Priest’s court attire causes controversy

ST. LOUIS, Mo. — When the Rev. Bryan Kuchar wore his Catholic priest’s collar and black shirt and slacks during his trials for sexually molesting a teenager, he stirred up some controversy.

The first jury that heard the case against Kuchar deadlocked on charges that the priest had sodomized a 14-year-old boy in 1995.

After that trial in May, some of the jurors interviewed said they found it difficult to think ill of a priest. Kuchar had worn his collar to court each day. He wore it again in August, but a second St. Louis County jury convicted him of three counts of sodomy and recommended a year in jail on each count.

As more priests go to trial nationwide in the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic church, the issue of what they wear to court has become a concern.

Richard Waites, a lawyer and psychologist who heads a nationwide jury consulting firm, said that more often than not he recommends defendant priests wear their collars to court.

“In general, jurors are looking for any person to be as genuine as possible,” Waites said in a telephone interview. “And since the defendant is under a great scrutiny, he needs or she needs to be as genuine as possible and as authentic as possible.”

People are conditioned from an early age to trust priests, police officers and other people in uniform, noted Waites, whose firm is called The Advocates and is based in Houston. Jurors want to trust the uniform and tend to put more faith in it than they do the wearer — even if they suspect they are being manipulated, he said.

In trials that end with guilty verdicts, jurors sometimes are more upset by their lost faith in the uniform than by the crime, Waites said.

“People are becoming more aware that people wearing the uniform may not be what they’re pretending to be,” he said. “People begin to feel betrayed, and they get really angry.”

Regardless, Waites said he has recommended that a clergy member defendant wear clerical garb in most of the 10 to 15 such cases in which he has served as jury consultant for the defense.

After Kuchar’s first trial ended without a verdict, Peter Joy, a Washington University law professor, noted that “anecdotally, police officers and priests are in positions that are highly respected” and therefore more difficult to convict.