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Autrefois Acquit?
Abstract: Double jeopardy for Presbyterian pastor?
Apparently church courts provide no protection against double jeopardy. Consequently The Rev. Janet Edwards, a Presbyterian minister in Pittsburgh, is headed back to court later this year for conducting a marriage ceremony for Brenda Cole and Nancy McConn in June, 2005 even though charges against her for performing the nuptials were dismissed in 2006.
Pr. Edwards has never denied performing the ceremony and has argued that there is no prohibition on same-sex wedding ceremonies in the Presbyterian Church (USA) because the courts have said only that clergy “should not” conduct them — language she believes is advisory, not binding.
The Rev. James C. Yearsley, a Presbyterian minister currently serving in Florida, filed a complaint against Edwards shortly after she performed the marriage. Those charges were dismissed in November 2006 when the presbytery's Permanent Judicial Commission (PJC) ruled that the investigating committee had not filed charges against Edwards in a timely way.
Yearsley submitted a new grievance against Edwards in February 2007. Seven other PC(USA) ministers and six elders from Texas, North Carolina, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Washington state signed on to the new complaint, joining Yearsley as "co-accusers."
In the new complaint Edwards is accused of acting in "willful and deliberate violation of her ordination vows" as stated in the Book of Order by performing the 2005 wedding ceremony.
The new charges against Edwards follow an April, 2008 church court ruling in which the Rev. Jane Adams Spahr was found not-guilty of misconduct on charges that she violated the PC(USA)’s constitution by performing weddings for two lesbian couples.
The Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly (GAPJC), the PC(USA)’s highest court, found that Pr. Spahr did not violate denominational law when she officiated at the weddings in 2004 and 2005. The GAPJC found that the ceremonies Spahr performed were not marriages, so she did not violate the church’s constitution, the high court ruled. The ruling overturned an earlier decision by the Synod of the Pacific’s PJC that found Spahr guilty of misconduct and gave her a rebuke — the lightest possible punishment.
