then-Morris County Prosecutor Robert Bianchi, who tried the 28-day trial, made inflammatory and disparaging remarks about him, including that he was “narcissistic.” Feliciano also unsuccessfully appealed use at trial of the criminal warrant from his past, and he argued that the state’s use of two witnesses — a pastoral psychotherapist and hospital mental health worker — violated his rights to confidentiality but the appellate panel disagreed.
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