Gerald Robinson, the Toledo priest convicted of murdering a nun, was back in Lucas County Common Pleas Court yesterday for the first time since he was led away in cuffs in 2006.
This time, the priest was watching proceedings by video camera from Hocking Correctional Facility in southern Ohio.
The two-hour hearing was very focused on the fine lines of his legal efforts to get a new trial. Judge Gene Zmuda questioned prosecutor Dean Mandros and defense attorneys Rick Kerger and John Donahue over important legal points that for lay persons sounded like a law school symposium. But of course this is the American system at work, and the weight of the arguments and the ultimate decision by Judge Zmuda affect people's lives in profound ways -- not the least of whom is Gerald Robinson. The judge's ruling will determine whether the priest will walk out of prison a free man, or spend the rest of his life condemned behind bars.
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One of the new issues raised in court yesterday was the discovery of an unknown number -- some say 70 -- police reports from the 1980 investigation into Sister Margaret Ann Pahl's murder that had been misfiled.
Dean Mandros said the information contained in those reports was nothing significant, but so far the judge and the defense attorneys have not reviewed the documents. As Rick Kerger said, he is not doubting Mr. Mandros' integrity but he would like to have the opportunity to make his own determination whether the newly discovered police reports are significant.
Mandros told me they did not include notes from police interviews with Father Swiatecki -- whom Robinson's appeals team asserts is the real killer -- nor the interrogations of Father Robinson, of which no copies have been seen since the cold case reopened its investigation in 2003. Those documents may not even exist because there are some who say the police official charged with filling out the paperwork had a habit of letting the reports slide.
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If Judge Zmuda does grant an evidentiary hearing, that does not mean he feels Robinson deserves a new trial, only that more evidence needs to be reviewed and discussed in the case.
He would then decide whether or not to grant a new trial.
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Arguments by the defense attempting to implicate Father Swiatecki have really dredged up some unflattering allegations.
The deceased priest's former housekeeper, Sister Dorothy Marie Balabush, signed an affidavit on Robinson's behalf saying Fr. Swiatecki was an alcoholic with a "hair trigger," a wood carver who collected knives, and that he deliberately left hard-core pornography out for her to see when he she was scheduled to clean his apartment.
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Late last year, the Ohio Innocence Project tested the DNA of Fr. Swiatecki to compare it to DNA found on Sr. Margaret Ann's fingernails. It was not a match.
That does not prove a whole lot because DNA has not played a role in this case, but one Robinson supporter told me recently that he has doubts about whether the DNA really was from Swiatecki. The prosecutors obtained the DNA sample from the hospital, from lab tests when Swiatecki underwent surgery to have a tumor removed.
The sample could have been mislabeled, the Robinson support suggested.
The only way to be sure would be to exhume the dead priest's body and obtain a new DNA sample.
While it is possible that a lab specimen could be mislabeled, I would consider that a longshot. But then again this is a case full of longshots.
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The gallery at the hearing yesterday was fairly small but there were some Robinson devotees there, including a trio of blue-haired ladies and a couple who are close friends and attended every day of the 2006 trial.

Here is a link to the article that ran today.

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Robinson looked more attentive at yesterday's hearing than he did at his trial in 2006. He looked at the camera, seemed to show interest, and you could see some facial expressions in reaction to testimony.
During the murder trial, he stared blankly, with virtually no expression on his face, almost the entire time. He even seemed to doze off periodically. Many observers thought he was taking some kind of mood-altering drugs or some sedatives, but I've been told by his defense attorneys that was not the case.