ST. LOUIS (MO)
The Kansas City Star
Associated Press
ST. LOUIS - Three years after being charged with sodomizing a teenage boy in the late 1970s, a St. Louis Catholic priest may be heading to court.
Circuit Judge Donald McCullin on Wednesday refused to dismiss the felony count of forcible sodomy against the Rev. Thomas Graham.
The charge has led to pleadings all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court on whether the statute of limitations bars a charge filed so late. The state Supreme Court in December upheld an appeals court decision that it does not.
The case is widely seen by Missouri prosecutors as a test to see how well the sodomy charge can be used to convict child molesters decades after their alleged crimes. Standard child molestation laws require charges to be filed relatively quickly.
Graham, 70, is accused of performing oral sex on a boy in his early teens at the rectory of St. Louis' Old Cathedral. The charge says it happened between mid-January 1975 and the end of 1978.