Why this Falsely Accused Priest Is Still in Prison

Why are some innocent defendants kept in prison? Attorney Harvey Silverglate unmasks the perversion of justice when judges give finality more weight than justice.

August 30, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Preliminary Note: I first wrote this post in 2018. The entire landscape of my own situation has radically changed since then. On October 9, 2022, famed Boston civil rights Attorney Harvey Silverglate penned an Op-Ed for The Wall Street Journal entitled “Justice Delayed for Father MacRae.” He wrote of how any hope for my ongoing defense fell into silence for several years until early 2022. At that time, new evidence emerged that James F. McLaughlin, the Keene, New Hampshire police detective who choreographed the case against me in 1994 had been present on a secret list for police misconduct. The charge against him, which preceded my trial by a few years, was “falsification of records.” Since then a New Hampshire court has sealed his file and has, in a secret hearing, allowed his name to be removed from the public misconduct list. Others who have written of this matter have somehow uncovered other incidents of police misconduct by him including allegations of falsification of evidence, witness intimidation, destruction of tape-recorded evidence, and other examples of official dishonesty, all of which I have been accusing him of for the last 30 years. There are signs of an official coverup going on in New Hampshire, and until someone gets to the bottom of it, progress in my defense had once again fallen into silence.

Until now. Next week in these pages we will host an explosive Op-Ed by a Los Angeles documentary researcher who seems to have arrived, if not at the bottom line of what has actually gone on, then very near to it. She has described her Op-Ed as “the epic of all epic scandals.”

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In North Carolina in 1983, half brothers Henry Lee McCollum, 19, and Leon Brown, 15, were arrested and charged with a heinous crime, the rape, and murder of an 11-year-old girl. Public pressure to solve the case was intense. A lot of facts were overlooked because the police felt certain they had the right suspects. The two brothers were interrogated for hours on end, finally confessed, and then were sentenced to death.

But after an initial state appeal, the young men’s confessions were seen as coerced and vacated. They stood trial but were convicted again. Only the sentence changed. This time Henry Lee remained on death row while Leon, being still a minor, was sentenced to life in prison. Further attempts to appeal their case were rejected by judges citing the state’s interest in “finality,” a principle of law that often prevails over justice.

I often receive letters and comments from readers who may not know the history of my own attempts toward justice. The well-meaning comments suggest that I seek out the Innocence Project for assistance, or that I appeal to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, or file a habeas corpus petition in the federal courts.

I know that these readers would have to plow through a lot of past material on this site to get a sense of how strenuously we have tried all of the above. The Innocence Project has saved many lives, but before taking a case it usually requires the existence of irrefutable DNA evidence that would exonerate a prisoner.

Absence of Evidence Is Not Evidence

A conviction like mine is different. Because no crime ever actually took place — a truth that comes down to my word against an accuser’s word — there was no evidence and nothing to review except the accuser’s claims themselves. For reasons you might understand if you keep reading, emerging evidence of innocence, no matter how compelling, has so far been unable to prevail over the court’s interest in finality.

The sheer number of cases overturned with irrefutable DNA evidence do not seem to translate for judges into a concern that wrongful convictions are more common than they want to admit. Mistakes that are made when there is evidence do not compel judges to consider that mistakes are also made when there is none. How finality prevailed over justice in my own attempts at appeal was laid out in an important article by Ryan MacDonald, “A Grievous Error in Judge Joseph Laplante’s Court.”

The grievous error notwithstanding, Judge Laplante was not in error in his procedural handling of my habeas corpus appeal. He simply followed existing case law. One of the most egregious principles of law to come out of the United States Supreme Court in modern times was a 1993 decision in Herrera v. Collins.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in his majority opinion that “A claim of Actual Innocence is not itself a constitutional claim” that entitles a convicted defendant to federal habeas corpus relief. This also applies to death penalty cases. Actual innocence is not a bar to lawful execution.

Let that sink in. But first, back to half-brothers Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown in North Carolina: After being sent to prison for the heinous rape-murder charges, the two young men themselves became the victims of sexual and physical assaults.

In a bizarre twist, an older prisoner befriended them, stating his belief in their innocence. That prisoner, Roscoe Artis, had been convicted for a series of sexual assaults against women and was a suspect in at least one “cold case” homicide. It turned out that Mr. Artis believed in the innocence of Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown because he himself actually committed the crime for which they were in prison. He did not tell them this, however.

