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| Former ADA Mariana "You're Killing My Case" Sorensen |
for BigTrial.net
Eight years ago, former Assistant District Attorney Mariana Sorensen conducted the first interview with Danny Gallagher, AKA "Billy Doe," right after a detective bailed the former altar boy out of jail, so he could assume the staring role in a witch hunt about to be staged against the Catholic Church.
But according to the D.A.'s office, Sorensen took no notes on Jan. 28, 2010, when she and Detective Drew Snyder interviewed Gallagher, along with his parents, at the D.A.'s office. According to what the D.A.'s office represented at two criminal trials, in front of at least three different judges, the only notes that existed from that initial interview with Gallagher were three pages of notes typed up by Detective Snyder.
Eight years later, seven pages of typed notes by Sorensen from that initial interview with Gallagher have mysteriously reappeared, a copy of which was sent to BigTrial. Defense lawyers in the case say those notes should have been turned over at two criminal trials, where three priests and a former schoolteacher were sent to jail for the alleged repeated rapes of Danny Gallagher. It's the latest episode of prosecutorial misconduct in a case replete with it, a case that's headed for a final chapter later this year when a new D.A., Progressive Larry Krasner, plans to retry Msgr. William J. Lynn, the lead defendant, on a charge of endangering the welfare of a child.
On July 29, 2011, with Judge Lillian Ransom presiding, five assistant district attorneys and five defense lawyers were gathered for a pretrial hearing in a case billed by then District Attorney Rufus Seth Williams as a "historic" prosecution of the Catholic Church.
The subject was whether the D.A.'s office had turned over to defense lawyers all the evidence it had gathered for prosecution, as required by law. Suddenly, it was time for some tap-dancing.
"This is where I need to talk to you about any statements at some earlier point that Mr. [Danny] Gallagher may have made as far as interviews at or with members of the D.A.'s office," Assistant District Attorney Sorensen told the judge. "I checked with [former Deputy District Attorney, and Sorensen's boss] Charlie Gallagher. There's nothing discoverable."
"I know that occasionally a piece of paper gets turned the wrong way," the judge replied. "If you come across anything, turn that over."
"Yes, Your Honor," Sorensen replied.
"I'll accept your representation as it stands now," the judge said.
"Thank you," Sorensen replied.
Michael J. McGovern, a defense lawyer and former ADA himself representing Father Charles Engelhardt, then asked about "oral statements and oral interviews" conducted by the D.A.'s office, especially, "the substance of any oral interviews, notes or anything that related to interaction and discussion with [Danny Gallagher]."
"Let me ask you this, Mr. McGovern," the judge interjected. "What I asked Ms. Sorensen to look for were written statements. Now if you are making reference to oral statements, they would not be recorded any place."
"There may be notes," McGovern replied. "I'm asking for anything. I'm being told that there was an investigation of this major complaint for over a year, and there is nothing documented or recorded about it. I find that hard to believe."
"That may be hard to believe, but that's the representation that we have at this point," the judge said.
"Good enough," McGovern said.
Later in the hearing, Judge Ransom turned to another prosecutor in the courtroom, Assistant District Attorney Evangelia Manos, and asked about discovery motions filed by the defense lawyers.
"Ms. Manos, I want to talk to you about these," the judge said, referring to discovery motions seeking "statements or interviews conducted by the district attorney's office. That [motion] is granted," the judge said.
"Ms. Manos, the judge said, is it your position that as of today you have turned over everything that you have?"
"Correct," Manos said."As of today?" the judge asked.
"Correct," Manos replied.
"It's an ongoing discovery issue," the judge told the prosecutor. "If other statements come into your possession, whether they're new or old . . . "
"Correct," Manos said.
"They have to be turned over," the judge concluded.
But during two criminal trials, and appeals in those cases, the D.A.'s office never turned over Sorensen's notes.
Charles Gallagher, former chief of the Special Investigations Unit, of which Sorensen was a member, could not be reached for comment. Neither could McGovern.
THE DANNY GALLAGHER INTERVIEW
On Jan. 28, 2010, Detective Drew Snyder showed up at Graterford Prison to spring Danny Gallagher out of jail, where he was being held for a probation violation, and chauffeured him over to the D.A.'s office, where Gallagher's parents were waiting, along with ADA Sorensen.
Danny Gallagher was about to tell a story how, back when he was a 10 and 11-year-old altar boy at St. Jerome's Church in Northeast Philadelphia, he had allegedly been passed around like a piñata among three different rapists.
This was music to the D.A.'s office, under Rufus Seth Williams, which was looking to make headlines by being the first prosecutorial agency in the country to put a Catholic priest in jail, not for sexually abusing a child, but for covering it up.
Gallagher at the time was 21, and so the usual protocol at the D.A.'s office in any sex abuse investigation would have been to interview Gallagher and his parents, James, a Philadelphia police department, and Sheila, a registered nurse, separately. But that's not what happened that day at the D.A.'s office.
The usual protocol also called for the detective and/or Sorensen to ask Danny Gallagher questions, and on a "483" police form, write down those questions, as well as the answers. And when the interview was finished, the usual protocol called for having Danny Gallagher review the Q and A interview form, make corrections, and then sign it.
Sorensen, according to what the D.A.'s office has represented for the past eight years, at two different
criminal trials, in front of at least three different judges, sat there like a potted plant, took no notes, and apparently asked no questions.
But now we know that Sorensen typed up seven pages of notes, and asked plenty of questions. And in what she describes as a typed "summary," she refers to handwritten notes that are presumably still missing.
What Snyder and Sorensen were dealing with was a completely non-credible witness who told an unbelievable story of abuse previously to two social workers from the archdiocese. In those stories, Gallagher claimed to have been anally raped for five hours by one priest, knocked unconscious and tied up with altar sashes by another priest, threatened with death if he talked, and strangled with a seatbelt by the schoolteacher who raped him.
