I’ve been away for awhile, so if there has already been a thread on this, could someone direct me to it? This is from today’s newswire:
“A Bronx man who spent the past 12 years in prison for murder shook with emotion yesterday as a federal judge ordered him freed because a priest’s testimony convinced him the inmate was innocent. José Morales, 31, blinked into the bright sun and smiled at his newfound freedom as he stepped out of Manhattan federal court yesterday.
Morales’ release came after the Rev. Joseph Towle came forward to say that another man, Jesus Fornes, had come to him years ago and confessed to the crime. Fornes told the priest that Morales and the other man convicted of the killing, Ruben Montalvo, 30, were not involved. ‘Father Joe’ kept the confession secret for years, finally coming forward in 1998 after Fornes was killed in Harlem.”
—Me, I think “Father Joe” should be tried for obstruction of justice, and Morales should sue the cassock off him. How 'bout y’all?
Good god. Why couldn’t he have just said, “yeah, somebody else confessed to me; this guy is innocent?” He wouldn’t be breaking confidentiality, would he?
I’m not a lawyer, but I’d always heard that American law respected the obligation on priests to keep confessions secret. (And if it didn’t, and Fornes knew that Towle could be forced to reveal the confession, would he have made that confession in the first place?) For my money, no, and no. Towles made the information known at the earliest time he could, in view of his obligations as a priest - which obligations he has every right to assume. And if he didn’t assume them, the situation wouldn’t arise - and Fornes wouldn’t confess to anyone, and Morales would still be in jail.
Would the absence of the religious element put a different complexion on this? Suppose mental patient Fornes, under treatment for violent behavioural problems, had revealed the truth in a therapy session with psychiatrist Joseph Towles; how do Dr. Towles’ obligations stack up against Fr. Towles’?
(For that matter, you don’t say - probably no one besides the priest knows - what attempts Towles made to get Fornes to confess to the authorities. I’d be surprised if he hadn’t tried.)
I’m with Steve Wright, and would add, in fact, that had Towle come forward earlier, Fornes could have probably “sue[d] the cassock off him”. There is currently a lawsuit of this nature going on in NY in which a woman is suing two rabbis for revealing information that she told them in a religious capacity. The courts have upheld her grounds for a suit (despite some complicating factors not present in the Fornes case).
Well, OK, then, let’s take this to a more Hitchcockian level: let’s say that Jesus Fornes was a serial killer, and confessed to Father Joe that he’d killed before and was going to kill again and again. I don’t really see much difference: the padre let at least one, apparently two, innocent men rot in jail for 12 years because of some religious rule.
If I were José Morales, I’d haul the Pope’s ass into court, too!
I guess this could be cross-posted to the “How Does Religion Hurt People?” thread. Two guys had to sit in jail for 12 years because we grant to clergy a privelege we do not grant to other citizens–the right to withhold knowledge of or evidence regarding a crime. Gee, tough noogies for Mr. Morales and Mr. Montalvo, I guess. It’s far more important to grant special priveleges to religious bodies than to see that justice is done.
My point is, Fornes would not have confessed at all if he’d known the information could be passed to the authorities. We know this, because he did not confess to anyone who was free to reveal the information. So, if priests were not specially privileged in this way… then Fornes would take his secret to his grave, and Morales and Montalvo would still be in jail.
Isn’t it better for justice to be delayed, rather than denied altogether?
Well, no. The clergy does not have a privlege not to tell, but rather an obligation not to tell.
The “privilege” belongs to the confessor, and the obligation extends not only to clergy, of course, but to the teller’s attorney, shrink, doctor and (in some cases) spouse.
All that said, based on an earlier story I don’t think this particular case had a clergy-confessor privilege issue directly involved at all. Lemme go running through the Times’ archives to see what comes up.
Yes pld but, as Steve Wright said, if priests did not have an unshakable reputation for confidence keeping, this Fornes would probably never have confessed to the crime in the first place. In this case, Morales would still be in jail.
So the fact that Townes and other priests can be trusted to keep confidence has actually led to the miscarriage of justice being revealed much earlier than would otherwise have been the case.
Eve, I think you should answer the question posed by Steve Wright about the corresponding priviledge (and resulting innocent suffering) granted to doctors and lawyers etc. It would appear that that you and pldennison, being both atheists, see little or no value in religion, and are therefore horrified at the idea of clergymen being given rights similar to parallel secular professionals. Those who believe that religion too has some value disagree. The fact that the laws are the way they are is a result of the religious (and symphathisers) being in heavy majority.
Also, pldennison, I don’t understand your post at all. Besides for the point made by Steve Wright that the guy would likely not have confessed without knowing that his confession was confidential, it makes no sense at all to make this out to a harm of religion. Even if the guy would have confessed without a confidentiality rule, it is certainly unlikely the guy would have confessed without religion. The whole confession is a religious rite. So in the abscence of religion there would have been no confession and how would these guys have been better off?
