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  Accused Green Bay Priest Adds Insanity Plea

Associated Press, carried in Green Bay News-Chronicle [Green Bay WI]
May 21, 2005

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) - A priest accused of molesting a 10-year-old boy while serving as a counselor at a Catholic school in 1988 asked Friday to change his plea to include a claim that he was not mentally responsible.

The lawyer for Donald Buzanowski, 62, filed a motion for him to plead not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, in addition to his previous plea of not guilty. If found guilty of the charges, he then would have a second phase of his trial on his sanity at the time.

Buzanowski is charged with two counts of first-degree sexual assault of a child stemming from alleged incidents when he served as a counselor at Ss. Peter & Paul Catholic School in Green Bay.

Defense lawyer Owen Monfils has also filed a motion to bar reporters from hearings leading up to trial. He contended that information from motion hearings could prejudice potential jurors in the case.

The Green Bay Press-Gazette filed a protest to the request.

The issue is expected to be argued at a hearing next Thursday before Brown County Circuit Judge J.D. McKay.

Buzanowski remains jailed in lieu of $100,000 bail.

He has not served as a priest since 1989, and the Green Bay diocese has asked the Vatican to laicize him, or return him to lay status.

Also expected to be argued at the hearing Thursday is the prosecution's effort to have McKay reconsider a bid to introduce a letter Buzanowski wrote to a Milwaukee pastor in 2002, in which he admitted molesting 14 boys from 1969-88.

McKay ruled in late April that prosecutors could use information from Buzanowski's conviction in 2002 for possession of child pornography, which sent him to federal prison for 21 months, but the judge said the letter could not be used as evidence.

 
 

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