Updated -- Mercure Priest Sex Abuse Verdict Upheld by Appeals Court

By Don Lehman
Post-Star
April 3, 2013

http://poststar.com/news/local/updated----mercure-priest-sex-abuse-verdict-upheld/article_1345dc80-9c79-11e2-80ec-0019bb2963f4.html

A Massachusetts state appeals court has rejected the appeal of former local priest Gary Mercure, who was convicted for molesting two young male parishioners.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Appeals Court found that Mercure was not entitled to a new trial, rejecting arguments that the trial judge erroneously allowed evidence of “uncharged sex crimes” and improper testimony and other technical errors during Mercure’s 2011 trial.

The former Queensbury resident, who served as a priest at Our Lady of Annunciation Church in Queensbury and St. Mary’s in Glens Falls, was found guilty of child rape and indecent assault for sexually assaulting teens he met through the local parishes when he took them to western Massachusetts for outdoors outings.

“There is no basis for the defendant’s claim that the cumulative errors at trial require a new trial,” the court stated in a decision released Tuesday.

Mercure, 65, can appeal the denial to the state’s Supreme Judicial Court.

He is serving a state prison sentence of 20 to 25 years.

Mercure was a priest at numerous Catholic churches in the Albany diocese for more than three decades before he was placed on administrative leave in 2008 and retired.

He was prosecuted after Warren County District Attorney Kate Hogan heard from numerous men who were victimized by him while members of his local churches.

New York’s law did not allow for him to be prosecuted because the allegations — stemming from the 1980s — were too old.

But Massachusetts state law is more lenient, and Mercure was prosecuted for assaults that occurred when he took local boys on trips to ski or hike in the Berkshires.

Part of the appeal focused on whether Hogan should have been allowed to testify during the trial because Mercure’s defense lawyer believed her testimony violated laws that allow only victims to testify about their abuse.

“The investigation conducted by Hogan did not include any of the crimes committed by the defendant in Massachusetts,” the three-judge court ruled. “Rather, they involved acts committed by the defendant in New York that were essentially unchallenged by the defendant. Moreover, the apparent aim of the testimony was to rebut the suggestion that Hogan’s office discussed with the victims the Massachusetts statute of limitations after advising them that the defendant could not be prosecuted in New York.”

Part of the appeal also focused on a comment made by one of the victims when he testified that he believed Mercure was continuing to sexually abuse boys.

Mercure’s lawyer, Michael Jennings of Springfield, Mass., did not return a phone call for comment Wednesday.

One of the men has sued Mercure and the Albany Diocese in U.S. District Court in Vermont, and trial in that case has been scheduled for Jan. 14.

Contact: dlehman@poststar.com