New Trial Denied for Ex-priest Convicted of Raping Altar Boys

By Andrew Amelinckx
Berkshire Eagle
April 5, 2013

http://www.berkshireeagle.com/ci_22958675/new-trial-denied-ex-priest-convicted-raping-altar

A former Roman Catholic priest who was convicted of raping two altar boys in Berkshire County in the 1980s was denied a new trial by a Massachusetts Appeals Court this week.

Gary Mercure, 65, the former pastor at Our Lady of The Annunciation Parish in Queensbury, N.Y., was convicted in February 2011 in Berkshire Superior Court of three counts of rape of a child by force and one count of indecent assault and battery on a child under age 14. He is serving a 20- to 25-year prison sentence.

In the appeal, Mercure's lawyer argued that the jury had been unduly prejudiced after being allowed to hear testimony concerning uncharged sex crimes involving the two victims and six others that allegedly occurred when they were altar boys in his parish in New York.

The statute of limitations prevented criminal charges being brought in that state.

The justices found that Judge John A. Agostini did not abuse his discretion in allowing the testimony since it was used only to show a common plan to both isolate and rape the boys, whose families were closely tied to the parish and not merely to show the defendant's "bad character."

Mercure, and the Albany Roman Catholic diocese, is also the subject of a pending civil suit brought by one of the victims.

The abuse of the two altar boys took place on camping trips to the Berkshires.