Man Who Shot Priest Accepts Deal

The palm-sized Bible that Dontee Stokes carried with him into the dimly lit courtroom had blue ink scrawled around a verse from the book of Timothy. “My son, be strong” were the words his mother circled just hours after a Baltimore jury acquitted him of shooting a Catholic priest who Stokes claims molested him a decade ago.

Speaking in a whisper when a judge called on him Tuesday, the former altar boy accepted a sentencing deal with Baltimore city prosecutors. Under the arrangement, Stokes would avoid jail time and be kept under house arrest for 11 months -- a result of three handgun convictions handed down by the same jury that freed him Monday night in the attempted murder of Father Maurice J. Blackwell.

“I feel like it’s a new beginning,” Stokes said afterward, insisting that the jury “didn’t acquit me out of sympathy. They made that decision based on the facts in the case.”

Jurors filing out of the courthouse Tuesday backed up Stokes’ assessment. Several of the panelists -- who deliberated for eight hours Monday before acquitting Stokes, 26, of attempted murder -- said they were not trying to send a message about the swelling national debate over the Catholic Church’s flawed handling of priests accused of child abuse.

“We just felt the state didn’t do a very good job of proving their case,” said juror Catherine Robinson, a restaurant manager. But Robinson, a practicing Catholic, said she and other jurors also became convinced during the five-day trial that Baltimore’s archdiocese had failed to take Stokes seriously when he repeatedly came forward in the early 1990s with allegations that Blackwell had molested him 20 times.

She likened the church’s failure in Baltimore to a similar controversy in Boston that led to a spate of lawsuits against the church and last week’s resignation in Rome of Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law.

Testifying for three hours, Stokes said that his rising frustration and anger with officials who ignored his pleas toppled him into an emotional freefall that led to the shooting. “What I did was an act of God,” Stokes said in a brief hallway interview. “It was nothing that I planned.”

Stokes testified that he had seen Blackwell May 13 while driving down a Baltimore street and emerged from his car to talk to the priest. The 56-year-old Blackwell spurned him, Stokes said -- a final rebuke that left him feeling “outside my body.” Stokes pulled a silver-plated .357-magnum handgun from his backpack and shot Blackwell, wounding him in the left hand and hip.

Stokes fled, but two hours later he confessed to a priest and surrendered to police. During the trial, his lawyer, Warren A. Brown, raised a defense of temporary insanity and presented testimony by a psychiatrist who said that Stokes was psychologically scarred by the molestations. Stokes could have been sentenced to life if he had been convicted on the attempted murder and assault charges.

Several jurors were critical of Baltimore’s Cardinal William H. Keeler for not dealing more forcefully with Blackwell after Stokes came forward with his allegations a decade ago.

“I felt the Catholic Church could have played a great role here and it’s sad that they didn’t,” Robinson said.

She cited a 1993 decision by Keeler to force Blackwell to undergo three months of spiritual evaluation therapy in Connecticut after Stokes went to church officials with his story. Afterward, Keeler allowed Blackwell to return to his post at St. Edward Catholic Church in west Baltimore.

“All he got was 90 days of therapy for what he did?” Robinson said, still outraged. “That was too little, too late.”

In 1998, Blackwell was suspended by the Baltimore Archdiocese after admitting he had an affair with another teenage boy.

During the trial, Keeler apologized for his dealings with Blackwell and approached Stokes, asking his forgiveness.

Keeler released a statement Tuesday saying that “one sad chapter is concluded, but there remains much healing ahead.” Keeler said his “prayers are with Dontee Stokes,” whom he described as “a young man who has shown much promise.”

Despite voicing a hope that Baltimore’s Catholics and residents “may find a greater measure of reconciliation,” Keeler offered no specific efforts to deal with similar matters.

Stokes declined to say whether the cardinal’s apology was acceptable, but he added: “It wasn’t an apology that I wanted.” Several relatives who joined him in the courtroom were less guarded. “If Cardinal Keeler knew about this, he should resign from his post, just like Cardinal Law,” said Tamara Stokes, Dontee’s mother. “The church should clean house all across the country.”

Jurors, as well as Stokes, his lawyer and family, also said that prosecutors erred in failing to aggressively investigate Blackwell when the youth came forward in the early 1990s. During the trial, Baltimore police Lt. Frederick V. Roussey said that Roberta Siskind, a city prosecutor, refused to allow him to interview Blackwell about Stokes’ complaints in 1993. Roussey said that Siskind told him: “He’s been doing this for a long time. Just sit on it.”

Siskind denied that account during her testimony, but Robinson and several other jurors said they believed the officer. “We felt the state’s attorney failed to pursue this case,” Robinson said.

City prosecutors have opened a probe into Stokes’ allegations. Clearly sympathetic to Stokes, the jury even allowed one member to send a note to Baltimore Circuit Judge John N. Prevas when the verdicts were issued, urging leniency. Sentencing was delayed until Feb. 14, after Brown and city prosecutor Sylvester Cox told the judge they had reached an agreement allowing Stokes to serve no more than an 11-month term and three years of probation in exchange for withdrawing a plea of diminished capacity on the gun convictions.

Brown said he would likely appeal the three gun convictions, but Cox said that he would urge the judge to allow Stokes’ “time served” for the seven months he has spent under house arrest.

As Brown and his client slowly made their way out of the courtroom, waylaid by embraces from sobbing relatives and smiling jurors, Dontee Stokes reached by instinct to a pocket inside the jacket of his gray suit.

His mother’s Bible was still there.