Then, when he told new versions of abuse to the police and the grand jury and the D.A.'s office, Gallagher dropped all those above details and invented an entirely new tale of abuse featuring oral sex and mutual masturbation, as well as being forced to perform strip-teases.
So Snyder and Sorensen were trying to pin Gallagher down on a semi-credible tale. The less notes the better. And certainly a Q and A form, or multiple quotes from Gallagher, were only going to cause further credibility problems for a witness with no credibility.
Keep in mind that the lead detective in this case, Joe Walsh, has previously come forward to say that he caught Danny Gallagher telling numerous lies. And when the detective confronted Gallagher about it, he admitted he had just "made stuff up" and "told them anything."
And when Detective Walsh repeatedly informed Assistant District Attorney Mariana Sorensen that Gallagher was not a credible witness, she replied that she still believed Gallagher's fairy tales, and, "You're killing my case."
WHAT SORENSEN'S LONG-LOST NOTES SAY
"Memorandum
To: File
From: Mariana Sorensen, Assistant District Attorney, SIU
Re: Interview of Daniel Gallagher and parents 1/28/2010
Supplement to Det. Snyder's notes
"I sat in on Detective Andrew Snyder's Jan. 28, 2010, interview with Daniel Gallagher," she wrote. "The summary below is typed up from my notes and includes some things that might not have appeared in Det. Snyder's notes. [Detective Snyder and I were both of out of the room at various times when Danny and his parents said things.]"
In her notes, Sorensen says that she talked to Gallagher's parents before he came into the room. And here, for the D.A.'s office, is where things start to get messy.
"At age 14, Danny changed," Sorensen wrote, after questioning Gallagher's parents. "He got kicked out of High School. They [the parents] didn't know what had precipitated the change. They attributed his behavior to the death of his grandmother, and that they had allowed him to see her as she was dying [or her body after she died??]"
These details, of course, did not fit the D.A.'s story line. On Nov. 12, 2010, Sheila Gallagher testified before the grand jury. ADA Manos was asking the questions while ADA Sorensen watched:
Q. Did there come a time when you noticed a change in [Billy's] behavior?
A. Yes. At age 14, as he entered high school, freshman year at high school, he wasn't the same child. He was very troubling to us.
Q. Ok. Prior to that, what was his personality?
A. He was basically a very pleasant, active, happy person prior to that and he was defined by some people as either Dennis the Menace or the All-American boy up to that point.
Q. Ok. So he's leaving St. Jerome's and entering into high school?
A. Uh-huh.
When Thomas A. Bergstrom, Msgr. Lynn's lawyer read the first page of Sorensen's notes, he couldn't believe it.
"She completely fabricates what the mother told her," Bergstrom said about ADA Sorennsen "That's an absolute, outright lie. There's no wiggle room there. She [Sorensen] heard it twice from the mother."
According to the mom, Danny Gallagher's personality change took place in high school, at age 14, and not in grammar school, at age 11. On top of that, Gallagher's parents blamed the death of Gallagher's grandmother for the personality change, and not sex abuse.
Those notes should have been turned over to the defense, Bergstrom said.
In Sorensen's notes, she describes four encounters Danny Gallagher allegedly had with Father Engelhardt, two of which resulted in sex abuse. In the grand jury report, there are only three encounters with Engelhardt, and only one resulting in sex abuse.
But that's not what the grand jury report says.
Sorensen quotes Danny Gallagher in her notes as saying things that were supposedly said by his attackers, but the quotes are missing from Snyder's notes, and they also do not appear in the grand jury report.
"There are certain things that people do that God wants them to do," Father Engelhardt supposedly tells Gallagher. "But people don't really talk about it. But it's natural . . ."
"You can do these acts without being a sinner [if you pray??]" Sorensen says Gallagher quoted the priest as saying. The priest also supposedly asked, "Do you want to practice?" as in sex. There are also specific details such as the priest allegedly unbuttoning the boy's shirt, and saying, "You are dismissed," that don't appear in Snyder's notes, or the grand jury report.
This is the kind of material that defense lawyers would use to impeach a witness. But you can't ask any questions if the D.A. deliberately buries the evidence.
In Sorensen version of the encounters with Engelhardt, "Danny said he he told the priest if he came near him again, he'd kill him." Snyder makes the same claim. But Gallagher told the social workers it was the priest who threatened to kill him; the grand jury report doesn't mention any death threat.
In Sorensen's notes, Gallagher claims that Father Avery attacked him "in a backroom where supplies are kept." Snyder says the attack takes place in a "back storage room." But in the official grand jury report, Avery allegedly attacks Gallagher in the sacristy.
In Sorensen's notes, Avery supposedly says during the attacks, "Look at me, son," and, "This is what God wanted."
"Danny says those words will never leave him," Sorensen writes. But Snyder doesn't mention this, and those quotes are left out of the grand jury report.
In Sorensen's notes, schoolteacher Bernard Shero attacks Gallagher in an area of a park known as "Little City" and they pass a sign that says "Welcome to Winchester Park." But in the Snyder version the rape occurs in a parking lot near Shawn and Holmhurst Street; in the grand jury report, the location is a park about a mile from Gallagher's house. In the Shero attacks, petroleum jelly and paper towels are used in the attack, details Snyder doesn't mention, details not in the grand jury report.
Now this prosecutorial misconduct is the problem of a new D.A., Progressive Larry Krasner. Will he go forward with the trial of Msgr. Lynn, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's former secretary for clergy? Lynn's conviction on one count of endangering the welfare of a child had twice been overturned by the state Superior Court.
Ben Waxman, a spokesman for the D.A.'s office, did not respond to a request for comment.