The man accused of killing a Phoenix priest and assaulting another in June pleaded not guilty to seven charges Thursday.
Gary Michael Moran, 54, was brought into court in a wheelchair for his arraignment, sparking chatter from people awaiting their own hearings who recognized him from the case that gripped much of the Valley last month.
Moran, who remained quiet for most of the brief hearing, stating only his name, is accused of a plethora of crimes, including first-degree murder.
The public defender assigned to Moran said she feared that the coverage of the case would possibly prevent him from having an unbiased jury trial, and asked for the cameras to be removed from the courtroom.
Maricopa County Superior Court Commissioner Casey Newcomb said that the coverage of the arraignment, which is open to the public, only allowed more people to access the information.
“We are all about transparency here,” Newcomb said. “We don’t do things behind closed doors.”
Police allege that Moran was the man who broke into the Mater Misericordiae (Mother of Mercy) Mission near 16th Avenue and Monroe Street June 11 and attacked Father Joseph Terra with an angle iron.
According to court records, Terra managed to retreat to his bedroom, where he retrieved a handgun. Terra then tried to shoot Moran, but could not pull the trigger because of an injury he sustained during the attack, records show.
Police said Moran then wrestled the weapon away and shot and killed Father Kenneth Walker, who had tried to assist Terra.
Moran had been released from prison 47 days before the murder, after serving 8 years in an aggravated-assault conviction. In that case, court records show that Moran entered a man’s home and stabbed him while he slept.
Phoenix police described Moran as a “career criminal” who has an extensive past filled with drug offenses and includes violent crime.
While Moran was released from prison in April, he was to remain supervised by the parole department until February 2015, Arizona Department of Corrections show.
Prior to the his arrest in the Walker case, prison officials were searching for Moran because he skipped a meeting on June 9 with a parole officer.
His inmate photo from the 2005 crime depicts Moran, eight years younger, still wearing the long gray hair and the shadow of a mustache that was present in his 2014 mugshot.
At Thursday’s hearing, eight years after the inmate photo was taken, Moran was thinner, his hair was grayer, but his detached expression remained the same.
After entering the not-guilty plea, deputies from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office pushed Moran’s wheelchair out of the court.
Moran is scheduled for an initial pretrial conference on Sept. 2.
Photos from the Mass for Rev. Kenneth Walker
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