By Ralph Ciprianofor BigTrial.net
He wasn't interested in sending anyone to jail; all he wanted was cash.
In February 2009, nearly a full year before he met with the Philadelphia District Attorney's office to press criminal charges, Danny Gallagher, AKA "Billy Doe," the "lying, scheming altar boy," told a social worker for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia that "He has been talking to lawyers," and if "he gets money," he "does not want to press charges."
It was the kind of exculpatory evidence that would have made the district attorney's star witness look like he wasn't out for justice, he just wanted to get paid. The kind of exculpatory evidence that defense lawyers would have used on cross-examination to question Gallagher's motives and impeach his credibility.
So how did the D.A.'s office handle that exculpatory evidence? Simple; they just buried it.
In another blatant example of prosecutorial misconduct under former D.A. Seth Williams, those seven pages of notes from a couple of social workers were never turned over to defense lawyers. Nine years later, however, the notes have mysteriously reappeared, a copy of which was courteously provided to Big Trial. Those notes will be an issue in the retrial of Msgr. William J. Lynn, scheduled for some time next year.
Previously, in March, seven pages of typed notes from the first interview with Danny Gallagher in January 2010, taken by former Assistant District Attorney Mariana Sorensen, mysteriously resurfaced eight years later. This was after Sorensen and two other assistant district attorneys told three different judges in three different courtrooms over the years that those notes didn't exist.
If you're a prosecutor in Philadelphia going after the Catholic Church, apparently it's Ok to lie to a judge as long as the ends justifies the means.
Keep in mind that the D.A.'s former lead detective in the archdiocese prosecution, Joe Walsh, has come forward to testify that he repeatedly told ADA Sorensen that the evidence he was gathering showed that Danny Gallagher wasn't a credible witness. And that she repeatedly refused to believe him, and eventually responded, "You're killing my case."
A spokesman for District Attorney Larry Krasner did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Krasner, according to sources, was busy out emancipating accused murderers, rapists, prostitutes and drug dealers.
Progressive Larry is on a mission to empty the city's jails, but he has to draw the line when it comes to liberating a Catholic priest falsely accused.
Gallagher, a former heroin user and accused dealer, wound up being the D.A.'s star witness in a historic prosecution that sent two priests and a Catholic schoolteacher to jail for supposedly raping Gallagher when he was a 10 and 11-year-old altar boy.
Gallagher's testimony also resulted in the conviction of a third priest, Msgr. Lynn, who was sent to jail for three years for endangering the welfare of a child. He was the first Catholic administrator in the country to be imprisoned during the ongoing Catholic Church sex abuse scandals, a jail sentence that made headlines around the country.
A jury in 2012 convicted Lynn, the archdiocese's former secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, on one count of endangering the welfare of a child, Gallagher, by exposing him to an abusive priest, Father Edward Avery, whom Lynn was supposed to be supervising.
Lynn served 33 months out of his 36-month sentence, plus 18 years of house arrest, before the state Superior Court overturned his conviction for a second time. But despite the fact that Lynn was an official scapegoat carrying out Cardinal Bevilacqua's orders, and he had basically already served his sentence, new D.A. Krasner has decided to retry the case, presumably for the sake of headlines.
And why not? For prosecutors in the current media climate, going after the Catholic Church is such a rush it's like shooting heroin. Seth Williams got plenty of headlines, even though he had to use a phony victim to stage his witch hunt against the church, propped up by prosecutors who cheated every step of the way.
And since I'm the only reporter in town who called him on it, what was the downside, even for a convicted criminal like Williams, now serving a four-year stretch in a federal prison in Oklahoma after admitting he took bribes, sold his office and stole money from his own mother.
And then Pennsylvania state Attorney General Josh Shapiro came along this summer and got a free ride from the media for basically digging up an ecclesiastic graveyard. In his grand jury report on sex abuse in a half-dozen dioceses in the state, Shapiro chronicled the alleged perverted exploits of 250 priests, 117 of whom were dead, and couldn't defend themselves, along with another 13 priests who were so old they were presumed dead.
The alleged crimes were well beyond the statute of limitations; some dated as far back to the 1940s. But the media played it like it had all jut happened yesterday. What was the aftermath? Prosecutors in 13 states immediately announced plans to launch similar probes. And not to be outdone, the U.S. Attorney's office in Pennsylvania launched a federal probe of the Catholic Church.
And again, why not? The church is a sitting duck. Under century-old Vatican rules, every diocese has to record every accusation against a Catholic priest, whether it's true or false, and keep it forever. So all a prosecutor has to do to generate a fresh set of headlines is to get a search warrant to pry loose a local diocese's old batch of secret archive files.
