Supreme Court to Hear Plea to Reinstate Roman Catholic Church Official's Child Endangerment Conviction
By Matt Miller
The state Supreme Court agreed Thursday to consider a plea to overturn an appeals court ruling that freed a Roman Catholic Church official convicted of child endangerment in a priest sex abuse scandal. Pennsylvania's highest court took on the case on a appeal by Philadelphia prosecutors, who want to send Monsignor William Lynn back to prison. Lynn, 63, was the first U.S. church officials to be charged with hiding child molestation complaints against priests. He was the contact person for the filing of such complaints in Philadelphia from 1992 through 2004. Prosecutors claimed Lynn, a former secretary for clergy at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, covered up sex abuse incidents and put children at risk by reassigning priests who were sex predators to new parishes in Philadelphia. A jury convicted Lynn of child endangerment in 2012 and he was sentenced to 3 to 6 years in prison. In December the state Superior Court dismissed the criminal case and ordered his release. The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office filed an appeal notice with the Supreme Court a month later. In accepting the prosecution's appeal, the Supreme Court said it will focus on two issues. The first is whether the evidence was insufficient to prove Lynn guilty of endangering children since he did not have direct contact with children. Also, the high court will weigh whether Lynn, despite his lack of direct contact with children, could have been convicted as an accomplice. The issue there is whether there was a "general scheme" where he placed "a known sexual predator under his control in a position that promoted risk of further sexual assaults." Lynn served 18 months of his prison term before the Superior Court ordered his release.
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