In 2014 — 31 years after being sentenced to prison — the case of Henry Lee, still not yet executed, was revisited by Sharon Stellato, an investigator for the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission. She undertook a dogged pursuit of the actual evidence against them but found none. What she did find, however, was some DNA evidence from the crime scene that had never been tested.

It was enough — just enough — to overcome finality so a judge ordered it to be tested. It excluded Henry Lee and Leon from any involvement in the crime, and it convicted Roscoe Artis, the man who befriended and protected them in prison. It was also revealed that fingerprints found at the 1983 crime scene were not a match for either Henry Lee or Leon, a fact that the police never conveyed to defense attorneys. At ages 50 and 46, more than 30 years after they were sent to prison, Henry Lee and Leon were finally released.

Politics, Prosecutors, and Career Paths

About every other week or so, usually on a Friday afternoon, I am summoned to a prison office to open and sign for an item of legal mail. Anything sent to a prisoner that obviously comes from a court, a lawyer, or a law firm falls into this category. It simply means that unlike all other mail, the item is opened in my presence after I sign a log indicating that I accepted it.

Prisoners shudder when the P.A. system announces their names for legal mail. It is generally an omen of bad news for prisoners. Those who are guilty of their charged offenses — and yes, they are the vast majority — don’t mind so much. They expect little beyond the justice already meted out to them. But those who maintain their innocence brace themselves for a letdown, or another step toward bankruptcy, whenever their names are called.

It is one of the myths of prison that many prisoners claim to be innocent. The reality is just the opposite. Those who do so are taunted as “damn fools” by nearly all others. I spent my first few years here fending off a taunt by both prisoners and guards: ‘You could have been out of here in ONE YEAR if you took a deal? What an idiot!” 

Much of the legal mail that I am summoned to pick up these days is from Harvey A. Silverglate, a well known civil rights and appellate defense lawyer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mr. Silverglate is author of the book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (Encounter Books 2009).

The foreword of the book is by Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law professor and a colleague and friend of the author. Both Misters Silverglate and Dershowitz appear frequently in the Boston and national media, and I have followed them for years.

In his Foreword, Alan Dershowitz presents with clarity a crucial point that I have made many times. Mr. Dershowitz writes:

“Prosecutors in other countries are civil servants who do not pander to the people’s understandable wish to be safe from crime ... in the United States, prosecutors are not only elected ... but the job is a stepping stone to a higher office as evidenced by the fact that nearly every congressman or senator who ever practiced law once served as a federal or state prosecutor. Winning becomes more important than doing justice.”

— Three Felonies a Day, p. xxv

It is also an important fact that prosecutors routinely move on to political appointments as judges. Judge Joseph Laplante, who declined to hear any evidence or testimony in my federal habeas corpus appeal, had a career as a federal prosecutor spanning twenty years before his appointment to the federal bench. Judge Laplante had been prosecutor in the NH Attorney General’s office at the time of my trial and first State appeal, and likely knew of Detective McLaughlin presence on the secret list of dishonest police.

Judge Arthur Brennan, who presided over my 1994 trial, was personal legal counsel to then-Governor Judd Gregg (1989-1992) when he received a political appointment to a judgeship just months before my trial. Judge Larry Smukler, who declined to hear my State habeas corpus appeal, also declined to provide any biographical information about his career trajectory for the official New Hampshire Law Directory.

The Acknowledgements section of Harvey Silverglate’s Three Felonies a Day is a virtual Who’s Who of many of the advocates for justice who have taken up my case. The names there include Dorothy Rabinowitz whose writings in The Wall Street Journal reopened my story in the important court of public awareness.

Also included there is Bob Chatelle, founder and president of the National Center for Reason and Justice which continues to feature my story and its appellate case files. Mr. Chatelle also hosts the Friends of Justice blog which links to many of my posts and has featured posts about my experience of justice.

Harvey Silverglate’s “Freedom Watch”

Mr. Silverglate, being a Massachusetts attorney, is not able to represent me in New Hampshire, but he generously sends me each installment in his series of articles called “Freedom Watch” published by WGBH News. I am most grateful for these informative glimpses into the inner function, and too often DYSfunction, of the criminal justice system. Mr. Silverglate has also long been a reader and supporter of Beyond These Stone Walls.

