wfn.org | Intent was key question in church trial, acquitted pastor says

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

March 22, 2001 News media contact: Tim Tanton·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.
10-21-28-71B{141}

By United Methodist News Service

The outcome of the recent United Methodist clergy trial of Seattle pastor
Dan Sailer continues to perplex some observers around the church. One
question surfaces again and again:

If Sailer was guilty of false swearing in a secular court, how could he not
have been found guilty of committing a crime by a church court?

United Methodist News Service has obtained records directly from the King
County Courthouse in Seattle and conducted interviews with some of the
people involved to put together this report on the case. Court records
contradict some of Sailer's key points, though he has provided additional
documents that support his side.

Sailer was acquitted Feb. 6 of a charge of committing crime, after a one-day
hearing before a panel of 13 fellow pastors. He had pled guilty to false
swearing in an earlier state court case, and that plea became the basis for
the complaint that led to the church trial. The church proceedings, held at
First United Methodist Church in Des Moines, Wash., were closed to the
public.

Asked why a church court would have acquitted him after his plea bargain in
the state case, Sailer said that in order for him to have been found guilty
of a crime, an intent to lie had to be proved. The church court decided the
intent wasn't there, he said. 

In his defense during the clergy trial, he explained how he had been
confused when giving his testimony during the earlier state court case. "To
make a mistake or to misunderstand the question, and answer it in an
incorrect way ... is not a crime," he said. "The church jury understood that
I had understood the question that way. (It) was not proved that I had
intently and deliberately answered falsely."

However, plaintiff Kathryn Frazier, speaking to UMNS in a telephone
interview, described the church trial as "a joke."

"I don't think they did their job," she said of the trial court.
 
The legal actions were part of a series of events that began with a
confrontation between Frazier and another motorist in a Target store parking
lot in Federal Way, Wash., in December 1996. Frazier charged later that the
other motorist, Kevin Mooney, pushed her to the ground after she advised him
to drive more slowly. Sailer didn't come forward at the time of the incident
but called police that day and offered himself as a witness, according to
court records.

In the 1997 district court trial that followed, Sailer testified in Mooney's
defense, saying that Frazier wasn't a victim and that she initiated the
confrontation. When asked if he knew Mooney, Sailer said under oath that he
did not. Mooney was acquitted. 

Later, it became known that Mooney had moved in with Sailer. Last year,
Sailer was charged in state superior court with perjury. In that case and in
the later church trial, Sailer said that he had not committed perjury.
Sailer said that in the 1997 trial, he had been confused by questions
regarding when he knew Mooney. He thought he was being asked whether he had
known Mooney on Dec. 9, the date of the incident at the Target - not whether
he knew Mooney on the trial date of March 11, he said.

Court filings by the prosecuting attorney's office in the 2000 perjury case
conflict with Sailer on that point.

On Aug. 18, 1999, Mooney "gave a sworn deposition in an unrelated matter
during which he stated that he has known defendant Dan Sailer since August
of 1996," according to a filing by the prosecuting attorney's office. Mooney
stated that he met Sailer via the Internet. If true, the two men would have
known each other four months before the Target incident.

However, Sailer told UMNS that Mooney had "several of those dates mixed up."
Mooney later signed an affidavit stating that he had made mistakes on the
dates, and the corrections were made in arbitration, Sailer said. The
arbitration, between Mooney and the Allstate insurance company, was related
to a 1999 automobile accident.

The two men did not meet on the Internet, Sailer said. "We had talked on the
Internet after we had met." Mooney wrote to the pastor asking for
information about Sailer's congregation, and the two became friends after
Mooney began attending the church. Sailer was serving Sunrise United
Methodist Church in Federal Way at the time. He currently serves Haller Lake
United Methodist Church in North Seattle, where he has been since July 1998.

The prosecuting attorney's filing goes on to describe Sailer and Mooney's
relationship. "By the time defendant Sailer testified on Kevin Mooney's
behalf in March of 1997, Mooney and Sailer were involved in a relationship;
Mooney worked for the church where Sailer was the pastor, and the two were
living together." A few lines later, the document added: "Kevin Mooney
changed his name to Kevin Sailer in May of 1997."

Sailer said that Mooney became his roommate at the end of March that year,
two weeks after the assault trial ended. The parsonage had five bedrooms,
and Sailer said he had various roommates there from July 1991 to June 30,
1998, when his appointment at Sunrise ended. Mooney worked as a janitor for
Sunrise from June 1997 to May 1998.

"Through discussions with his grandfather, we discovered that we had common
ancestry," Sailer said. Mooney had had a bad relationship with his father
and wanted to change his name, so he picked "Sailer," which is "an ancestral
name," Sailer said. Mooney pronounces the name differently, as "Syler," in
keeping with the original German pronunciation, Sailer said.

Asked whether Mooney's adoption of "Sailer" as a surname indicated anything
about the nature of their relationship, Sailer replied: "No."

