United States prosecutors are challenging the medical report claiming former cardinal Theodore McCarrick is not competent to stand trial on charges he sexually abused a teenager in the 1970s. Source: OSV News.
Mr McCarrick’s legal team filed the report on Monday in Massachusetts’ Dedham District Court based on a medical evaluation that found Mr McCarrick, 92, is suffering from impaired cognition. That report is now impounded by the court.
Assistant Norfolk District Attorney Lisa Beatty said the state will now bring in its own expert to evaluate Mr McCarrick to determine if he can go to trial. The schedule for the state’s evaluation is not currently set, but both sides will be back in court in April for a status conference. Any eventual ruling on Mr McCarrick’s motion to be declared incompetent is not likely for months.
McCarrick was not in court for the hearing. It was reported last year he lives in a Missouri treatment centre for priests.
Defence lawyers for the former cardinal had him evaluated last year by David Schretlen, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Professor Schretlen found Mr McCarrick suffers from neurological defects, including impaired memory and cognition, according to records available in court.
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represents Mr McCarrick’s Massachusetts victim in civil lawsuits filed in New York and New Jersey, spoke outside the courthouse on Monday following a brief hearing and said his client has no plans to let up.
Mr McCarrick, once one of the most powerful clerics in the Catholic Church and known for his fundraising prowess, has been accused of sexually abusing both adult and child victims over decades, a scandal that burst into public in 2018. After the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (now a dicastery) found Mr McCarrick guilty of abuse in 2019, he was laicised by Pope Francis.
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Prosecutors challenge medical report finding McCarrick not competent to stand trial (By Damien Fisher, OSV News via NCR Online)