A recent article he sent was “When the Criminal Justice System Can’t Admit a Mistake: The James Rodwell Case.” He refers to this murder conviction as “a case that will not go away” because “too many people remain disturbed by the outcome.” Harvey Silverglate is one of them because …

[The] instinct that drives people to persevere when the system misfires is countered by the system’s self-protective reflex that makes it difficult to get judges to take a second, third or fourth look into a case, even when new and powerful evidence of a severe miscarriage of justice surfaces.”

This self-protective reflex, Mr. Silverglate says, has long roiled the justice system, producing “considerable disagreement between the two camps of judges — those who view finality as the ultimate goal, and others who deem justice to be paramount.” The central issue in the James Rodwell case, says Silverglate, is whether Mr. Rodwell actually committed the murder for which he has constantly maintained his innocence throughout 36 years in prison.

The sole evidence against him was the testimony of “two inmate thugs” who were treated favorably by prosecutors and police in exchange for their testimony. One of them claimed that Rodwell confessed to the murder while they occupied neighboring cells in a county jail where they were held pre-trial. Further, the district attorney’s office had since “lost” the entire file of its prosecution of this case.

Mr. Silverglate went on to describe the “remarkable display of clairvoyance” in a Superior Court judge who denied Rodwell’s latest appeal. The judge stated that “it is highly unlikely” that the ‘lost’ files contain evidence of prosecution deals afforded to inmate witnesses in exchange for their testimony.

This judicial clairvoyance struck a familiar note. When my own habeas corpus appeal came up against a wall of finality, Judge Joseph Laplante offered some clairvoyance of his own. While declining to hear from witnesses, including my accuser’s former wife, Judge Laplante attributed a motive for her to lie today about her ex-husband’s perjury: Thomas Grover was charged with felony domestic assault for punching her and breaking her nose before my trial — a charge conveniently dropped on the day my trial ended in a conviction.

Her bravely coming forward with the truth today was explained away by Judge Laplante who asserted that my defense could have called her as a witness at my 1994 trial, and could have tried to elicit the truth then. This assertion completely overlooks the fact that she may have been terrified of the man who had just broken her nose for questioning his truthfulness then. It is fascinating how all the credence afforded to victims of abuse and domestic violence is set aside when their testimony might right a judicial wrong.

Mr. Silverglate’s “Freedom Watch” article went on to describe some of the “far too many infamous cases where the indications are strong that justice misfired, but where the systemic preference for finality and the resistance to the confession of judicial error are strong.” One of these cases he cited is that against the Amirault family and the “witch trial” prosecution of them in the notorious Fells Acres Day Care Center case. 

This story and others convey powerfully both the perversion of finality prevailing over justice and the perversion of justice when politics preside over a courtroom. In their book, Actual Innocence (New American Library, 2003) Innocence Project founders Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld describe how the doctrine of “finality” is an obstacle to justice:

“Only the criminal justice system exempts itself from self-examination. Wrongful convictions are not seen as catastrophes, but as topics to be avoided... Finality is a doctrine that can be explained in two words when it comes to innocence tests: willful ignorance... The Innocence Project and other advocates have spent hundreds of hours just arguing against ‘finality’ doctrines that are used to block inquiries that no fair person would resist.”

— Actual Innocence, p. 320

For Harvey Silverglate, Advocate for Justice, “The key question is whether judges, clothespins firmly attached to noses, will continue to pretend that justice was done.” None of the rest of us are given clothespins.

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Please share this post, and please return here next week for the “epic of all epic scandals.” You may also be interested to see some new evidence added to our Important Documents in the Fr Gordon MacRae Case. It is the evidence that appellate judges have declined to hear.

Affidavit of Former FBI Special Agent James Abbott

Statement of Steven Wollschlager

Statement of Debra Collett

Statement of Leo Demers

Dying in Prison in the ‘Live Free or Die’ State

News articles allege that Detective James McLaughlin falsified reports and/or evidence but this was kept hidden from the jury in the 1994 trial of Fr. Gordon MacRae.

July 13, 2022 by Charlene C. Duline

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by noted author, Charlene C. Duline. Retired from a distinguished career as a diplomat and Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. State Department, Ms. Duline served the United States in several nations across the African Continent, in East Pakistan and Panama, and at United Nations Headquarters in New York. She holds degrees in journalism and political science from Indiana University and a Master’s degree in International Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.

