PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call
Bill White
State Judiciary Committee Chairman Stewart Greeleaf, R-Montgomery, announced over the weekend that he will recuse himself from proceedings invovling House Bill 1947, the child sex abuse statute of limitations bill.
I wrote last week about the way Senate rules never result in findings of conflicts, including cases much more obvious than Greenleaf’s. At that time, what we knew was that the law firm for which he is a partner had represented a Catholic entity several years ago in its attempt to have Delaware’s similar statute of limitations law declared unconstitutional. A law firm that represented child sex abuse victims in Delaware accused Greenleaf of having a conflict, but the Senate parliamentarian ruled there was no problem.
I argued that the appearance of a conflict can create credibility problems, even where there’s no direct financial interest involved. By then, Greenleaf already had stacked a Judiciary Committee hearing with witnesses who argued the Pennsylvania bill is unconstitutional, and his appearance of conflict made his conduct even more suspicious than it otherwise would have been.
As you’ll see in his statement below, he says he discovered another child sex abuse case in which his firm was involved, and although he continued to insist he had no conflict, he decided to recuse himself.
One of the lawyers who accused Greenleaf of the conflict, Stephen Neuberger, argued in response that the process already has been tainted by Greenleaf’s involvement, a reaction I’ve seen in several other emails since then from victims and their advocates.
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