"Kevin is just a friend of mine," he said. "I am very close to his family. I
join them for family activities at holidays, and they're very close to me.
They're almost adopted family for myself. But he and I are just friends."
The two are still roommates, he said.

Sailer's sons, now 18 and 19, told Detective Mark Hartfield of the Federal
Way Police Department that they were introduced to Mooney by their father,
and that Mooney was at a restaurant in Federal Way after church in October
1996, according to another court filing. 

Sailer told the detective that Mooney had contacted him in December 1996
after learning that Sailer was a witness to the parking lot incident,
according to the statement. Sailer said Mooney wanted to thank him for
coming forward. "Sailer continued by saying that Mooney started attending a
church where Sailer was a pastor and that eventually he moved in as a
roommate," the document stated.

The minister has provided UMNS with additional documents showing he passed a
polygraph test in which he denied having known Mooney before Dec. 9, 1996.
He also has provided copies of statements purportedly signed by his sons
indicating that they were confused about the dates they gave to Hartfield
regarding when they met Mooney. The documents weren't entered in the perjury
case because that case didn't go to trial, Sailer said. However, they were
given to the church's committee on investigation.

Sailer entered an Alford plea in the perjury case. By entering the plea, he
did not admit to lying under oath but acknowledged there was enough evidence
to make a conviction likely.

"I do not believe that I am guilty of the crime of false swearing," Sailer
said in entering the plea. "However, after reviewing all discovery materials
with my attorney, I believe that there is a substantial likelihood I will be
convicted of the crime if the case proceeds to trial. In order to obtain the
benefits of the prosecutor's favorable recommendation, and to avoid the need
for a costly and painful trial, I ask the court to find me guilty of false
swearing."

The judge had to have a basis for the Alford plea, so the evidence that the
prosecutor had given was accepted, Sailer said. If the jury had heard just
that evidence, it would have had probable cause to find him guilty, he said.
That doesn't mean that that was all the evidence in the case, he said.

The publicity around the case had become intense, Sailer said in an
interview. He was receiving threatening phone calls and people were going
through his mailbox. "The only reason that I entered the Alford plea was
because I needed to end all that calamity that was happening to me and my
family, and I couldn't afford going to a full trial with the cost involved.
It was going to be in excess of $25,000," he said.

As part of the Alford plea, Sailor was given a one-year deferred sentence
and required to perform 240 hours of community service, in addition to
paying court costs and a $500 victim penalty assessment. He has completed
the terms of the plea agreement, he said.

After the resolution of that case, Frazier filed her complaint against
Sailer with the United Methodist Church's Pacific Northwest Annual
Conference. She was assisted by the Coalition for United Methodist
Accountability (CUMA), which was formed last year by three unofficial groups
- Good News, the Confessing Movement and UMAction -- seeking to enforce the
denomination's Book of Discipline among clergy and other church leaders.

In accordance with the Book of Discipline, Frazier's complaint was referred
to the conference's committee on investigation. After reviewing the case,
the committee converted the complaint into a charge for church trial. Sailer
was acquitted. The vote was not disclosed, but at least nine votes from the
13-pastor trial court were necessary for a conviction.
 
Bishop Dan Solomon of Granbury, Texas, presided over the trial. In an
earlier UMNS report, he stressed that the chargeable offense in the Book of
Discipline refers to "crime" in church law, not crime as determined in the
civil or criminal courts. He made that distinction in response to the
question of why the secular court outcome would not have meant an automatic
guilty verdict in a church court. "Crime" is not defined in the Book of
Discipline, and the presiding officer is prohibited from defining the term,
he said. "The 13 jurors are the only people who can define that term."

That raises a question for the Rev. Ira Gallaway, with CUMA and Good News,
regarding the Book of Discipline's references to crimes: "What were they put
in there for if not for what is traditionally known as crimes?"

Sailer had to plea-bargain to get out of the perjury charge, said the Rev.
John Grenfell, also with CUMA and Good News. "Is the church saying it didn't
happen?"

To Gallaway and Grenfell, the handling of the Sailer case casts light on
what they see as a bigger issue - whether the church's leaders are willing
to enforce the Book of Discipline.

"I'd like to see the Council of Bishops come to grips with the fact that the
process, which is under their bailiwick of responsibility, is not being
handled right," Grenfell said. 

Gallaway said he will talk with Frazier and Seattle-area pastors who are
concerned about what happened with the Sailer case. "We feel there's been a
miscarriage of justice," he said. The church court did not have all the
information it needed, he said.

If the church court's decision can be appealed, CUMA will help with that,
but any appeal must be initiated by the local people, Gallaway said.

Frazier said she would be interested in an appeal. "I want the truth brought
out."

Her life has not been the same since the incident in the parking lot four
years ago, she said.
"I'm very fearful (and) scared all the time."
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United Methodist News Service
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