MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press
By Emily Gurnon
egurnon@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 04/07/2014
The criminal sexual conduct conviction of a former Nativity of Our Lord priest has been reversed and the case sent back to the lower court for retrial.
The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled in a decision published Monday that a lower court judge made errors in the case of Rev. Christopher Wenthe.
Wenthe was convicted in 2011 on one count of third-degree criminal sexual conduct. He had a sexual relationship with an adult woman from his St. Paul parish during a meeting in which she “sought or received religious or spiritual advice, aid or comfort” in private, the jury found.
But, agreeing with Wenthe’s defense, a three-judge panel of the appeals court determined that Judge Margaret Marrinan made several errors by: failing to tell jurors they must agree on which particular meeting between priest and victim was the one in which she sought or received spiritual advice or aid; failing to instruct the jury that the state must prove Wenthe knew the woman sought or received spiritual advice during the sexually infused meeting; prohibiting evidence about the woman’s sexual history from being presented by the defense after the state “opened the door” to it by eliciting testimony of her sexual inexperience.
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