PA Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Convicted Catholic Church Official

PA Supreme CourtMonsignor William Lynn could be released from prison later this week, after the PA Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling to reverse his 2012 conviction on child endangerment charges.

The state Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Philadelphia DA Seth Williams’ office to overturn a December 2015 Superior Court ruling ordering a new trial for Lynn, the first Catholic Church official to be convicted for supervising and relocating priests accused of child sexual abuse, Joseph A. Slobodzian of the Inquirer reports.

Five justices on the high court concurred with the lower court’s ruling that the prosecution’s use of historical information on clergy sexual abuse – including some cases from over 60 years ago – had affected Lynn’s right to a fair trial.

Lynn was first convicted four years ago for his role in reassigning accused priests to new parishes as archdiocesan secretary for clergy between 1992 and 2004, according to the report.

In April 2015, the Supreme Court reinstated Lynn’s conviction after the Superior Court had overturned it on other grounds.

Defense attorney Tom Bergstrom will now seek Lynn’s release from prison on his original $250K bail, with his client having almost served the minimum of his three- to six-year sentence, the Associated Press reports.

“Currently, he is an unconvicted and unsentenced individual, and he should be released on bail pending a new trial, a fair trial this time,” Bergstrom told the Inquirer.

The Philly DA’s Office has not commented on plans to re-prosecute Lynn.

12 Responses

  1. Headline is inaccurate. Lynn is no longer “convicted” of anything. Another EPIC FAIL by R. Seth Williams and his team (Jews or not).

    Rumple – was bungy correct? Is the appellate lawyer on this case Jewish? Is it you? Are you Ron Eisenberg?

  2. A real Jew would know how to spell Matzo (also spelled Matzah … but never “Matza”)

    LOL at the RETARD troll

  3. I concur with P. References to foreskins, etc., and ethnic slurs are coming too uncomfortably close to the email exchanges that got many state officials in trouble. Since this site is open to the public, postings should be reviewed and those that don’t pass muster should be replaced with, for example, “Rumpled … is an unadulterated juvenile asshole whose verbal farts are repulsive and will not be allowed to detract from the discussion.” Three of these, and the IP address is banned. Software exists.

  4. Politics PA has to police these responses. The site offers good daily news feed updates but allowing the trolls to take over the comments damages any perceived professionalism of the site.

  5. You betcha Bungy! You (especially you) can bet that the Jew who’s working on this case, enjoys eating Matza made from the blood of Catholic children

  6. How fortunate that PA Superior Court has time to read a transcript and determine admitted testimony was irrelevant, but somehow never could find the transcripts that showed PACSES computer printouts are fraudulent, deleting payments that were previously recorded and relied upon at prior Family Court hearings.

  7. No – not yet, Aaron.

    Does anyone here know who the trial ADA was on Seth Williams’ hallmark prosecution of a man that never touched a child?

    It was Pat Blessington – one of the alleged Porngate prosecutors that NOW wants fired.

  8. At least this takes the attention off of me and my brother-in-law Harry Levant. We are hoping no one noticed how we took care of Harty’s criminal case.

    So what if my brother-in-law stole almost $2M and got away with it?

    So what if we didn’t tell anyone about our conflict?

    So what if my husband’s clients that work for me handled the case?

    So what?!?

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