DETROIT (MI)
Detroit Free Press
April 5, 2006
BY PATRICIA MONTEMURRI
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
The Rev. Edward Olszewski lives in Florida, but the Archdiocese of Miami has barred him from working as a priest.
Charges were dismissed Tuesday against the Rev. Edward Olszewski after the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office decided not to retry the Catholic priest. A December ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court overturned his 2002 conviction for allegedly abusing a youth at St. Cecilia parish in Detroit in the 1970s.
"His first response is that he'd been through four years of hell and was now vindicated," said Olszewski's attorney, James Thomas, speaking of Olszewski's reaction when he learned the news while at home in Florida. When the court ruled in December that he deserved a new trial, Olszewski already had served most of his sentence, which was handed down by a trial judge in January 2003.
Olszewski, 72, "was deprived of an impartial jury" because a juror did not disclose prior to being selected that she had been sexually molested, the state Supreme Court ruled in December.
Maria Miller, a spokeswoman for Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, said the office would pass on a retrial. The high court's decision legally cleared Olszewski. His name no longer appears on the Michigan sex offender registry, as was required after the 2002 conviction.