{"id":2120,"date":"2006-05-13T10:41:37","date_gmt":"2006-05-13T10:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/toledo-verdict.html"},"modified":"2006-05-13T10:41:37","modified_gmt":"2006-05-13T10:41:37","slug":"toledo-verdict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/toledo-verdict.html","title":{"rendered":"Toledo verdict"},"content":{"rendered":"

As most of you already know, there was a guilty verdict – 15 years to life.<\/a><\/p>\n

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A murder case unsolved for 26 years was brought to an unexpectedly quick and dramatic end yesterday after jurors convicted a 68-year-old Toledo priest, Gerald Robinson, in the brutal, ritualistic murder of a nun.<\/p>\n

The 12 jurors in the Lucas County Common Pleas Court trial deliberated just over six hours before reaching a unanimous verdict.<\/p>\n

Robinson, wearing his clerical collar, showed no emotion as Judge Thomas Osowik read the verdict and then polled the seven female and five male jurors individually.<\/p>\n

Judge Osowik then asked Robinson if he wished to say anything and the priest \u2014 who did not take the witness stand and never spoke during the three-week trial \u2014 declined. The jammed courtroom was eerily silent but for an immediate gasp, followed by the stifled sobs of the priest\u2019s sister-in-law, Barbara Robinson of Toledo.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The prosecutor speaks:<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Mr. Mandros said that if the state had filed charges against Robinson alleging it was a satanic-cult murder, it would have increased the burden of proof on prosecutors. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n
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"It’s another legal element that would have to be in the indictment and, once you argue that that’s what this was, you would have been accepting the burden of proving that beyond a reasonable doubt to those 12 people," he said. "Why would I want to give myself that additional obligation? <\/p>\n

"I think that I could have convinced quite a number of people on the jury that that was true. But I never felt like I could convince 12 of them," he said. <\/p>\n

Despite the satanic evidence, Mr. Mandros said he is convinced of the theory he espoused in his closing argument: that Robinson killed Sister Margaret Ann in a fit of rage. He said the anti-Christian symbols were intended to desecrate the devout nun and to "leave a message for whomever his audience was." <\/p>\n

"However, only one person knows what it all really meant. And maybe someday he’ll talk," Mr. Mandros said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As most of you already know, there was a guilty verdict – 15 years to life. A murder case unsolved for 26 years was brought to an unexpectedly quick and dramatic end yesterday after jurors convicted a 68-year-old Toledo priest, Gerald Robinson, in the brutal, ritualistic murder of a nun. The 12 jurors in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nToledo verdict - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/toledo-verdict.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Toledo verdict - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As most of you already know, there was a guilty verdict – 15 years to life. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}