The Trial of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Fraud

For Catholic priests, merely being accused is now evidence of guilt. A closer look at the prosecution of Fr Gordon MacRae opens a window onto a grave injustice.

Editor’s Note: This is Part 1 of a two-part guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald.

From  - These Stone Walls

“Those aware of the facts of this case find it hard to imagine that any court today would ignore the perversion of justice it represents.” (Dorothy Rabinowitz, The Wall Street Journal, May 11, 2013)

The above quote says it all. I wrote 

 I wrote for These Stone Walls two weeks ago to announce a new federal appeal filed in the Father Gordon MacRae case. I mentioned my hope to write in more detail about the perversion of justice cited by Dorothy Rabinowitz in “The Trials of Father MacRae,” her third major article on the MacRae case in The Wall Street Journal.

The details of how such injustice is perpetrated are especially important in cases like Father MacRae’s because there was no evidence of guilt – not one scintilla of evidence – presented to the jury in his 1994 trial. I recently wrote “Justice and a Priest’s Right of Defense in the Diocese of Manchester,” an article with photographs of the exact location where the charges against this priest were claimed to have occurred. If you read it, you can judge for yourself whether those charges were even plausible.

Entire article here: http://thesestonewalls.com/gordon-macrae/the-trial-of-father-macrae-a-conspiracy-of-fraud/