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I am outraged at the State of New Hampshire! Every citizen in the State should be! Recent news articles by Damien Fisher and Nancy West at InDepthNH.org have pulled the shroud of secrecy from a grave injustice. Few people in that State knew about a list formally called the “Exculpatory Evidence Schedule,” now better known as the “Laurie List.” The list was revealed in December 2021 by the New Hampshire Attorney General as a result of litigation filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire and the New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism which remains a litigant seeking the full publication of that list.

The court-ordered release of the list of compromised police is based on a Supreme Court decision holding that if favorable exculpatory evidence has been knowingly withheld by the prosecution in a criminal case, the burden shifts to the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the undisclosed evidence would not have affected the outcome of a trial. If such a violation occurred and the State failed to meet its burden, a defendant has been denied his right to present all favorable proofs and is entitled to a new trial or to have his convictions vacated altogether.

Former NH detective James McLaughlin, the shady detective who was instrumental in pursuing lie after lie about Fr. Gordon MacRae sending him to a long prison term in 1994, was prominent on the Laurie List for “Falsification of Records” and/or evidence. Over 28 years of wrongful imprisonment in the New Hampshire State Prison, MacRae has consistently asserted that the case against him was built on lies, cheating and distortions aided and abetted by a dishonest police officer.

Just as Innocence Project founder Barry Scheck predicted in his 2003 book, Actual Innocence, those assertions have since been ignored or explained away at higher levels of the justice system by judges with a clear bias in favor of police and against defendants — and this defendant in particular. Judge Arthur Brennan, the first New Hampshire judge to hear this case, told jurors to “disregard inconsistencies” in accuser Thomas Grover’s testimony. As The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote in The Trials of Father MacRae, they had much to disregard.

In addition to new evidence and witnesses that other judges declined to hear, much of MacRae’s failed 2012 Habeas Corpus petition was about Keene, New Hampshire sex crimes detective James McLaughlin and the shady tactics he employed to generate claims, prosecute, and convict MacRae in 1994 paving a path to lucrative settlement deals from the Catholic Diocese of Manchester.

Now it turns out that McLaughlin was sanctioned on a secret Attorney General’s list for “falsification of records” in 1985, nine years before the trial of Father MacRae. Under a U.S. Supreme Court precedent, Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors were required to reveal that fact to Defendant MacRae and his legal counsel. They did not. This was especially egregious because a central issue in this case has been the falsification of police reports and witness tampering.

Since there were no consequences, McLaughlin continued what he did best. The record in this case is filled with post-trial witness statements that he threatened, intimidated, coerced and lied to witnesses, and falsified records. At least one witness today claims that this detective attempted to suborn his perjury with a monetary bribe. Judge Joseph Laplante, the New Hampshire federal judge who heard MacRae’s Habeas Corpus petition, ignored all of this and allowed none of these witnesses to testify under oath.

Few people know that Fr. MacRae was offered two plea deals before his trial and one during trial. He was told that if he would plead guilty he would receive only one year in prison. This honest man turned down the plea deals. The lengthy criminal rap sheet of 27-year-old accuser Thomas Grover includes multiple arrests for forgery, theft, burglary, drugs, and assault. He broke his future ex-wife’s nose when she questioned his perjury.

The jury never heard any of this. Neither did they hear that Thomas Grover several times received financial payments from his personal injury lawyer, advances on his expected windfall in his accompanying civil lawsuit — a practice that is forbidden by the rules of professional conduct for lawyers. Grover was awarded almost $200,000 for crimes that never took place. There are photos of him dancing with stacks of $50 bills.

At the trial, Judge Arthur Brennan warned MacRae that if he took the stand in his own defense, the judge would open the door for Thomas Grover’s brothers to testify to their own false claims in related civil lawsuits. Gordon MacRae was the only person never heard from in this trial. In a flimsy 1996 appeal represented by a public defender (because MacRae’s diocese refused to help him), MacRae was not even allowed to be present. At three attempts at a Habeas Corpus appeal before state and federal courts since this trial, neither MacRae nor any witness for his defense were permitted to give testimony. At no time has any court official allowed a single word from this defendant.

