Rufus, Rambo & Father Andy
By Ralph Cipriano
The district attorney has until May 10 to decide, after two mistrials, whether to retry Father Andrew McCormick a third time for the alleged attempted rape of an altar boy. On his twitter account, Rufus Seth Williams, our crusading district attorney, was remarkably low-key about the case. He briefly noted Father Andy's latest mistrial before deleting the tweet and moving on to more important things. Such as the D.A.'s call-in on the WIP morning show where he joked about subpoenaing Eagles Coach Chip Kelly to find out "where all these deals will lead us." And the D.A.'s comparison of himself to Rambo in the D.A.'s running feud with state Attorney General Kathleen Kane over whether to prosecute local pols caught in a sting operation. ["I find myself like John J. Rambo," the D.A. tweeted. "They drew first blood not me."] Meanwhile, the "friends of Father Andy" have launched a petition drive online to "demand an end to the persecution of Father Andrew McCormick by the District Attorney of Philadelphia." Maybe Father Andy's friends are on to something. Like those tired Rocky and Rambo franchises it might be time to end the priest abuse trials in Philadelphia before we waste any more taxpayer money and have to suffer through any further embarrassments. "Sign this petition because you don't want more of your tax money spent on a trial and investigation that's been going on since 2011," says the online petition in support of Father Andy. "Sign this petition because it's not fair for a man of limited financial resources to spend more than $100,000 to defend his name for a third straight time." In the Father Andy case, none of the principals can talk because of the gag order imposed by Judge Gwendolyn N. Bright. It did seem fitting, however, that in the fourth installment of the D.A.'s priest abuse trials a defense lawyer finally put the right guy on trial, namely the D.A. Trevan Borum, Father Andy's lawyer, ripped the D.A.'s office for not doing their homework in the case, and instead relying on a blatant appeal to emotion. "Do not decide this case based on sympathy," Borum told the jury. He asked the jury to recall how many times he had objected to questions from the prosecutor "designed to evoke an emotional response" from a witness, and how many times a witness broke down crying. Borum's indictment could easily be applied to the D.A's entire prosecution of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia beginning with the 2012 trial of Msgr. Lynn and Father James J. Brennan, the 2013 trial of Father Charles Engelhardt and former Catholic school teacher Bernard Shero, and last year's mistrial of Father Andy. During the Engelhardt-Shero trial, while Assistant District Attorney Mark Cipolletti gave his 82-minute closing statement, the prosecution kept a photo up on several courtroom TVs of the alleged victim in the case, a smiling 10-year-old Billy Doe, wearing his parochial school uniform and looking like the star of Leave It To Beaver. In her closing in the Father Andy case, Assistant District Attorney Kristen Kemp talked about how only a guilty verdict could take away the pain of the alleged victim, as well as the collective guilt felt by his mother, father and cousin, who was 11 when the alleged victim told her about the abuse and she still feels bad about not doing anything. In the Father Andy case, Borum said, the D.A. took the witnesses at their word. "Instead of vetting anybody, they decide to run with it," Borum said, because, "We're gonna convict a priest." "It doesn't matter how we do it," Borum said. "The ends justify the means." Again, Borum could have been speaking about the entire prosecution of the archdiocese. Talk about not doing your homework. It starts with a 2011 grand jury report that had more than 20 mistakes in it. And an investigation of Billy Doe's allegations two years later where every witness interviewed by the D.A.'s own detectives, including the alleged victim's mother and brother, contradicted the star witness. Instead of vetting anybody, the D.A. just decided to run with it. Because the ends justify the means. Down in the Italian Market on Wednesday, they're closing off Ninth Street for the filming of Creed, the latest Rocky movie. In this one, Rocky's the manager schooling Apollo Creed's grandson, who wants to be a contender. A guy who works at Lorenzo's pizza joked that they're going to keep filming Rocky sequels until they have to push Sylvester Stallone down Ninth Street in a wheelchair. Would Stallone sink that low? What about our D.A.? Has he hit bottom yet? In the Father Andy case, in order to get a guilty plea, the D.A. was willing to bargain five sex charges -- involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sexual assault, endangering the welfare of a child, indecent assault of a child, and corrupting the morals of a minor -- down to a single guilty plea for corrupting the morals of a minor. In order to win at all costs, the D.A. was willing to let a priest he publicly accused of attempting to rape a 10-year-old altar boy not spend a day in jail, go on probation for four years and not even have to register as a sex offender under Megan's Law. Father Andy's friends noticed. "This offer [declined by Father McCormick] stands as proof that the main objective of the district attorney is not to keep someone they believe to be a rapist and child molester off the streets but rather to inflate their own conviction statistics," says the petition to free Father Andy. What about the SNAP crowd and the victims' advocates? If you're on the other side of this issue, and you believe the D.A.'s story line, that Father Andy is a menace, how does that plea bargain protect children? Maybe the next time Seth Williams does some grandstanding, somebody should ask him that question.
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