It's a target that can't be missed.
Meanwhile, the retrial of Lynn, the cardinal's dutiful lackey, is proceeding slowly through the courts. According to the court docket, a pretrial hearing was scheduled for Nov. 15th in the courtroom of Common Pleas Court Judge Gwendolyn Bright.
But on Sept. 28, the D.A.'s office under Progressive Larry Krasner filed yet another appeal in the nine-year-old case to the state Supreme Court. Krasner's office is appealing a decision by Judge Bright to limit the number of supplemental sex abuse cases the D.A. can present in a retrial of Msgr. Lynn, to show a pattern of cover ups in the archdiocese.
The D.A.'s office would like to include as many supplemental cases as possible so they can basically put the Catholic Church on trial, along with Lynn, but the D.A.'s office under Krasner previously lost an appeal of that same issue in state Superior Court. Now, they are appealing to the state Supreme Court.
Back in Common Pleas Court, Judge Bright has a nonsensical gag order still in place that prohibits lawyers on both sides from taking to reporters. So nobody can comment on fresh revelations of prosecutorial misconduct.
But since I'm the only reporter in town still writing about this travesty of a case, here's what those old and previously deep-sixed documents have to say.
On Feb. 6, 2009, Joann Blaney, of the archdiocese's Office For Child and Youth Protection, sent an email to Louise Hagner, victim assistance coordinator. It was Hagner on Jan. 30, 2009 who drove out to Gallagher's home to interview him after he had called in on a sex abuse hot line to report that he had previously been raped by two priests and a schoolteacher.
Gallagher, Blaney wrote to Hagner, had just called and he "also wanted to know what department to call about suing us." In her email, Blaney asked Hagner to call Gallagher back.
In handwritten notes on a print-out of Blaney's email, a social worker wrote that she put in a "call to Dan," and that Gallagher told her "he is upset" because "when he goes to sleep he keeps dreaming the abuse is happening."
"He was slurring his words & I asked him if he was medicated," she wrote. "He said no -- he had not slept in 2 days. He said that he has had problems with drugs."
"The police have not called him yet," she wrote. "He did receive the letter from Tim Coyne to Charles Gallagher. He [Danny Gallagher] called Tim Coyne today because he wanted to find about suing us."
On Jan. 30, 2009, Timothy R. Coyne, director of the archdiocese's Office for Legal Services, wrote to Assistant District Attorney Charles Gallagher [no relation to Danny] to inform him of Danny Gallagher's allegations.
On Feb. 17, 2009, a social worker wrote that she called Gallagher and he reported that he "had a dream on Valentine's Day. The news people were outside his home & and I was standing there too. He said he is concerned that it will become public."
In the handwritten notes, a social worker recorded on Feb. 2, 2009, she called Danny Gallagher back, who said "he is so depressed" because "he has been dreaming about it" again.
"He has been talking to lawyers," the social worker wrote. If "he gets money," she wrote, "He does not want to press charges."
On March 19, 2009, a social worker wrote that she called Gallagher and he told her he had "heard from the D.A." and that he "will probably go on Monday with his Dad."
Previously, Hagner wrote on Jan. 30, 2009, that after she and another social worker drove out to interview Danny Gallagher, "He has been calling lawyers," and that he was concerned about the "statute of limitations."
But for the rest of the year, Gallagher didn't do anything about pressing a civil claim against the archdiocese, and the D.A.'s office did mptjomg to pursue a criminal investigation of Gallagher's allegations. That's because, multiple sources say, the D.A.'s office under former D.A. Lynne Abraham had decided that Danny Gallagher's allegations were B.S.
But after Abraham retired, Seth Williams became D.A. And he was very interested in putting together a case that would land Msgr. Lynn in jail. To make a case, however, Williams needed a victim whose allegations fell within the statute of limitations.
At this point, Danny Gallagher and his far-fetched and endlessly contradictory tales of abuse became useful to Seth Williams and his henchmen.
Nearly a full year after Danny Gallagher first told church social workers about his far-fetched stories of being repeatedly raped, on Jan. 28, 2010, Detective Drew Snyder bailed Danny Gallagher out of Graterford Prison, where he was being held on a probation violation. Snyder drove Gallagher to the D.A.'s office, where his parents were waiting, along with ADA Sorensen.
The fix was in. And by playing the D.A.'s star witness, Danny Gallagher eventually got paid big time.
The D.A.'s office, according to Gallagher's testimony at the trial of Father Charles Engelhardt and schoolteacher Bernard Shero, also supplied Gallagher with a civil lawyer so he could sue the archdiocese and collect $5 million.
That's what happens when a habitual liar has as his enablers prosecutors who cheat.