The man who actually controlled the Diocese of Manchester during much of MacRae’s sentence was Monsignor Edward J. Arsenault, now known as Edward J. Bolognini. He violated Church law regarding Father MacRae who was never told, despite repeated requests, what the Diocese conveyed to the Holy See in Rome about this matter. Arsenault was later dismissed from the priesthood after pleading guilty to stealing almost $300,000 from the Diocese and the estate of a deceased priest. He reportedly spent the stolen money in the company of a much younger gay musician.

At the time of his nearly $300,000 embezzlement, Arsenault held a $170,000 per year position as Executive Director of the St. Luke Institute for troubled priests in Maryland. He served only two years of a 20-year prison sentence before being released and his sentence vacated when an unnamed third party paid his entire restitution. Now a convicted felon with a new name, he today administers a lucrative contract for the City of New York.

I believe that Father MacRae’s bishop and diocese owe him apologies for their abandonment of him, their presumptions of guilt, their refusals to visit or even correspond with him for 28 years in prison where Father Gordon MacRae remains a priest. He offers Mass in his cell each week, and has been instrumental in saving lives and souls. One of them is the life and soul of my Godson, Pornchai Moontri, a conversion story beautifully told by Marian Helper Editor, Felix Carroll in the great Divine Mercy book, Loved, Lost, Found.

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Editor’s Note: Charlene Duline’s Godson, Pornchai Moontri, now residing in Bangkok, Thailand, was the subject of a stunning investigative report by Father Gordon MacRae:

“Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam”.

For additional information on Charlene Duline’s article, see the following:

AG Hides Some ‘Laurie List’ Names Hours After Release By Damien Fisher, InDepthNH.org

Famed Keene Cop Called Out for Federal Entrapment By Damien Fisher, InDepthNH.org

A Grievous Error in Judge Joseph Laplante’s Court By Ryan A. MacDonald

The Trial of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Fraud by Ryan A. MacDonald

Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell

Detective James McLaughlin shows up on a previously secret list of dishonest police for falsifying records. In 1994 he falsified the case against Fr Gordon MacRae.

January 19, 2022

I was hoping to find someone else to write this, but information happened fast and time is critical. So I will write it myself even though I have an obvious conflict of interest. At this writing I am in my 28th year of unjust imprisonment. In that time, every avenue of appeal has been exhausted with no hope for justice. All resources for further appeals are also exhausted. And, frankly, so am I.

Many well-meaning friends and readers have nonetheless urged me in recent years to continue to explore and pursue any means to address what seems for most a clear injustice. My 67-year prison sentence — after rejecting plea deal offers to serve one year — just doesn’t sit well with fair-minded, rational people. That seems especially so given that if I were in fact guilty or at least willing to pretend so in 1994, I would have left prison 26 years ago.

From seemingly out of nowhere, a new development has arisen at the start of 2022. I am told that it has the potential to either right a wrong and set me free or simply fade away like all previous endeavors that left me to die in prison. I had come to accept that latter reality. My focus in the last two years, like that of my friend and patron, St. Maximilian Kolbe, was to set someone else free. I am proud of that accomplishment. It is all I have to show for this injustice. Then, at the very close of 2021, a bombshell exploded on New Year’s Eve.

The New Hampshire LEACT Commission

I received a message that day from an old friend, Joseph Lascaze. Like Pornchai Moontri, Joseph went to prison at age 18. Also like Pornchai, he accomplished something extraordinary in that time. After a few aimless years lost in an aimless prison system, Joseph fought against many obstacles to educate himself. Over those years, he became a close friend to both me and Pornchai. Prison is not a good place to grow up, but Joseph did, and in spite of all obstacles he became an exemplary citizen and gifted young man.

Joseph was released in 2019 and is today the “Smart Justice Campaign Manager” for the New Hampshire Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He also serves by invitation of NH Governor Christopher Sununu on the Governor’s LEACT Commission (Law Enforcement Accountability, Community, and Transparency). Joseph has been well received and even honored by New Hampshire law enforcement for his candor and unprecedented contributions to this Commission.

Among many other projects, Joseph has worked with LEACT to make public a previously secret document held by the NH Attorney General entitled the “Exculpatory Evidence Schedule.” It is more popularly known as the “Laurie List” named for the judicial ruling that created it. The ACLU, along with several NH media outlets, sued the state under the Freedom of Information Act to make the list public.

