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| D.A. Krasner: perverter of justice |
for BigTrial.net
In a new low for the district attorney's office -- in a case that's full of them -- D.A. Larry Krasner today sent his top assistant out to threaten a judge into allowing him to stage a show trial alleging sex abuse against the Catholic Church, without having to put an alleged victim of abuse on the witness stand.
The problem for Krasner is that the alleged victim in this case, Danny Gallagher, AKA "Billy Doe," has been repeatedly revealed to be a fraud. And if Gallagher does take the stand, defense lawyers for Msgr. William J. Lynn will call as their star witness, Joseph Walsh, the D.A.'s former lead detective in the case. Walsh will testify that after he caught Gallagher telling one lie after another in a pretrial prep session, the former altar boy flat-out admitted to the detective that he had made up his most outrageous allegations of abuse.
So in Common Pleas Court today, Krasner's top lieutenant, First Assistant District Attorney Robert Listenbee Jr., showed up to try and browbeat Judge Gwendolyn Bright into amending her order requiring the D.A.'s office to subpoena Gallagher for the March 16th scheduled retrial of Msgr. Lynn, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's former secretary for clergy.
Listenbee's pitch to the judge was that he supposedly was an expert on trauma, and that the D.A.'s office has an "internal policy" of not "re-traumatizing" victims of sex abuse by summoning them to testify in court.
In response the judge said she had presided over "hundreds of cases" involving sex abuse, and if the D.A. had his way with his anti-trauma policy, none of those cases would have ever gone to trial.
The judge bluntly told Listenbee that she would not reconsider her Jan. 31 order requiring Gallagher to be in the courtroom under subpoena.
"Yes, I believe that the named victim should be present" in the courtroom, the judge said, referring to Gallagher. But she said she has not made a decision yet on whether she will allow the prosecution to retry the Lynn case without having to call Gallagher to the witness stand.
"We'll see what evidence you put on," the judge told Listenbee, adding "I made no determination" on whether the case against Msgr. Lynn can be retried without a victim.
Lynn is charged with endangering the welfare of a child, Gallagher, by exposing him to Edward Avery, a priest who had previously been credibly accused of abuse. The monsignor's conviction on one count of endangering the welfare of a child has twice been overturned on appeal. Along the way, Lynn has served 33 months of his 36-month sentence, plus 18 months of house arrest.
So a retrial in the case basically amounts to piling on for the sake of headlines, as the defendant has already done his time.
In her angry remarks to Listenbee, Judge Bright accused him of attempting to influence her to change her order on Gallagher by using a "veiled threat," namely that if she didn't amend her order on the subpoena of Gallagher, the D.A.'s office would file yet another appeal in the case.
Such a "veiled threat" is "inappropriate," the judge lectured Listenbee, and she added that no such threats should ever be included in any motion to any judge.
The veiled threat, the judge claimed, was made in a pretrial motion that the D.A. has filed in the case. The problem is that the judge has forced lawyers on both sides in the case to file all of their motions under seal. The end result of this misguided policy is that the public has no idea what's going on. And the D.A.'s office, which has a shameful history of prosecutorial misconduct in this case, continues to pull one stunt after another, under cover of darkness granted by the judge.
The prosecutorial misconduct in this case includes filing a grand jury report riddled with more than 20 factual mistakes, as well as hiding witnesses and documents that would have benefitted the defendant. At the original trial, the D.A.'s office also strong-arming a co-defendant of Lynn's into pleading guilty at the last moment to crimes that he later testified in court that he didn't do.
In the retrial, the judge also has a nonsensical gag order on the lawyers in the case, which forbids them from talking to the media.
While they don't plan to call Gallagher as a witness, the D.A.'s office today said they do intend to call Avery as a witness. The former priest took a plea bargain on the eve of the first trial of Msgr. Lynn back in 2012; he plead guilty to abusing Gallagher back when he was a 10 year-old altar boy.
At the time of the first Lynn trial, Avery, then 70 years old, was facing a prison sentence of up to 20 years. And the prosecution offered a sweetheart deal -- only 2 1/2 to 5 years in jail. So on March 22, 2012, Avery pleaded guilty to involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, and conspiracy to endanger the welfare of a child -- the alleged victim of both crimes was Danny Gallagher -- "to avoid a more lengthy prison term," Avery subsequently testified at a second archdiocese sex abuse trial brought against Father Charles Engelhardt and former Catholic schoolteacher Bernard Shero.
The reason he agreed to plead guilty to something he didn't do, Avery testified at the Engelhardt-Shero trial, was because "I did not want to die in prison."
At his guilty plea, neither the prosecutors nor the judge asked Avery if he had actually done either of the crimes he was accused of doing. That's because according to Mike Wallace, Avery's lawyer, he had forewarned the prosecutors that if they actually asked Avery if he was guilty of abusing Gallagher, he would have told them he didn't do it.
How's that for justice?
The D.A.'s office, which doesn't plan to call Gallagher, does plan to call as witnesses a trio of altar servers who testified during the Engelhardt-Shero trial that Danny Gallagher allegedly underwent a personality change after he was allegedly abused in grade school. His mother, however, told a grand jury that her son's personality change took place in high school, not in grade school, and it happened after he got involved with drugs.At his guilty plea, neither the prosecutors nor the judge asked Avery if he had actually done either of the crimes he was accused of doing. That's because according to Mike Wallace, Avery's lawyer, he had forewarned the prosecutors that if they actually asked Avery if he was guilty of abusing Gallagher, he would have told them he didn't do it.
How's that for justice?
It would be quite a travesty of justice if Judge Bright allows the D.A.'s office to bring in evidence regarding Gallagher through Avery and the altar servers. It will also be a travesty if the judge allows the D.A. to get away with not having to call Gallagher as a witness, where he would have to face cross-examination.
But judging by the nine year history of this case, it appears to only move in one direction -- lower, and lower still.