St. Margaret of Cortona Church in Little Ferry, N.J. this week is dealing with the arrest of its pastor, The Rev. Kevin Carter, 54. Even more shocking is the charge: aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of a child. However, on closer examination, the arrest and charge seems wildly out of place according to published reports. What was a gag based on football rivalry has turned into a full fledged criminal case due to the refusal of the police or prosecutors to show a modicum of discretion or logic.
This whole mess arose when an eight-year-old boy showed up in a Cowboys jersey in the middle of New York Giants country. Carter saw the boy and called him into a side room. In front of witnesses, he pulled out a Civil War musket and pretended to prepare to execute the boy by pointing it at him. A parishioner was aghast and called the Archdiocese which called the police (after the abuse scandals, the church is now under strict instructions to call police on any allegation of abuse). Father Carter was then arrested and charged.
Here is my problem with this case. First, no one has suggested that Carter was actually trying to scare the boy or intended to harm him. Second, while the musket could have been fired, I am assuming that this is a muzzle loader that would have taken steps to actually load — even if it could fire (which police say it could). Third, it is not clear that Father Carter knew the musket could be fired.
This does not mean that Father Carter was in the right. It is extremely poor judgment to point any weapon, even a vintage weapon, at a child. Had this been a toy gun, there would be no issue. There are many tragic cases of people who assume a gun is unloaded — only to cut down a loved one or acquaintance.
So what are you left with? An act of good-natured, but ill-considered fun. It was a mistake. But I fail to see the need for a criminal prosecution.
Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli clearly views this differently. Malignly said “Prior to the mass beginning, Father Kevin Carter asked to see him in one of the rectory rooms. Once in the room, Father Carter had the victim stand against a wall. He then retrieved a long gun from nearby and pointed it at the child with an indication that he would shoot him.” Yes, but various witnesses have said that it was clearly a joke and people were laughing. Doesn’t that factor into prosecutorial discretion? Does Molinelli think that the priest was serious about executing the boy and knowingly put him at risk? If he knew the musket was a working weapon, this was a very very stupid thing to due. However, it seems clear that he it was unloaded (which was true). (In fairness of Molinelli, police did find gun powder and ammunition in the room so someone clearly knew it was a working weapon if the ammunition was for this musket). Molinelli insists that Carter should not be given special treatment because he is a priest. That is far enough, but I would have the same reservations about prosecuting a non-priest. Indeed, the testimony of credible eyewitnesses would seem to support the exercise of prosecutorial discretion to forego a prosecution in the case.
Richard Fritzky, an adjunct professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, was apparently a witness and said that the musket was brought down originally to show him.
“I was in the rectory at Saint Margaret de Cortona in Little Ferry visiting Father Kevin Carter at the very moment that the incident with the Civil War era rifle, the young 8 year old boy with the Cowboys Jersey and the alleged threat took place . . . I can definitively state that the only reason the rifle was in his hands at all was because, fellow Civil War buffs that we are, he brought it down to show it to me and was in the process of taking it back upstairs, when the boy and his parents or parent, I assume, came walking through the long hallway or entrance to the rectory from the church . . . I could clearly see Father Kevin to my left and what I witnessed and heard was this: he feigned being struck and hurt that anyone would dare come into his home with Cowboys colors on and he loudly and good naturedly teased the boy, who had quite apparently come to do the same to Father Kevin,” he said. “It was all loud and good humored fun and nothing but, as everyone involved, including the boy, was clearly laughing. In fact, boisterously so.”
He insists that Carter did not raise the rife or threaten anyone.
Of course, the kid is not the only Cowboys fan in the state.
Carter is charged with one count of fourth degree aggravated assault by pointing a firearm and one count of third degree endangering the welfare of a child. Bail was set at $15,000.
What do you think?
