PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
Joseph A. Slobodzian, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Posted: Friday, January 25, 2013, 1:18 PM
A Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury has begun getting legal instructions from the judge after a morning listening to closing arguments by a second defense lawyer and the prosecutor in the child-rape trial of a Philadelphia Catholic priest and ex-parochial schoolteacher.
Judge Ellen Ceisler told the jury her legal instructions, known as the charge, will take about 40 minutes. After that, the jurors will begin evaluating the charges against the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero.
Engelhardt, 66, and Shero, 49, are charged with rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, child endangerment and two related counts involving the alleged serial sexual assault in 1998-99 of a 10-year-old altar boy in the St. Jerome’s parish in the Northeast.
Defense attorney Michael McGovern challenged the jury in his closing this morning not to convict Engelhardt as part of what he called a national “groundswell of the presumption of guilt” in cases involving Catholic priests and sexual abuse of children.
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