Michigan Criminal Lawyers Blog
Recently it was announced that the conviction of Msgr. William J. Lynn for endangering the welfare of a child has been vacated by a Pennsylvania appeals court. Lynn, who was convicted in 2012, was serving a three-to-six year prison sentence. According to a news article at NCR Online, Lynn was the first Catholic administrator in the country to be imprisoned for failure to sufficiently supervise a sexually abusive priest.
A new trial has been ordered in the case, however in the appeals court’s decision, the judges found that the trial court “abused its discretion” in allowing evidence against the monsignor which include 21 supplemental cases of sex abuse, some dated back to three years before the defendant was even born. The original trial was overseen by Judge M. Teresa Sarmina in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, who was blasted in the Superior Court judges’ decision.