WAUKESHA (WI)
Duluth News Tribune
Associated Press
WAUKESHA, Wis. - The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has thrown out the child molestation conviction of a former Episcopalian priest, saying his attorney performed inadequately in not objecting to a prosecutor's closing arguments.
The prosecutor told jurors they should not be swayed by character witnesses for Russell Martin's defense because people like serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and Theodore Oswald, who was convicted of killing a police captain, robbing banks and kidnapping a woman, also had character witnesses at their trials.
The federal court said the Dahmer and Oswald references were inflammatory and improper.
Martin, now 47, was among a group of people accused of sexually assaulting children during the late 1980s at the Nashotah House, an Episcopalian seminary in Delafield, and he was convicted in 1995 in a case involving a 13-year-old boy.