Four Reasons Father Robinson Should Be Released From Prison

I have noticed a huge spike in searches about Father Gerald Robinson that lead people to this website. Maybe the documentaries are finally airing. I'll have to catch one of them.

So here's a recap for you folks who might be new toaf the outrageous travesty of justice captioned The State of Ohio vs. Gerald Robinson.

A few months ago, a priest in Toledo, Ohio was convicted of murdering a nun. The elderly nun was at work in an annex next to the chapel inside a large Catholic hospital when she was found stabbed to death 30-plus times. Her body was arranged with her arms along her sides, and her underwear and stockings had been rolled down, leaving her half-naked. It was unclear if she'd been sexually assaulted. Whoever killed her did so in a frenzied rage, clearly.

The prosecution argued, and the jury apparently agreed, that the nun was murdered as part of a Satanic ritual. If true, it would mark the very first time there was objective evidence to support a claim of Satanic ritual murder by a Catholic priest anywhere in the world.

The only wrinkle is that it does not appear to be true.

Not to a reasonable and objective person cooly examining the facts and setting aside the ritualistic nonsense.

Here are four reasons why Father Gerald Robinson should be out of prison NOW.

1. The prosecution did not have a credible explanation for the presence of foreign male DNA on the body and clothing of this murder victim.

This blood should be very persuasive evidence. It was DNA from blood, after all -- not saliva or sweat or hair.

(Correction: I am advised that the lab was not able to tell the exact nature of the DNA, so there isno direct evidence whether it was blood or skin or something else. I am not sure. However, the location underneath the fingernails is circumstantial evidence suggesting that it is blood and skin that got there when the victim scratched her attacker).

One would reasonably expect the man who committed this bloodlust, this incredibly violent murder, might have nicked himself along the way, or gotten nicked by his victim, who struggled for her life. One would reasonably expect that blood underneath a victim's fingernails represents the blood of her attacker. That is why the fingernails of murder victims are scraped into a container for scientific inspection.

A man's DNA was also found on the nun's underwear. Mind you, her underwear had been rolled down her legs, bunched up. A man's DNA was also found on a large white altar cloth that the killer draped over her body. There was enough of the foreign materialin each location to conduct DNA testing.

The DNA from the male did not match the priest.

DNA evidence CAN come from contamination. This is called an "artifact." The prosecution argued that the medical personnel that responded to the scene and removed her body for autopsy must have been the sources of contamination. But in this case, there were THREE separate spots of DNA evidence. One, I can maybe see as contamination.

But three spots? And one under a fingernail? And one in her bunched-up underwear?

I just cannot accept that a medical professional, or anyone else for that matter, handling the body of a murder victim would be actively bleeding -- and would drip blood on the corpse -- and not say anything -- and/or would allow themselves to be scratched by the fingernails of a corpse -- and not report it or seek treatment. This murder was in 1980, before AIDS, but there are all sorts of other diseases that you can get from mishandling dead bodies.

And while DNA was not yet known at the time of this murder, certainly blood typing evidence has been around since the 1910s, although it was long ago trumped by the miraculous advent of DNA evidence. For some reason I have yet to fathom, the jury discounted the DNA evidence in this case.

2. The only other remotely scientific evidence in the case was the blood transfer pattern evidence -- in other words, outlines or images of the murder weapon on the altar cloth, implying that the killer set down the weapon, or wiped the weapon on the cloth. But listen carefully to the prosecution's expert when she says that the stains were made by a large dagger-shaped letter opener owned by Father Robinson.

She testified, quote, that the letter opener "could not be ruled out" and was "consistent" with the blood stains.

That is an awfully subjective and equivocal opinion on which to convict someone of first-degree murder.

3. In the most shocking Perry Mason moment I've ever seen in a real trial -- and I have ten years of experience as a trial lawyer under my belt -- the defense was able to get this prosecution's expert to concede that another bloodstain on the altar cloth matched a pair of scissors (a) that were missing from scene when (b) the coroner who did the original autopsy wrote in the first autopsy report that the wounds appeared to his trained eye to have been made with scissors.

4. The prosecution argued that a dagger-shaped letter opener owned by the priest was the weapon. But the blade was 7" and the deepest wounds were 3" deep! How does the prosecution explain this? It doesn't.

As to the rest of the evidence, it hardly merits comment. I will rely on the words of legendary British true crime historian and criminologist Colin Wilson, who once referred to the ludicrous Satanic ritual child abuse scares from the 1990s, which infected the U.S. as well as parts of the U.K. (remember the McMartin preschool case?), as a "shameful period" in our criminal history.

I patiently await a reply to the four points listed above from those who agitate for Gerald Robinson's continued imprisonment.

Comments

[Nene]

I never heard of the case before CLEWS, so I admit to ignorance in the specifics. Apart from the details outlined here, what I fail to understand is the so-called Satanic connection. What was there at the crime scene that led the prosecution to allege Satanic ritual? As if anyone could credibly testify that they knew 'Satanic' ritual when they saw it anyway, and real Satanists don't practice ritual human sacrifice. That sounds to me like the DA trying to make headlines. Was it perchance an election year?