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	Defense in Chatham Priest Killing: Janitor Was Enraged By Peggy Wright Daily Record October 20, 2011 http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20111020/NJNEWS/310200020/Chatham-priest-slaying-trial-Attorneys-say-cleric-provoked-janitor-s-rage Suggesting a sordid relationship between victim and killer, a defense lawyer told a Morris County jury Thursday that custodian Jose Feliciano stabbed the Rev. Edward Hinds to death in Chatham in an enraged frenzy after the priest fired him. The trial of the 66-year-old former janitor on charges of murdering the pastor of St. Patrick Roman Catholic Church on Oct. 22, 2009, opened in state Superior Court, Morristown, with the prosecution and defense offering opposing reasons behind the killing of the 61-year-old cleric. Pastor of the church since 2004, Hinds was found at 8 a.m. Oct. 23, 2009, on the kitchen floor in the rectory with his dog Copper on his lap. Morris County Prosecutor Robert A. Bianchi said the killing was a deliberate, purposeful murder. Defense lawyer Neill Hamilton said the priest forced Feliciano to do certain things, then fired him, which provoked and impassioned him to grab a knife off a kitchen counter and kill. In the months leading up to the slaying, Hinds and parish workers were hurrying to comply with a Catholic Church mandate that all volunteers and employees with access to children had to complete special training, be fingerprinted and undergo a criminal background check. Hamilton said the priest learned in the summer of 2009 that Feliciano’s fingerprints were never forwarded to State Police and further discovered in early October 2009 that Feliciano was wanted since 1988 in Philadelphia for a crime against a child. Yet, Hamilton said, Hinds held onto the information without immediately firing the janitor as he should have since people with backgrounds that included crimes against children weren’t allowed to work for the church. Hamilton told jurors that Feliciano confessed to the crime, but the lawyer did not say outright that Feliciano claimed the priest threatened to fire him unless he continued a homosexual affair with him. Instead, Hamilton only hinted in his opening at an illicit liaison between the two men. “Mr. Feliciano paid a price to Father Hinds for that silence” about his background, Hamilton said. “We’re never going to say Father Hinds deserved to die. Because of the things he made Mr. Feliciano do, he provoked Mr. Feliciano such that a reasonable, objective person would fly into a homicidal rage.” Bianchi, in his opening, called Feliciano a liar and a lazy worker who was earmarked for firing at the church that was struggling through tough economic times. Bianchi sneered when he described how Feliciano tried to look like a hero by performing half-hearted resuscitation efforts on the priest and then turned into a victim with complaints of feeling stressed and sick. Feliciano’s failure to cover his tracks led detectives straight to him, Bianchi said. Feliciano broke the cellphone that belonged to Hinds, Bianchi said, but in doing so made the device malfunction; detectives were able to trace hits it was making off cellphone towers out in Easton, Pa., where the janitor lived with his wife and two children. “That is the miracle of the case. The cellphone is the thing that took him down. One little mistake released an avalanche of evidence,” Bianchi told the jury. Custodian of the church for 18 years, Feliciano had been “on the radar” as a “subpar” employee after Hinds became pastor. But the clincher to firing him, Bianchi said, was the information Hinds gathered while trying to comply with the background checks on all employees. The state will present evidence that Feliciano balked on complying and that Hinds grew suspicious and undertook his own investigation into the janitor’s past. The state also will present Hinds’ diary, where he had noted that Feliciano was to be terminated on Oct. 23, 2009, but paid until Oct. 31, Bianchi said. Making lengthy eye contact at times with the defendant, who mostly averted his head and squeezed his hands throughout the prosecutor’s two-hour opening, Bianchi said that Feliciano was in the process of stabbing Hinds to death in the rectory when the pastor was able to make a 911 call at 5:26 p.m. Oct. 22, 2009, from his cellphone. Bianchi played that call for jurors. The priest told the dispatcher in a weak, gasping voice his location on Washington Avenue but then the call was ended. Bianchi charged that Feliciano saw the priest making the call, “pounced on him,” and ended the connection. The dispatcher called back, getting Hinds’ voice mail. The dispatcher called again, this time with Feliciano picking up Hinds’ phone and assuring the woman there was no emergency. “It’s a horrible call, but it’s a beautiful piece of evidence,” Bianchi said. “Father Hinds’ voice may not have been heard by the New Jersey State Police, but it will be heard here, loud and clear.” Bianchi asserted that most of the wounds suffered by Hinds were not life-threatening and that evidence will show he struggled desperately for his life, with knife wounds to his abdomen, hands, and the front and back portions of his body. Feliciano, he said, took phones from the rectory so the priest would bleed out and couldn’t call for help. The trial is scheduled to resume Monday before Judge Thomas V. Manahan in Morristown. Peggy Wright: 973-267-1142; pwright@njpressmedia.com
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