By Peggy Wright
Daily Record
November 2, 2011
http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20111102/NJNEWS/311020041/Chatham-priest-slaying-trial-Prosecutor-works-to-dispel-suggestion-of-cover-up
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| Jose Feliciano is charged with murdering a priest at St. Patrick’s rectory in Chatham. / Photo by Karen Fucito/Special to the Daily Record |
The Morris County prosecutor on Wednesday tried to dispel defense suggestions that slain Rev. Edward Hinds attempted to protect or engage in a "cover-up" of the past of the man who allegedly murdered him, former St. Patrick Church custodian Jose Feliciano.
Jeannine Sorrentino, an administrative assistant for nine years at St. Patrick's in Chatham, spent hours on the witness stand in state Superior Court, Morristown, testifying at the trial of Feliciano, 66, who is charged with fatally stabbing the 61-year-old Hinds on Oct. 22, 2009, in the rectory.
While prosecutors still are presenting their case, Sorrentino was called as an out-of-turn witness by defense lawyer Neill Hamilton, but her testimony was largely beneficial to the prosecution. The state contends that the priest learned in the fall of 2009 that Feliciano had not gone through mandated background checks, was hiding a criminal past, and intended to fire him.
Hamilton suggested in his trial opening that the priest and custodian had a sordid relationship and that Hinds deliberately did not forward Feliciano's fingerprints to the State Police so that a background check could be completed. Jurors have not been told, but Feliciano confessed to a detective that he wanted to end a homosexual relationship with the priest. He claimed the priest threatened to fire him if their intimacy ended and he reacted in a homicidal rage.
In the end, jurors will have to decide whether Feliciano stabbed the priest 32 times in a deliberate act of murder or in the throes of passion//provocation, a lesser form of homicide.
On Wednesday, county Prosecutor Robert A. Bianchi elicited from Sorrentino that Hinds was not in control of employee files and did not have access to a website that indicated whether parish volunteers and employees with contact with children had completed background checks and special training.
Just before he was killed, Hinds was in the process of preparing for an upcoming audit on whether all employees and volunteers were in compliance with a church-mandated program called Protecting God's Children. That program was implemented by the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops in response to sexual abuse cases involving priests and children.
Sorrentino testified that she noticed in the fall of 2009 that Feliciano was fingerprinted at some point but his prints were never checked out so she brought the fingerprint card to Hinds' attention.
"Father Ed said 'I'll look into it. I'll take care of it,' " she said. She later clarified that Hinds could not have done anything with the aged, inked impressions on the card she gave him because, by the fall of 2009, employees were required to get their fingerprints scanned at a company in Parsippany.
"There's been a suggestion of a cover-up if you will," Bianchi asked Sorrentino. She called Hinds "brilliant," committed to the Protecting God's Children program and said that Hinds couldn't have been part of a "cover-up" of Feliciano's failure to go through full background checks because he lacked access to all necessary records.
Contact: pwright@njpressmedia.com
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