Defrocked Priest Will Get New Trial

[emad]

Saturday April 9, 2005 1:46 PM

By SARAH BRUMFIELD

Associated Press Writer

BALTIMORE (AP) - Less than two months after he was convicted of molesting a boy who later shot him, defrocked priest Maurice Blackwell was granted a new trial by a judge who said testimony about other alleged victims was inappropriate.

In a case where ``credibility is a critical issue,'' Circuit Judge Stuart R. Berger wrote, the witnesses ``improperly attempted to enhance the credibility of the state's critical witness by injecting references to other victims.''

The state's attorney's office said Friday that prosecutors will review the opinion and decide whether to retry the case.

Blackwell, 58, was convicted of three counts of abusing Dontee Stokes, a former parishioner who shot Blackwell in 2002, nearly a decade after the alleged abuse. Stokes, 29, was acquitted of attempted murder but convicted on gun charges.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4925001,00.html

[Catch22Dem]

1. Those damn activist judges

I suspect DuhLay wasn't talking about this judge though, right?

[Stinky The Clown]

2. This is an outrage

But ...... the judge did what he did and I will have to live with that.

"references to other victims" is the problem ...... but old Jacko .... in his trial, that's exactly what that nutjob prosecutor out there is doing.

In all of this, years after the abuse, the only one with a criminal record is the fucking victim. Go figure :shrug:

[mikehiggins]

3. What is legal in California

might not be legal elsewhere.

The point has been made repeatedly that the reason the Prosecutor (no nutjob, by the way) can bring up previous accusations is that this is a charge of pedophilia and under California law it is seen as often being necessary to create a record of a pattern of behavior in cases where the situation often becomes one of "he said, he said".

Good law? Bad law? Who knows? All I know is that Michael should have moved out of California as soon as it was passed.