Msgr. Lynn's Wait Continues
By Joe Slobodzian
It’s been three weeks since Msgr. William J. Lynn was sent back to prison after the state Supreme Court reinstated his 2012 conviction and sentence for child endangerment in the Catholic Church priest sex abuse scandal. For the 64-year-old Lynn, the first church official convicted for a supervisory role over deviant clergy, it’s become a question of waiting behind bars or returning to house arrest while his lawyers continue appealing. Thomas A. Bergstrom, Lynn’s lawyer, said Friday he plans to visit Lynn on Wednesday to discuss whether he wants to petition the Superior Court to free him on bail pending his new appeals. For many people, this wouldn’t even be a question. But Bergstrom said that after already serving 18 months of a 3- to 6-year prison term, Lynn “is not enamored of the thought of becoming a jack-in-the-box: in and out and in and out and in again.” Since Lynn was charged in 2011 on the recommendations of a county grand jury, he has been through a dizzying array of legal proceedings. First he was free on bail awaiting trial and then sentenced to prison by Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina. After 18 months in the state prison at Waymart in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the Superior Court reversed Lynn’s conviction and sentence in December 2013 and let him to go free on bail pending the Philadelphia District Attorney’s appeal to the state Supreme Court. Well, not exactly free. The Superior Court let Lynn post $250,000 bail and live in house arrest in the rectory of St. William, a parish in Lawncrest in the Northeast. There he remained until the Supreme Court reinstated the verdict and sentence and Sarmina sent him back to prison on April 30. Although Bergstrom said he expected Lynn to be returned to Waymart, as of Friday he was still at the city’s Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility. In the meantime, Bergstrom filed an appeal with the Superior Court asking the state’s mid-level appeals court to hear further argument on appellate issues the Supreme Court did not address. The high court’s April 30 decision rejected – and only focused on -- Lynn’s contention he was wrongly convicted for his supervisory role because the state child-endangerment statute was not amended to include supervisors until 2007 — three years after he left his job as Secretary for Clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. On Friday, the Superior Court agreed to assign Lynn’s new appeal to the same three-judge panel that ruled in his favor in 2013. Bergstrom has 45 days from Friday to file a supplemental appeal brief and the District Attorney’s office has 75 days from Friday to respond. The court said it would not decide whether to hold oral argument until after the judges review the parties’ briefs. What's in the new appeal comments is unclear. The Superior Court ordered all documents sealed. Officials in the District Attorney’s office could not be reached for comment on the sealing order and Bergstrom said he didn’t ask for it. It’s possible a seal order applied to some earlier documents to protect victims’ anonymity has now been extended to the entire case file.
|
.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.