Joseph’s New Year’s Eve message was read to me by another friend who noted that Joseph attached an article he urgently wanted me to see. The article, by Damien Fisher at InDepthNH.org, was “AG Hides Some ‘Laurie List’ Names Hours After Release.” In short, the ACLU lawsuit settlement dictates that the secret ‘Laurie List’ is now to be a public list.

The potential bombshell for me is this: It turns out that Keene, NH Detective James F. McLaughlin, who choreographed the case against me in 1994, was sanctioned and placed on the list for “Falsification of Records” in 1985, nine years before my trial. Another recent InDepthNH article by Nancy West,entitled “AG Removes 28 Names From ‘Laurie List’ of Dishonest Police Outside the Law,” describes what this development potentially means:

“Officers placed on the list sustained discipline for dishonesty, excessive force, or mental illness in confidential personnel files .... If a criminal defendant finds out that such evidence existed, even many years later, he or she can petition the court for a new trial or try to have the charges dropped altogether.”

InDepthNH, November 24, 2021

More than a half century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in ‘Brady v. Maryland’ that criminal defendants must receive all exculpatory evidence or their conviction could be overturned or vacated entirely.

The Suppression of Exculpatory Evidence

Needless to say, neither I nor my defense were made aware of the 1985 falsification of records infraction against Detective McLaughlin before my trial. But that was certainly not the only suppression of exculpatory evidence. In multiple police reports prepared by McLaughlin before trial — reports which steered the prosecutor’s case — McLaughlin made repeated references to tape recorded phone calls and interviews from which he made specific claims.

Some of the subjects on those tapes claimed that McLaughlin grossly misquoted them or included statements that they never made at all. Despite a court order to turn those recordings over to my defense, every one of them disappeared before trial. McLaughlin claimed, for example, that a specific tape was “recycled” and a transcript that his report referred to was never made due to a “clerical error.” Years later, McLaughlin sent that same tape to The Wall Street Journal despite the fact that it contained none of what he said it contained. Writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2005, Dorothy Rabinowitz addressed this:

“On the police tape, an otherwise bewildered-sounding Fr. MacRae is consistently clear about one thing — that he in no way solicited [anyone] ... for sex or anything else. ‘I don’t understand,’ he says more than once, his tone that of a man who feels that there must, indeed, be something for him to understand about the charge and its causes that eludes him. . . . He listens as the police assure him that he can save all the bad publicity. ‘Our concern is, let’s get it taken care of, let’s not blow it out of proportion. You know what the media does,’ they warned. He could avoid all the stories, protect the church, let it all go away quietly.”

A Priest’s Story Part 1: The trial, April 27, 2005

There was no evidence at all in the case brought against me in 1994. In New Hampshire — as in many states since the 1980s — no evidence is needed to convict someone accused of a sexual offense. No evidence was admitted at my trial beyond the word of 27-year old accuser, Thomas Grover, a man with a criminal record who stood to gain $200,000 for making the claim.

The story of how that trial unfolded has received much attention over the years. Dorothy Rabinowitz, a Pulitzer-prize winning member of The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, published two major articles on my trial and its back story in 2005 and a third in 2013 entitled “The Trials of Father MacRae.”

These articles sparked some national interest, but no one could have predicted the tidal wave of accusations against Catholic priests that arose in 2002 and continued until the present day. Other media — including most in the Catholic media — decided to look the other way in any case of injustice against a priest.

Seeking justice has been a steep uphill battle. In 2009, at about the same time this blog began, a new investigator began a fresh look at the case. A decorated career FBI Special Agent Supervisor, he ended his investigation in 2012 concluding, bluntly:

“In my three year investigation of this matter, I found no evidence that MacRae committed these crimes or any crimes. Indeed, the only ‘evidence’ was the statements of Thomas Grover which have been discredited by those who were around him at the time including members of his own family.”

Affidavit of former FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbott, Ret.

Alarming New Evidence Alarmingly Ignored

When no evidence is needed to put a man in prison there is no evidence to dismantle or challenge. Nonetheless, Mr. Abbott’s investigation uncovered many things, including allegations of misconduct by Detective James McLaughlin. New witnesses were interviewed and they bravely came forward to write and sign statements in the case. Their evidence is profiled by David F. Pierre at The Media Report under the title, “Alarming New Evidence May Exonerate Imprisoned Priest.”

