CALIFORNIA
The Press-Enterprise
11:39 PM PDT on Tuesday, July 12, 2005
By MICHAEL FISHER / The Press-Enterprise
Tuesday's scheduled courtroom arguments between the Diocese of San Bernardino and prosecutors seeking to review a defrocked priest's personnel file never materialized after the two sides apparently struck an undisclosed deal.
"Pursuant to our agreement, we have no comment," the Rev. Howard Lincoln, spokesman for the million-member diocese, said Tuesday.
Both he and Riverside County prosecutors declined to elaborate.
Prosecutors and the Inland diocese have been locked in a legal fight over the personnel file of Jesús Armando Dominguez, charged with 58 counts of child molestation for allegedly sexually abusing two teenage boys at Catholic churches in Coachella and Perris in the late 1980s.
Court records from Tuesday indicate that the diocese and prosecutors have reached an accord, but Riverside County Superior Court Judge Russell Schooling ordered that agreement sealed.