Defense Attorney: Priest Provoked Janitor's Rage

Defense Attorney Neill Hamilton said during his closing remarks Monday that the Rev. Edward Hinds of in Chatham chose to fire janitor Jose Feliciano privately because the priest had things he needed to hide from other church officials.

It was a private meeting with Feliciano on Oct. 22, 2009 that led to the priest’s stabbing death, Hamilton told the jury hearing the Superior Court case in Morristown before Judge Thomas V. Manahan.

Feliciano is accused of murdering the priest because Hinds was planning to fire the janitor. The defense claimed Hinds bullied Feliciano into a sexual relationship that lasted a number of years.

Hamilton presented his closing arguments to the jury Monday morning, methodically disputing the state’s case, which was presented by Morris County Prosecutor Robert Bianchi. The prosecution provided its closing arguments Monday afternoon.

He tried to show the jury that while Feliciano admitted he stabbed Hinds to death,  the act failed to reach the legal standards for murder, but was instead provocation manslaughter.

The stabbing resulted, Hamilton said, because of the impending firing and the years of sexual abuse at the hands of Hinds, a man he claimed Feliciano admired.

Key to the crime, Hamilton said was that Hinds knew that the Pennsylvania State Police had information about 1988 charges against Feliciano involving children, information that would have caused the church under New Jersey law to fire  Feliciano.

Central to that allegation were a finger print card that was sent to the church and not found, and the absence of Feliciano’s name on a list of church employees even though he worked for the church for 18 years.

The other issue, Hamilton said, is that when another employee was also let go at the time that Feliciano was to be fired, the other employee received a letter explaining the action and a cash payment to tide them over, and was told his firing in a meeting with Hinds and other staff.

Feliciano was not offered any such meeting, but was called to a private meeting by Hinds, the attorney said.

Hamilton said that Hinds could have had the issue dealt with routinely through the church office but he didn’t.

“He knew that this was a problem,” Hamilton said.

It was a problem, because church auditors could stop by and examine Hinds’ management of the church and they would have found the irregularities, Hamilton said.

Finding the employment issues would have then exposed the sexual relationship  Hinds maintained with Feliciano, Hamilton said.

The defense attorney said that the money that was found in the priest’s sock drawer was another example of how Hinds acted like  a bully. The donor of the cash—Hamilton slowly counted it out several times for the jury, displaying 10 $50 bills—had paid Hinds for a “spiritual journey.”

“This,” Hamilton, displaying the envelope filled with cash, “should have gone to the parish. Instead, it went to Hinds for a spiritual journey.”

Then Hamilton focused on the struggle that led to Hinds’ death.

He said there was only one knife used in the murder, a kitchen knife from the church kitchen, not two as the state contended, and not a large kitchen knife that could have  been retrieved from another location.

Hamilton held up the suspected murder weapon. It was a small kitchen knife.

It could have been on the counter, Hamilton said. Even though the kitchen had been cleaned, someone could have failed to put the knife away.

The point, Hamilton said, was that Feliciano did not go searching for a knife in a plan to kill the priest, but used whatever weapon was available when his rage exploded into a frenzy that resulted in Hinds being stabbed 44 times.

Most of the stab wounds did not penetrate, Hamilton said.

The last point Hamilton made was that the crime was not felony murder because Feliciano, while he took some items belonging to Hinds, chiefly his cell phone, the theft of the items was part of the cover-up of the crime, and not actions that led up to the crime.

He urged the jury to return a verdict of guilty on provocation manslaughter, not murder.