Among the many statements described and quoted there is one from Steven Wollschlager obtained by the Investigator. Steven, facing a drug charge, described being summoned to the office of Detective McLaughlin where, he alleges, he was offered a direct monetary bribe in exchange for a fabricated accusation against me. He was given $50 in cash and told that “a large sum of money” could be obtained in a civil suit. “Life could go a lot easier for you with a large sum of money,” McLaughlin allegedly said.

Steven wrote that the detective “knew I was using drugs at the time and could have been influenced to say anything for money.” Enticed by the prospect, Steven agreed to come up with a fabricated claim. He then received a summons to appear before a Grand Jury to help bring a new indictment. It was a testament to his integrity that his conscience, instead of the proffered bribe, became his guide. He decided that he could not do this “to someone who only tried to help me.” He was then told to go away because “we won’t be needing anything more from you.”

I write that these witnesses “bravely” decided to come forward because some of them were threatened by Detective McLaughlin before my trial. One witness, former drug abuse counselor Debra Collett who treated Thomas Grover, denied that he accused me during therapy sessions as he alleged. She described being “bullied,” “coerced,” “overtly threatened” by this detective when she would not say what he wanted to hear. “I will come to your house and physically drag you out of it,” she was told.

Ms. Collett described that the entire interview was recorded, but that tape, like other exculpatory evidence, “disappeared” before my trial. It is shocking that judges reviewing my appeals declined to even hear from these witnesses. Innocence Project founders Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld described how such misconduct by police was sometimes covered up by judges. From their acclaimed book, Actual Innocence:

“For 64 percent of DNA exonerations analyzed by the Innocence Project, misconduct by police or prosecutors played an important role in the convictions. Lies, cheating, distortions at the lower levels of the system are excused at the higher ones.”

Barry Scheck, Actual Innocence, p. 225

That is exactly what happened when my habeas corpus appeal and its accompanying memorandum of Law was filed in 2012. One judge after another summarily declined to hold any hearing that would give these witnesses a chance to go on record. One possible reason for this is that Detective McLaughlin has brought forward hundreds of cases with an almost 100-percent conviction record through offers of lenient plea deals.

I believe judges are reluctant to deal with the “Pandora’s Box” of challenged convictions if this officer’s challenged integrity becomes public. I wrote more about this in a March 2021 post, “Wrongful Convictions: The Other Police Misconduct.”

I was entirely demoralized by the judicial lack of regard for truth and due process in this story. A witness, who directly accused a sworn officer of offering a bribe to suborn perjury before a grand jury has been simply ignored and silenced. I saw no further path if judges can willfully decline to hear such testimony.

So my attention turned then to assisting my friend, Pornchai Moontri, whose plight was even more brutally unjust than my own. I made a promise to him, to myself, and to God that I would use whatever time I had left in life to do all I could to bring forward the truth of his situation and free him.

With help from readers, I did just that. The person who arranged for him to be brought here from Thailand at age 11 — only to be horrendously exploited and sexually abused — was found and brought to justice in 2018. He pled “no contest” to forty felony charges of sexual assault of a minor in Penobscot (Maine) Superior Court in September 2018, but was sentenced (are you sitting down?) to zero prison time and 18 years probation.

I had no reason left to expect anything even remotely resembling justice from our justice system. But then, yet another ray of hope surfaced just at the dawn of a new year.

I do not know what to do. The prospect of possibly emerging as a free man after over 27 years unjustly in prison is daunting. The very infrastructure of my life has long since disintegrated. Even in prison I remain a priest, but in freedom I doubt that my bishop would do anything to help me. I will be 69 years old in April, 2022. At the age at which most people plan for retirement, I would be faced with starting life anew. But how? Where? Would I now be required to sacrifice priesthood for freedom?

It will be many months before there is clear direction on what comes next. I will keep you posted ... .

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ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Please visit our new “Documents” section in the Navigation Bar for more information about this story. Please also share this post. You may be interested in the following relevant posts:

Wrongful Conviction: The Other Police Misconduct

The Trials of Father MacRae by Dorothy Rabinowitz

The Trial of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Fraud by Ryan MacDonald

LEACT commissioners include, from left, Rep. David Welch, Joseph Lascaze, John Scippa, Hanover Police Chief Charlie Dennis, and Lt. Mark Morrison of Londonderry.