By Ralph Ciprianofor BigTrial.net
Graham Spanier was scheduled to report to the Dauphin County Prison this morning at 9 a.m.
But last night, a federal judge threw out Spanier's 2017 conviction on one misdemeanor count of child endangerment. In a brief, two-page order, U.S. Magistrate Judge Caroline Mehalchick ruled in favor of the former Penn State University president's writ of habeas corpus, basically a legal request to "produce the body" of a convicted person before a judge, to decide if there's a lawful reason for that person to be detained.
In the case of Spanier, scheduled to go to prison today for two months, the judge decided that there wasn't a lawful reason to jail him, no matter what the prosecutors had said. So the judge wrote that Spanier's writ of habeas corpus "is GRANTED with respect to the first two grounds raised in the petition, namely that the application of the 2007 child endangerment statute to his 2001 conduct, and the jury instruction based on the 2007 statute, as applied to Spanier, are unconstitutional."
The simple concept at work in the federal magistrate's decision is something that Big Trial and some state appeal judges have been arguing for years, with mixed results, namely that's it's unconstitutional for prosecutors to try a person ex post facto, or after the fact, under the standards of the state's original child endangerment law if that law originally didn't apply to him.
Accordingly, Judge Caroline Mehalchick wrote, "Spanier's conviction and sentence for one count of Endangerment of the Welfare of a Child in the Court of Common Pleas of Dauphin County . . . are VACATED." The judge gave the vindictive and ethically challenged state attorney general's office 90 days to decide if they will retry Spanier, a guy with an otherwise spotless criminal record, a high level national security clearance, and health problems that include ongoing treatments for cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, and depression.
The Spanier case is similar to the case of Msgr. William J. Lynn, the former secretary of clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Both are a disgrace to Pennsylvania law, and journalism. The two cases feature unscrupulous prosecutors running with sensational rape allegations that turned out to be bogus, judges who put politics above the law, and a gullible media that refuses to reexamine its own irresponsible conduct, or hold judges and prosecutors accountable for gross miscarriages of justice.
Since there's a gag order in the Lynn case, nonsensically imposed by Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Gwendolyn Bright, the monsignor's lawyer was unable to comment. Expect Lynn's lawyers, however, to use Judge Mehalchick's order as further evidence that their guy shouldn't be retried by new Philly D.A. Larry Krasner.
In the Spanier case, the AG's office was prosecuting the former Penn State president after the fact for allegedly not protecting the rights of children during the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal, when Spanier was discussing with lieutenants the infamous alleged rape in 2001of a ten-year-old boy in the showers.
The alleged rape in the showers by Sandusky turned out to be bogus. A victim has never come forward after 18 years; prosecutors claimed his identity was known "only to God." But a previously unknown federal investigation conducted on the Penn State campus in 2012 by former NCIS Special Agent John Snedden came to the conclusion that the facts in the case didn't make sense, and that the only witness to the alleged crime, former Penn State Assistant Coach Mike McQueary, wasn't credible.
Spanier, as well as Lynn, should never have been prosecuted because the state's original child endangerment law clearly didn't apply to them.
Unless, of course, you're an unscrupulous prosecutor in search of headlines. Then you can jam somebody up while ignoring the law, and expect to have the media on your side, cheering you on. That's exactly what happened with the attorney general's office in the case of Spanier, and exactly what happened with former Philly D.A. Rufus Seth Williams in the case of Lynn.
Former D.A. Williams today is in protective custody in federal prison doing five years after he pleaded guilty to 29 crimes in 2017 that included taking bribes, extortion, and stealing from his own mother. But his legacy lives on in the office of our grandstanding Attorney General, Josh Shapiro, who knows that there's nothing like sex abuse to generate headlines.
The state's original 1972 child endangerment law said: "A parent, guardian or other person supervising the welfare of a child under 18 years of age commits a misdemeanor of the second degree if he knowingly endangers the welfare of a child by violating a duty of care, protection or support."
For nearly 40 years in Pennsylvania, that law in practice was applied only to adults who had direct contact with children, such as a parent, guardian or teacher who "knowingly endangers the welfare of a child."
In 2005, then Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham and a grand jury concluded that the original child endangerment law did not apply to Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua, Msgr. Lynn, or any other high-ranking official of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia who had a supervisory role. The grand jury, which was investigating four decades of sex abuse and church cover ups in the archdiocese, issued a report that said it couldn't legally indict Lynn or Bevilacqua for child endangerment because the original 1972 law didn't apply to supervisors.
D.A. Abraham then led a state-wide crusade to change the law to include supervisors, and the state legislature complied, amending the law in 2007 to include supervisors. But Rufus Seth Williams came along in 2011 and decided, without explanation, that in order to grab some headlines, the original child endangerment law did apply to supervisors.
In 2013, a year after Lynn was convicted, the state Superior Court overturned that conviction, saying that the original child endangerment law didn't apply to Lynn. The monsignor was accused of failing to protect an altar boy dubbed "Billy Doe" during the 1998-99 and 1999-200 school years from being raped by Father Ed Avery, a priest with a history of sex abuse.
Billy Doe, whose real name is Danny Gallagher, also claimed that he was raped by another priest, as well as his homeroom school teacher. But Gallagher was subsequently outed as a fraud. The former lead detective in the case, Joe Walsh, came forward to say that he repeatedly caught Gallagher telling one lie after another, and that Gallagher finally admitted to him that he had made up all the lurid allegations of multiple rapes by three attackers that he had initially reported to archdiocese social workers.
But in the Lynn case, the state Supreme Court in 2015 upheld Lynn's conviction, and overruled the Superior Court's reversal by reinterpreting the language of the original 1972 child endangerment law to discover that it actually did include supervisors.
To do this, the state Supreme Court had to basically ignore 40 years of actual case law as to how the child endangerment statute was applied in Pennsylvania, Philly DA Abraham's crusade to amend the law, and the actions of the state legislature to amend the law in 2007 to specifically include supervisors.
To get around all that, the state Supreme Court played a word game.
Again, the state's original 1972 child endangerment law said: "A parent, guardian or other person supervising the welfare of a child under 18 years of age commits a misdemeanor of the second degree if he knowingly endangers the welfare of a child by violating a duty of care, protection or support."
Not whether he was a supervisor.
"Focusing on the supervision element, the statute is plain and unambiguous that it is not the child that [Lynn] must have been supervising, but the child's welfare," the state Supreme Court opinion states.
"By requiring supervision of the child's welfare rather than of the child, the statute endeavors to safe-guard the emotional, psychological, and physical well-being of children," the state Supreme Court opinion states. "Simply put, [Lynn] did not safeguard the physical and moral welfare of [Danny Gallagher] by placing Rev. Avery, a known child molester, in a position to molest him."
So for Lynn to beat the rap, like Spanier, he may have to migrate to federal court, to escape the Pennsylvania judiciary.
In the Spanier case, the state Supreme Court refused to hear the argument that made plenty of sense to the magistrate judge who just decided last night that Spanier wasn't going to jail today.
Like Spanier, to find justice, Lynn may have to get the hell out of Pennsylvania.
