A decade of disasters and a surge in fraud led the Justice
Department to form the Disaster Fraud Task Force, but who investigates
fraud against Catholic priests?
“‘Well, if you want to accuse a priest of something, I
can have $50-grand in your account by the end of the year – a $100,000
settlement split fifty-fifty.’ Randy was shaking with enthusiasm as he
stood at my door. He said he told the lawyer that he lives in a
cellblock with a Catholic priest who has been accused. ‘Even better!’
the lawyer reportedly said. ‘Tell him where you grew up and see if he
can get you a name.’ ” (“Let’s Play ‘Name That Priest,’ “ Sancte Pater, July 26, 2011).
SNAP spokespersons and the contingency lawyers who have funded them may minimize or deny the existence of fraud in the Catholic sex abuse story, but it’s a denial of human nature. David Pierre’s media watchdog site, The Media Report has been especially vigilant about exposing some of the fraud. The evidence is all around us, and not only in the narrative of our own millstone of Catholic scandal. Fraud is by no means new or surprising in the field of personal injury law.. (continued)
Parallel stories of Jerry Sandusky at Penn State, the Duke
University Lacrosse Team, and accused Catholic priests create a mosaic
in varying shades of grey.
I wrote recently in “Why Are So Many Catholics So Angry with So Many Priests?”
about two parallel stories in the news. One was the unjust conviction
and jailing of Philadelphia Monsignor William Lynn on one count of child
endangerment after his acquittal on all other charges.
The other news story was the not guilty verdict of a California man
who savagely beat an elderly priest in front of numerous witnesses after
conning his way into an elderly care center. The man was acquitted of
the vicious beating because he claimed the priest molested him 35 years
ago. With this verdict, a judge and jury have declared the judges and
juries are no longer necessary if vigilante justice is to be the rule of
law.
The point I made in that post was that Catholic anger and cultural
hostility toward Catholic priests are not a result of the sex abuse
scandal, but rather its frame of reference. Many readers agreed with me
that the anger I described has preceded the Catholic sex abuse scandal
by decades. On the part of Catholics, this vaguely defined anger has
festered and grown, in my opinion, since the first implementations of
the Second Vatican Council began to take shape in the late 1960s and
early 1970s.
The comments on that post are worth reading, and some are better than
the post itself. In addition to those 20 or so comments, several TSW
readers commented by e-mail and snail mail. The reactions of readers
form a fascinating mosaic about perceptions of the priesthood in Western
Culture at this point in our history. It’s a story I plan to revisit
soon on These Stone Walls.
One of the letters I received was from a seminarian who asked whether
I had noticed that the conviction of Monsignor Lynn and the conviction
of former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky occurred in the same state and
on the same day. Yes, I had noticed, and I think that fact stole some
of the thunder from SNAP members who found the Monsignor Lynn story
eclipsed on the cable news channels by the Sandusky verdict... (continued)
The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners – and clear evidence of a wrongful conviction problem.
No one can watch the Oscar-winning 1993 film, “The Fugitive,” starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, without rooting for Dr. Richard Kimball. We empathize with this skilled surgeon who lost everything while on the lam from “justice.” Falsely accused and wrongfully convicted of the murder of his wife, he finally won the most grueling of battles. He managed to prove his innocence by unraveling the mystery of the one-armed man who really committed the crime. In essence, he conducted the investigation the police didn’t while at the same time evading the dogged pursuit of Tommy Lee Jones’ Marshall Sam Gerard and his crack team of dogged pursuers.
Who could forget Richard Kimball cornered by Sam Gerard at the precipice of that immense dam outside Chicago? Before jumping a hundred feet into its turbulent falls, Dr. Kimball desperately pleaded, “I didn’t kill my wife!” to which Sam Gerard responded in exasperation, “I don’t care!” In the end, however, it turned out that he did care, though it wasn’t in his job description. The Marshal’s job was to return to prison a man whom a judge and jury had declared to be guilty, though we all knew that he was not. As Marshal Sam Gerard delved deeper into the case, however, he was transformed before our eyes from The Fugitive’s adversary into his advocate...
In September, Robert Wilcoxson, age 32, and Kenneth Kagonyera, 31, both walked as free men out the gates of a Texas prison after serving over a decade behind bars for a crime they had nothing to do with. It turned out that the man who really committed the crime – a man Robert and Kenneth didn’t even know – confessed to it after DNA evidence was finally tested and showed him to be the perpetrator of the crime...
A problem for this newest exoneration case is that Robert Wilcoxson and Kenneth Kagonyera had also pleaded guilty to the crime for which they were later exonerated. How can such a thing happen? I have come to know the answer to this, but first it needs some context. It’s an important context – to me, at least – since it applies to my charges and imprisonment as well. It’s a context that I described in “The High Cost of Innocence,” and one you would not readily see in any episode of “Law & Order.”
The context is this: the American justice system works in favor of the man who stands before it guilty of the crimes charged. The vast majority of criminal cases end with a “plea deal” and not a conviction following a jury trial. The real Catch-22 is that guilty people can often negotiate for lighter sentences in exchange for sparing the state the time and expense of a trial.
Innocent men, on the other hand, feel compelled to preserve their Constitutional rights to a fair trial and a presumption of innocence. But innocent defendants also expect the justice system to work so they risk a vastly inflated prison sentence if it fails them, as it sometimes does... (continued)
