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	Priest Convicted of Killing Nun in '80 Pahl Judge Sentences Toledoan to 15 Years to Life; Defense Says Verdict Will Be Appealed By James Ewinger Cleveland Plain Dealer May 12, 2006 http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf? /base/news/1147423349244900.xml&coll=2 Toledo- A Lucas County jury on Thursday convicted a Roman Catholic priest for the slaying he's lived with for 26 years, finding that the Rev. Gerald Robinson murdered Sister Margaret Ann Pahl in 1980. Robinson stood as Common Pleas Judge Thomas Osowik read the verdict about 11:30 a.m., but he displayed the same cool detachment he had throughout the nearly monthlong trial. Osowik immediately sentenced Robinson to the mandatory term of 15 years to life in prison. Armed bailiffs whisked the priest - his hands cuffed behind his back - out of the courtroom just four minutes after the judge read the verdict. As he entered the hallway and headed for the county jail, applause greeted the priest. "It isn't something to applaud. It's a homicide case," Assistant County Prosecutor Dean Mandros said later at a news conference. "We were trying to hold the person accountable. I don't see it as a reason to celebrate. We didn't go back to the office high-fiving." Defense attorney Alan Konop said the defense team respected the jury's decision but will appeal. John Thebes, another of Robinson's lawyers, thanked the priest's supporters, including residents and parishioners who pledged their homes to help meet his $400,000 bail bond. Robinson never took the stand, but a videotaped 2004 interrogation was played in the courtroom, letting jurors hear his voice. When left alone briefly, Robinson, apparently unaware that he was being recorded, seems to mumble and utter the word "sister." Thebes said the state enhanced only part of that passage, but did not enhance a part where he quoted the priest as saying, "You know I didn't do this sister. Won't you please come through for me?" The jury of eight women and four men deliberated six hours over two days. It took the judge, four defense attorneys and three prosecutors five days to select the panel from an initial pool of 250. The state's case came down to the simple proposition that no one else could have committed the grisly crime, which involved the ritual strangulation and repeated stabbing of the 71-year-old nun. Robinson was the only one with the knowledge of ritual, with the animus toward Pahl and with no plausible explanation for his whereabouts, prosecutors said. The state also relied on expert testimony from nationally known forensic experts, including Henry Lee and Paulette Sutton. And prosecutors used a local forensic psychologist, Dr. Lucia Hinojosa, to advise them as the jury was empaneled. The priest's lawyers argued that the evidence was thin and contradictory at best, flowing from a botched investigation and a rush to arrest in 2004. Robinson was the prime suspect from the beginning, but police and prosecutors felt they did not have enough evidence for a conviction. When a new group of investigators took up the case in 2003, it found new clues among the evidence that had lain in police storage rooms for more than two decades. This included bloodstains on an altar cloth that covered the nun's body during part of the stabbing frenzy - and matched the form of Robinson's letter opener. Toledo police Sgt. Steve Forrester and others noted similarities between the bloodstains and the letter opener taken from Robinson in 1980. After the verdict, in the building where Pahl was slain, a nun read a prepared statement about the sentiments of the Sisters of Mercy, the order to which Pahl belonged for 53 years. "All of us continue to live with the sorrow of a sudden death, the loss of a loved one and the belief that Sister Margaret Ann now experiences eternal life," said Sister Marjorie Rudemiller, president of the order in the region that includes Ohio. She expressed gratitude to Toledo police, prosecutors, witnesses and the jury. "God's grace enables us to forgive the person who caused her death," Rudemiller added. The Robinson investigation is the work of a cold-case team that Lucas County Prosecutor Julia Bates created not long after her 1996 election. In an interview, Bates said she got the idea from U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, who was the Cuyahoga County prosecutor when the two met. Tubbs Jones told Bates of the challenges she faced with the resurgent Sam Sheppard case. The 1954 slaying of Marilyn Sheppard in Bay Village was the subject of two criminal trials leading to Sam Sheppard's acquittal, and later a civil trial in which a jury declined to find that he was wrongfully imprisoned. DNA and other scientific tools were a part of that case, and they have played a role in the growth of cold-case investigations. Bates said at a post-trial news conference Thursday that such cold-case prosecutions "send the message that we do care, that these cases are not sitting on some shelf gathering dust." To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: jewinger@plaind.com, 216-999-3905
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