(I should also note FWIW, that it is apparently not clear that this confession is to be tken at face value - the prosecution is apparently going to fight the release.)
OK. This is not a clergy-confessor case. This guy was apparently blabbing about his guilt to anyone who would listen until his lawyer told him to shut up.
But because he listened to his lawyer, all the testimony about his confession at the time was inadmissible as hearsay.
Manny—Your link only works if one is registered with the Times; can you provide a few excerpts?
Izzy—I am not here to “answer questions,” I am simply bringing up a topic for discussion and debate. And I have never said religion has “no value,” it simply has no value for ME. I’m sure people who believe in that sort of thing find it very valuable, and good for them. That being said, I would indeed hold doctors and lawyers to the same standards: if they know that by keeping silent they are putting an innocent person in jail, they should speak up, too.
Answering purely “on the Hitchcockian level” (I like that phrase, btw)…
If I were a serial killer, went to a priest and made an act of confession but said that I was “going to kill again and again”, then it’s not a true act of confession; I’m not repenting my sins. Therefore, in that situation the priest is not bound by the rules of confession. If, however, I go to my local priest and confess to murder, say that I truly repent, that I will not repeat my sin and make a true act of confession, then my words are sealed in the confessional; it’s between me and God, and the priest can’t tell anyone.
That information comes from a conversation with a Catholic priest.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to be confrontational, I was trying to bring out the point that if one concentrates solely on the confidentiality of clergy and not others it implies that one recognizes that there is a genuine purpose in these other cases and not in the case of clergy. Which seems to point to the conclusion that I drew, and hence my counterpoint. I don’t think it makes sense to look at confidentiality of clergy in isolation from other identical priviledges. But if indeed you are uniformly opposed to all confidentiality, than that point is off the table (with regards to you, at least).
I can’t reach Manhattan’s link either - but the bit IzzyR quotes reinforces a point I made earlier; Towles tried to get Fornes to confess to the authorities. (And if I’d committed a crime, and confessed it to a priest - confession is available, though rare, within my denomination - I’d be astonished if the priest didn’t at least suggest this, and quite possibly make it a condition for the granting of absolution). If Fornes refuses to do so (or backs out of it), then there’s nothing Towles, as a priest, can do about it. And if Towles were not a priest - with all the obligations that entails - then the situation wouldn’t arise.
I’m not sure I’d get mad at the lawyer who advised Fornes not to talk, either; he has his own obligations, and among them is the obligation to act in his client’s best interests. For my money, the real villain of the piece is (are you surprised?) Fornes - the murderer who told the priest he’d tell the truth, then went back on his word. As far as I can see, Towles did the best he could within the limits imposed on him.
Don’t fret, Izzy, dahling. And from what Manny says, it seems this case is much more complex than my hurried reading of the Times this morning (coffee cup in hand, cats sitting on my lap) implied.
Let’s go with what Tavalla says: Father Jimmy Stewart hears the confession of his parishioner, Ray Milland, who has killed his first wife, Barbara Bel Geddes. Father Jimmy knows poor Bob Cummings is in jail for that crime, on death row—and that his pal Grace Kelly is about to unwittingly marry the evil Milland! It seems that Father Jimmy has to keep mum? That seems awfully wring to me.
Whatever the hell that means. Perhaps one of our Catholic folks could explain the distinction.
And Eve, you really should sign up. It’s free, and they don’t sell your email addy. I’ve never received spam from my account there. And they have Doonesbury and old Dilberts, so I save 50 cents by not having to buy the Daily News.
Well, first of all, I don’t feel that religion is entirely without value, but I most emphatically do feel that clergymen, in their roles as clergymen, provide services that cannot (and should not) be equated with those of legal and medical professionals. (Legal professionals, especially, are bound by Fifth Amendment concerns regarding their clients.)
Second of all, and as a corollary to the first point, I would offer the opinion that whether doctors and lawyers are obliged to keep confidential on those matters is irrelevant to whether clergy should be obligated to do so.
Third of all, call me crazy, but my concern lies more with the two innocent men sitting in jail than with the hypothetical state of Mr. Fornes hypothetical soul, and with whom who chooses to keep counsel on the matter.
Finally, I do have an issue, excepting the aforementioned Fifth Amendment concerns, with professional confidentiality in general, when it involves evidence of a crime. If one has evidence that a crime has been committed, or even worse, has evidence that justice is about to be perverted by having innocent men convicted of a crime, I think it’s a moral imperative to speak. Doctors, certainly, are required to report suspected cases of child abuse, so we already make exceptions to that shield of confidentiality. We aren’t talking about, “Father, forgive me, I cheated on my wife” or “I stole a Snickers bar.” We’re talking about, “Hey, I killed a guy, and two other guys are going to go up the river for it.”