If I represented the Pastor would first ask him to fleece the flock and pay me some money. Then I would enter an appearance and take the child’s deposition. I would do it at the courthouse if possible. I would inquire if the gun was pointed at him and what was said. Was the witness who is described in the article present. I would examine the gun with a gun expert. Demand photos of all evidence seized and particularly photos of evidence on the date of the crime. See if the gun has been altered. Not at the alter but at the Sheriff’s Office. Inquire if the gun had ever been fired in recent years. Examine the so called powder and gunshot seized. Depose the dorks who reported the defendant to the church authorities and the persons who then reported it to the cops. Inquire around to see if the defendant is a pedophile. If he has that in his background then there could be other things going on here. Pick a jury and try to get males and Catholics. Try to eliminate religious people who are not Catholic. During trial do not pick up the gun and for Christ sake do not point it at anyone. Of course put that witness on the stand in your case. The prosecutor might call him in their own case first. Call the witness to the event. Call the defendant as last witness. And say in closing: As God is my witness…
D. Dean Carrol @ 9:17am …..stated “The first rule of firearm safety: Never point a gun at anything unless you intend to shoot. What youngster wouldn’t be laughing, uncomfortably, when confronted in this way by a person in authority. Those in positions of authority should never set such a poor example for an impressionable eight year old. This priest should be prosecuted for child abuse!”
Anything that could be potentially harmful to others should of course be against the law with trumped up charges to prosecute them. Malum prohibitum strikes again.
Child abuse, Really? He was playfully placing the kid against the wall as if a firing squad for wearing a football adversaries jersey. It’s called role playing and it is often done in jest.
D. Dean Carrol….. you’re just kidding right? His punishment the Firing Squad? That will teach him to do something that stupid. Break the number one rule of gun safety.
The US is 91st on the homicide list of countries comprised by the UN. Canada is 89th. Much higher on that list are some socialist countries w/ strict gun control. With all of the assaults on our 2nd Amendment by people who also assault the 1st Amendment, you would think the US would be #1 on that list. But no, we are virtually the same as Canada. The truth can be a mofo!
D. Dean Carroll
Now that we are down memory lane, growing up in Northern Alberta, Junior High School, in the early sixties, I attended a funeral for a friend. We were a small community all military. Some of the guys went out with their fathers’ shotguns to hunt birds one weekend morning. One of them was playing the ‘Rifleman’ trying to spin his shotgun around on his finger and it went off into his friend’s chest.
The real irony in this country is that the sanctity of gun ownership seems to come without a matching responsibility. No one should get near a gun without first being educated, just like watching state troopers scooping up brains off of the highway to make a point regarding teenagers drunk driving in high school auditoriums before most of them get their licenses. We were all military brats, most of us from dysfunctional families where ‘kids just raised themselves’. The kid that killed his friend was from one of those families where the parents and their kids seem to live apart.
The 2nd amendment does not remotely infer or imply that guns are not dangerous and that unfettered means allowing activities such as seen with this priest or other kids playing with them.
Guns are interwoven with America. One could call it a sickness, a cancer, or a right. One would only be stupid, as stupid as this priest to maintain that every one wishing to own a gun should not undergo some rigorous education. Rights and freedoms given to individuals do not negate society’s rights to be protected from their misuse and/or misapplication.
No one move will do away with the total carnage but those that refuse to allow any fine tuning are just as much a part of the cause as the negligent parent that leaves a loaded gun where his kid can find it or the negligent parent that allows his mentally challenged kid to access guns. Every time I hear someone argue against further controls I hear the responsibility for another death.
The stupidest response sounded is, “It wouldn’t have made any difference if there were more controls, education, restrictions.” Are we that far gone? When many Americans hear Wayne the Peter expound that people kill people and that guns don’t kill people we hear an example of the most notorious double talk today. People with guns kill people. The scary part is that there are so many who believe that this is nothing more than collateral damage, necessary deaths, to maintain sacred freedoms, to own as many weapons of any sort without any societal oversight.
In places like Japan common sense is still common. In the West, the New Left social ideology that reigns virtually unchallenged has driven it underground.
The Priest shouldn’t have pointed a gun at the child, even in jest, that was incredibly stupid. Criminal, no.
Unfortunately it has become very uncommon.
