BishopAccountability.org
	Lawyer Claims Priest's Rights Were Trampled By David Yonke Toledo Blade January 17, 2009 http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090117/NEWS02/901170429/-1/NEWS An attorney for Toledo Catholic priest Gerald Robinson filed a motion yesterday claiming that his client's constitutional rights were violated in the 2006 trial that led to Robinson's conviction for the 1980 murder of a nun. John Donahue of Perrysburg asserted in an amended petition for postconviction relief, filed in Lucas County Common Pleas Court, that Robinson's trial attorneys were ineffective, that the State of Ohio withheld key evidence, and that pervasive media coverage deprived the priest of a fair trial. "I believe he is innocent and the highest calling for me is to assist a wrongly convicted person," Mr. Donahue said. He said he spent two years and donated more than $400,000 of his time in compiling evidence for the 56-page motion and an appendix containing hundreds of pages of police reports, coroner's files, affidavits, and other documents. Robinson, 70, is serving a 15-years-to-life sentence at Hocking Correctional Institute in southern Ohio for the April 5, 1980, murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl. He lost an appeal in the Sixth District Court of Appeals, and on Dec. 31 the Ohio Supreme Court declined to hear his case. Mr. Donahue said he will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in a "two-pronged attack," along with the amended petition, seeking to overturn his client's murder conviction. Robinson retired in 2006 and has been barred from ministry by Toledo Bishop Leonard Blair, but remains a priest because he has not been laicized by the Vatican. Dean Mandros, assistant Lucas County prosecutor, said the motion "is primarily a continuation of the arguments raised at trial and on appeal when they tried to blame a dead priest, Father Jerome Swiatecki, for this murder. The trial jury didn't buy that. The court of appeals didn't buy it. And we'll see if this judge buys it, but I don't think so." He said Mr. Donahue made at least 225 assertions in the motion, and the state will ask the court for "an adequate amount of time to respond properly."
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