NEW ORLEANS — The rape trial of 92-year-old Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker will not start as scheduled Monday in Orleans Parish Criminal Court because Hecker’s mental competency has not yet been evaluated.
It’s unclear when that evaluation will happen or how long the trial will be delayed.
Hecker admitted in a powerful, on-camera interview in August with WWL Louisiana and the Guardian newspaper that he had sex with at least three underage boys in the 1960s and 70s. But in that same interview, he denied ever having sex with someone against his will.
A week after that interview, Hecker was arrested and charged with aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature and theft for allegedly choking a student unconscious and having sex with him in his church office in 1975 or 1976.
Hecker pled not guilty to those charges last year and his bond was set at more than $800,000. Later, he was transferred from jail to a hospital after suffering physical and mental decline, according to court records. He’s now in an extended care facility in Marrero under armed guard, his defense attorneys say.
This month, his lawyers asked for a mental-competency hearing that was scheduled for Thursday morning in front of Judge Ben Willard.
That didn’t happen. Seconds after a prosecutor announced the hearing on Hecker was ready to start, Willard gestured to his clerk to have a waiting jury seated to begin a separate murder trial. The clerk told Assistant District Attorney Ned McGowan and one of Hecker’s defense attorneys, Matthew McLaren, to come back Monday to figure out the status of Hecker’s case.
Even if there hadn’t been a scheduling conflict, little could have been decided Thursday about Hecker’s mental competency. McLaren said Hecker hasn't even been evaluated by a panel of doctors yet.
“We’ve raised an issue with our client’s competency and his ability to assist us and we’re currently waiting for that to be evaluated by the doctors and for them to provide a report to the court and the state, and then we’ll be able to figure out where we’re going to go from there,” McLaren said. “Mr. Hecker's a 92-year-old man who's in an extended care facility and he's struggling with some health issues. Mentally, he's in and out of being able to assist us with what's going on.”.
It's unclear exactly how much Hecker’s condition has deteriorated and why, but if he’s declared incompetent for trial, it would indicate he’s suffered a major decline from August. That’s when he stood in the heat for 18 minutes and clearly answered a battery of questions from WWL and the Guardian. The news organizations confronted Hecker at the gate of his home with a printout of a 1999 statement he gave to church officials, in which he acknowledged “overtly sexual acts” with at least three underage boys and other sexually charged relationships with four more teens.
Even after he was confronted with allegations in 1988 and gave his written confession 11 years later, the Archdiocese of New Orleans kept him in active ministry and let him retire with full benefits in 2002. Hecker didn’t lose those benefits until a federal bankruptcy judge ordered the church to stop paying him in 2020 and the church didn’t turn over its secret file on Hecker until DA Jason Williams subpoenaed it last summer.
The August interview with WWL and the Guardian made national and international headlines. In it, Hecker claimed the "sexual revolution" had made him feel "finally free" to have sex with boys. He also claimed if he had “known then what we know now,” he wouldn't have done it.
While Louisiana’s child sex laws have become stricter over the years, it was a felony for adults to have sex with children under 17 at the time of Hecker’s admitted actions. Asked if he should face criminal punishment for what he did, Hecker said he didn’t know.
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