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Court Vacates Murdered Priest's Conviction

Posted on: Saturday, 27 September 2003, 06:00 CDT

A court vacated the child molestation conviction of defrocked priest John Geoghan because he died in prison during his pending appeal, a ruling that angered accusers of the former cleric.

The decision Friday by the Massachusetts Appeals Court is customary under state law when convicts die mid-appeal and attorneys seek to have their convictions voided.

Mitchell Garabedian, who represents many of Geoghan's alleged victims, called for the law to be changed.

"It's as though the reporting of Father John J. Geoghan's sexual abuse, his trial, and the jury decision never existed," Garabedian said.

Geoghan's case triggered the sex scandal in the nation's Roman Catholic Church. He had been serving a nine- to 10-year sentence for groping a 10-year-old boy and was accused of molesting nearly 150 boys over three decades.

Last month, the 68-year-old was strangled and beaten to death in his prison cell, allegedly by fellow inmate Joseph L. Druce. Druce has pleaded innocent to murder.

The court vacated Geoghan's conviction for indecent assault and battery on Sept. 17, and ordered his original indictment dismissed after his attorney filed notice of Geoghan's death with the court on Sept. 2.

According to the ruling, state prosecutors neither opposed nor agreed to the motion from Geoghan's attorney that the conviction be vacated. A spokeswoman for Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley, whose office prosecuted Geoghan, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The attorney who represented Geoghan, David Skeels, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Ralph DelVecchio, 47, who settled the claim that Geoghan molested him when he was a child, said the vacated conviction means little to him.

"To be honest with you, I'm not paying any attention to this stuff any more," he said. "I settled things, I know what's what, and I moved on with my life."

Geoghan was not the first high-profile convict whose guilty verdict was voided because of a mid-appeal death. The conviction of John Salvi, who was convicted of murdering two abortion clinic workers in a 1994 shooting rampage at two Boston-area clinics, was voided in 1997 after he apparently committed suicide in his prison cell.

Massachusetts lawmakers tried to close the legal loophole that allowed the conviction to be expunged, but the effort died in the Legislature.

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