ARIZONA
KPHO
We have new information about the efforts to bring a fugitive priest back to the valley to face trial.. It involves Father Patrick Colleary, a catholic priest accused of sexual conduct with a minor. Colleary is in Ireland now fighting extradition and, according to this letter from the irish court, obtained by the 5-I Team just this afternoon.. The accused priest may not be headed back any time soon.
Father Patrick Colleary was released from jail back in 2003. Shortly after that, Colleary returned to his home in ireland. The 5-I Team tracked him down to the family farm where his brother told us the family had concerns about the way the priest would be treated here in Arizona.
The letter from the Chief State Solicitor in Dublin echoes those concerns. It says Colleary is asking for a "permanent prohibition on extradition...due to alleged cruel, inhuman, and unconstitutional conditions...in particular in Maricopa County." The chief solicitor brings up Sheriff Joe Arpaio's policy of making inmates wear pink underwear. And it criticizes the recent transfer of inmates from the old Madison Street Jail to the new jail. During that transfer the inmates were kept in their underwear in the streets of downtown Phoenix. This apparently was played up in the Irish media.
Posted by kshaw at May 11, 2005 08:55 AM