NEW ORLEANS — A 92-year-old Catholic priest charged with raping a teenager after choking him unconscious is now “in and out of consciousness” himself, according to Lawrence Hecker’s defense attorney.
But Orleans Parish First Assistant District Attorney Ned McGowan vowed to “roll him in on a gurney” if necessary to try Hecker, as scheduled, on March 25.
“If the state wants to try a vegetable, they can do that,” defense attorney Bobby Hjortsberg said in a pre-trial hearing Friday, before clarifying in an interview outside court that Hecker’s medical records do not say he is a “vegetable.”
“Mr. Hecker was conscious and, in some respect, resting comfortably,” McGowan told Judge Ben Willard. “The defense has not raised mental competency issues and if they wish to do so, we will need to convene a panel very quickly.”
Hjortsberg said he and the rest of Hecker’s defense team have not been able to meet with him since he was transferred from jail to a long-term medical facility. He and McGowan relied on medical records to discuss Hecker’s competency to stand trial.
“Hopefully, we can proceed on” March 25, Willard said.
In August, Hecker stood outside in stifling heat for 18 minutes and admitted -- on camera to WWL Louisiana and the Guardian newspaper -- that he had sex with at least four underage boys and sexually charged relationships with at least seven others in the 1960s and 70s.
Hecker told WWL and the Guardian that he now understood that what he did was wrong, but believed at the time that he was “free” to do those things because of the “sexual revolution.” It was a crime in the 1960s and early 70s in Louisiana for an adult man to have sex with a child under 17, although it wasn’t considered rape if the child was also male until 1975.
The former head of the New Orleans Archdiocese’s chapter of the Boy Scouts, Hecker also admitted in the interview that the New Orleans Archdiocese let him remain in active ministry in Catholic churches and schools, even after he admitted his actions in writing and was diagnosed as a pedophile by the church’s own doctor.
But Hecker specifically denied to WWL and the Guardian that he ever had sex with any of the children against his will. A week later, he was indicted on charges of doing just that in 1975 or 1976, plus charges of aggravated kidnapping and theft.