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Injustice Scales
Injustice and discrimination as a legal system concept for breaking the law and performing unfair illegal acts as a pencil eraser erasing a justice scale as a metaphor for inequality and the stress of oppression.
Special to United Methhodist Insight
As the United Methodist Church looks to the possibility of a trial for suspended Bishop Minerva Carcaño, I'd like to clarify the terms being used rather carelessly about the process, resulting in confusion. I refer to "complaints," "charges," and "specifications."
Technically, “charge" is the more general term using one of the statements in Paragraph 2702 of the Discipline. It is a common practice to say something like "The complaints we got indicated seven charges against so-and-so." But the Committee on Investigation (COI) must be a lot more precise.
Upon investigating the complaints, the Committee on Investigation must first identify specifications, that is, events that actually occurred, described in sufficient detail with time, date, and place. Let's say the complaint says so-and-so used money from a missions account and spent it for a lavish dinner for a family event. The COI would want to see in the complaint the day that the withdrawal of the money occurred, that the funds ended up in so-and-so's hands or personal account, and then was used at an event with time and place included.
Specifications are extremely important because the counsel for the church has something to have to prove and the accused person can establish a defense. For example, in a past case, a pastoral counselor was accused of having sex with counselees on such-and-such date. The counselor was able to prove he was not in town on that date. In another example, a counselor was accused of having sex with a counselee on the floor. When the trial court saw that he could not even get up from a chair without his two canes and someone helping him, he did not have to say very much to demonstrate such allegations were false.
Once a specification is identified, then it is compared with the list of chargeable offenses in Paragraph 2702. In this hypothetical case about misuse of finances, Paragraph 2702.1(l) about fiscal malfeasance is appropriate.
So. in the United Methodist technical use, the charge is "fiscal malfeasance." But there is no charge unless there is a specification under it to illustrate the charge. In this case, it is the misappropriation of funds at a certain time, place, and event.
Occasionally, a COI will use the same specification but under different charges. This same specification could be used under "crime," though that should only be used if there is a criminal case that has been made, tried and conviction brought in the courts outside of the church. It is not uncommon to use a specification a second time under the charge of "disobedience to the order . . ." or "immorality," or even "practices declared by The United Methodist Church . . ." to emphasize to the trial court (jury) that the specification was really bad. It's an intimidation to use the various charges that way, although it may be a way to get a guilty verdict on something that the trial court feels is a lesser charge and maybe allows for a lesser penalty.
Hence a complaint could begin looking like seven charges, end up becoming two because they were from two different people, and come out as five from the COI for trial.
Going into a trial for Bishop Carcaño takes us into a different verbal world with rules that we may be not clear enough about.
The Rev. Jerry Eckert is a retired clergy member of the Wisconsin Annual Conference and a longtime church trial expert through the volunteer organization Associates in Advocacy.