PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philly.com
by Joseph A. Slobodzian, Staff Writer.
The District Attorney’s Office has asked the state Supreme Court to hear its appeal of the Dec. 22 Superior Court ruling that granted a new trial to Msgr. William J. Lynn, who was convicted for his role in supervising pedophile Catholic priests.
The 37-page petition to the state’s highest court, filed Thursday, contends that the 2-1 ruling by a Superior Court panel “usurps the trial court’s discretion” to let the jury hear historical evidence about how the Archdiocese of Philadelphia handled allegations that priests sexually molested children.
The filing had been expected since Feb. 10, when the entire nine-member Superior Court rejected the district attorney’s request for a review of the three-member panel’s decision.
The historical evidence in question, sometimes called “other bad acts evidence,” has been at the heart of Lynn’s case since 2011, when he was charged with three priests and a parochial school teacher after a local grand jury probe.
Lynn, now 65, was not accused of molesting children. Instead, he was accused of child endangerment because, as the archdiocese’s secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, he allegedly reassigned pedophile priests to new parishes, where they preyed on more children.
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