Judge says Wisconsin trial against McCarrick will remain suspended until his death

CNA Staff, Dec 30, 2024 / 15:05 pm

A Wisconsin judge last week ordered that a sexual assault case against disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick will remain paused until the laicized clergyman dies. 

The criminal case against McCarrick in Wisconsin was suspended in January after a psychologist hired by the court found that the former prelate was not competent to stand trial. 

The misdemeanor sexual assault charges in the case relate to an incident that allegedly occurred in April 1977 near a house by Geneva Lake near Elkhorn.

Court records indicate that Walworth County Circuit Court Judge David Reddy on Dec. 27 said the trial will not resume before the 94-year-old passes away. McCarrick is reportedly suffering from dementia. 

Prosecutors told the court they were “not ready to dismiss this matter” and asked that the trial remain “in suspended status.” McCarrick’s attorney Jerome Buting countered that McCarrick’s “extreme deterioration” should lead the court to dismiss the case outright. 

Reddy said the court “cannot dismiss the matter” under state law, but the court “will not set any further reviews on this matter and it will remain in suspended status until the defendant passes away,” court records say. 

McCarrick was not present for the hearing. 

Local Wisconsin news outlet WLUK broke the news on Monday. 

A Vatican investigation in 2019 found McCarrick guilty of numerous instances of sexual abuse, leading to the disgraced clergyman being laicized in February of that year. 

In August 2023, a district court judge in Massachusetts dismissed similar criminal sex abuse charges against McCarrick after two psychological evaluations determined he was too cognitively impaired to actively participate in his defense.

In 2020 the Vatican published a lengthy report on McCarrick examining the “institutional knowledge and decision-making” regarding the former cardinal, who rose through the ranks of the American Church throughout the mid- to late-20th century and headed the archdioceses of both Newark, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. 

In 2019 McCarrick told Slate that he was “not as bad as they paint me.” 

“I do not believe that I did the things that they accused me of,” the former cardinal said.