Posted on 02/18/2007 12:11:59 AM PST by siunevada
LEBANON — A Middletown pastor who faced up to 10 years in prison for using personal and church bank accounts to launder drug money won't go to jail.
Friday, Judge James Heath of Warren County Common Pleas Court sentenced Bishop Keith Brooks, founder of Power of Deliverance Temple/Judah Sanctuary of Praise on Crawford Street in Middletown, to three years probation and 30 days community service.
Brooks, 52, pleaded guilty in January to felony charges of engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity and money laundering. Brooks rented a home on West Pekin Road in Clearcreek Twp. to James Scott Jr. — a church member and convicted cocaine dealer — who paid rent with drug money.
The Warren County Drug Task Force last fall seized 11 pounds of crack cocaine and $46,000 from that house. Task force Commander John Burke said he was surprised by the leniency of the sentence.
Brooks' attorney, Ken Lawson of Cincinnati, has said his client pleaded guilty only because prosecutors threatened to file charges against his wife and the church.
Scott was free in lieu of a $50,000 bond when he ran off while a jury deliberated his fate on nine counts of trafficking and possession involving powder and crack cocaine.
"We are still actively looking for him and so are other jurisdictions," Burke said.
Prayers for him in his addiction, for his poor family, and the people for whom he had pastoral care.
It seems so easy for some to get lost in cocaine, and never find their way out without a sort of permanent miracle. And so many get dragged down with them, or at least singed or otherwise wounded as they pass.
The lack of response to this cleric's criminality seems to answer a question raised on another thread about a pilfering priest.
Non-Catholics seem more interested in ...ahem...debating... Catholic problems than they are in the problems in their own backyards.
This weekend my brothers in Search and Rescue are looking for a boy who has probably committed suicide. I have heard of two veterans who are either facing death or the imminent loss of loved ones. I was asked to consider becoming a tertiary. And still and once again my Lord was lifted up before me in the midst of angels and especially squally babies.
YEAH, it irritates me when people stick their heads up over the lips of their denominational trenches and lob a few grenades into ours and vice versa. But that kind of bitterness and denominational paranoia is it's own punishment. They have their reward.
But for now let's just hope and pray that they ALL went to Church and ALL received some gift or other from God -- would that ALL the Lord's people were prophets - and maybe we can study war, if not "no more" then maybe at least only against the devil and all his angels and not one another.
I'll probably feel better and ready to swing my sword again later, but right now let there be peace to those who are far off and to those who are near, so I can take a nap.
I bet that guy got ordained because at one time he was full of love and wanted to love and be loved. And now look what has become of him. Whatcha got here is lacrimae rerum.
Amen
Be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.
" thoughts on the matter."
"Power of Deliverance Temple/Judah Sanctuary of Praise..."
~Probably won't count as it isn't in their flavor of the month.
Howard Johnson had nothing on these guys....
Warren County prosecutors dismissed 43 of 45 counts of money laundering against Brooks, of 4412 Brandon Lane.Prosecutors said Brooks rented a home at 280 W. Pekin Road in Clearcreek Twp. to James Scott — a member of his congregation and a convicted cocaine dealer who has been eluding police for a year — for about three years at $2,000 a month. The counts against Brooks represent the number of times Scott is alleged to have paid him rent using drug money.
A county grand jury in October indicted Brooks after the Warren County Drug Task Force began investigating Scott for drug activity in 2004 and reported they seized $46,000 from a safe and 11 pounds of crack cocaine from the house he rented from Brooks.
Not sure what to think. If the paster was knowingly money laundering, I'd have thought the rent would be higher than two grand (the rental house is in a decent neighborhood. The prosecutors throwing away 43 of the 45 counts also says a great deal in the pastor's favor, IMO. If I had to guess, I'd say the prosecutors think the pastor is hiding the cocaine dealer, and are using the charges in an attempt to get the dealer's current location out of the pastor.
***The lack of response to this cleric's criminality seems to answer a question raised on another thread about a pilfering priest. ***
Why is that? You post an article in the middle of a long weekend and expect us to be here?
Details are thin, but if what if published in the article bears out he should be in jail and prayed for.
Non-Catholics seem more interested in ...ahem...debating... Catholic problems than they are in the problems in their own backyards.
How so? The monolithic absence of Catholics on certain other recent threads IMO raises a whole set of new questions:
Former church treasurer accused of stealing $25,000
Pastors who Fall into Sin
Well first, I like to think of MY absences as paleolithic.
But more importantly, instead of all this coyness, why not ask the darn questions? Come on there, Son! Out with 'em!
Me, I don't see what a former church treasurer being a crook has to do with anything interesting -- except that you ought to get your treasurer and finance people bonded.
ON a more innerleckshual scale, I make muhc of Bunyan's observation that there is a way to hell even from the gates of heaven. So I conclude that the men in black get challenged as we all do, and some of them fall.
Because folks know me around here (but I still have them fooled) they come to talk over church stuff now and again. And often they're all freaked out because their pastor is a jerk. So I ask them why they've come to talk to me. I'm the biggest jerk I know. Then I try with the notion that for RCs it's the sacrament that has the mojo, not the sacramental minister, and for Protestants is the relationship with God, not the relationship with the pastor. So, yeah, a scoundrel in the pulpit is a bad thing, but it's not a huge thing, at least not to me.
What breaks my heart is that I think MOSt of them wanted to be very good and very helpful and very pious, and they got lost. Yeah there are all sorts of neurotic reasons to want to be an offishul holy person. But somewhere in there was, I suppose, a real yearning. And how much pain and confusion and lostness there must be now!
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