The priest did a stupid thing and should be admonished for doing so. You don’t point a real gun at anyone and his actions contradicted that in the mind of the child. However, one of America’s sicknesses is criminalizing or at the very least bringing the police into every innocent blunder. Kids get suspended for shooting their friends with their index finger. Kids get suspended for bringing a Maple Leaf to class. Kids get suspended for ingeniously creating a clock and bringing it in for show and tell, etc.
The damage done is to authority. How many heroin addicts started out hearing that pot and heroin were just as bad and when they found out that pot was not only not bad but fun and controllable-more controllable than alcohol, they made the decision to try heroin-the first one’s free, relying on other than the intelligence of the authority that bundled pot and heroin and every other drug.
The real crime here is to authority. The Priest should apologize to the kid and reinforce that one never points a gun, loaded or not loaded at anyone. The authorities should use their heads, something which is sorely lacking in America these days.
Everyone is pretty much always looking for common sense.
“…by using Leviathan to…“
” Those in positions of authority should never set such a poor example for an impressionable eight year old. This priest should be prosecuted for child abuse!”
Ludicrous.
If we follow that rule, if “setting a poor example for an impressionable children is prosecutable,” then every adult would be prosecuted at some time.
Here, the prosecutor is setting a poor example for an impressionable kids by suing Leviathan to smash a stupid joke that harmed no one.
Following your logic, he should also be prosecuted.
Bergen County is a pretty upscale area. It proves the point that this idiocy by prosecutors is not confined to poor counties like Baltimore. Sunshine is a great sanitizer and publishing injustices like this is the best way to stop it.
Reminds me of four of our local teenagers playing with an antique muzzleloader pistol. It hadn’t been fired in anyone’s memory but after hundreds of playful clicks, the “unloaded” gun fired into a boy’s heart, killing him.
The first rule of firearm safety: Never point a gun at anything unless you intend to shoot.
What youngster wouldn’t be laughing, uncomfortably, when confronted in this way by a person in authority. Those in positions of authority should never set such a poor example for an impressionable eight year old. This priest should be prosecuted for child abuse!
Let’s see, pointing an unloaded gun; aggravated assault? Sorry, I don’t see the connection.
Tell you boys not to point their toy guns at their friends anymore; State Prosecutors could go to the next rational progression for aggravated assault.
2 things are going on here:
1. There shouldn’t be a gun the church rectory.
2. Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli.
Molinelli’s hold on the $165,000 job is not a certainty, and for reasons that have nothing to do with recent cases.
First appointed in 2002 by Gov. James E. McGreevey and reappointed by Gov. Jon Corzine to a second term, Molinelli, 58, has continued to serve as a holdover since January 2013.
Governor Christie nominated Gurbir Grewal, an assistant U.S. attorney in New Jersey, to replace him that year; but he did not receive a hearing from the state Senate, so the process starts anew.
http://www.northjersey.com/news/analysis-high-profile-losses-raise-questions-for-bergen-county-prosecutor-molinelli-1.1384813
the Catholic diocese called the police on a priest who was engaged in a joke but covers up the bad behavior of purists who abuse children…..good grief!
As to the busy body who called the diocese and the prosecutor who is moving forward with this case don’t you have better things to do.
We have lost all perspective.
Stupid police, stupid prosecutors, stupid, stupid, stupid.
I would normally say there is more to this story but that ship has sailed. Of all the professions I had a reasonable expectation to have critical-thinking skills it is the law. There seems to be so much ego in it that once they make the stupid decision to charge they cannot drop the charges because they would lose face.
An example of fan idiocy in regard to a football, basketball, hockey, soccer team. Besides, only cops get to threaten kids. If the judge is not a fan of the Cowboys, the priest’s actions were justified and case dismissed.
Mindless zero tolerance. How is it we have public officials without any common sense?
At some point you’ll come around to seeing that we long ago abandoned the Constitution and now exist under a capricious, political, bureaucratic state where everyone can be indicted for something and, like the USSR, all fear the knock at the door.