Judge removed from Ohio serial killings case

(CNN) -- The Ohio Supreme Court has removed a Cleveland judge from a case after attorneys for serial killer suspect Anthony Sowell accused her of bias as a result of postings about their client on a newspaper website.

Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold was removed from the case Thursday, and it has been turned over to the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court for reassignment to another judge.

Sowell faces murder, attempted murder, rape and attempted rape charges in connection with the killings of 11 women and attacks on five other women. He was arrested after the bodies of the slain women were found at his house last fall, and he has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Read the indictment (PDF)

Sowell's attorneys, John P. Parker and Rufus Sims, filed an affidavit Monday seeking Saffold's disqualification, according to court documents.

They alleged that Saffold had "improper," ex parte conversations with the former judge on the case, Timothy McGinty, and a newspaper reporter from The Cleveland Plain Dealer. They also said that e-mails from the judge's personal and office accounts allegedly were sources of information for a March 26 Plain Dealer article and that the judge has a financial interest in the case because she and her daughter have sued the newspaper over the apparent use of her e-mails as sourcing for that article.

The defense said someone using the moniker "lawmiss" posted derogatory comments on the newspaper's website about attorney Sims and Sowell.

Those comments were linked to Saffold's account, but she has denied posting them and has said her court computer was not used to make them.

Saffold could not be reached for comment Thursday.

However, she filed a response to the defense, insisting she harbors no bias in the case and denying she had any improper conversations about it with others. She also said her civil suit against the newspaper has nothing to do with the case against the defendant.

Still, acting Chief Justice Paul E. Pfeifer found the concerns over Saffold's e-mail accounts and the public postings particularly troubling.

"Although Judge Saffold denied that she was the source of these online comments, she has admitted that the comments originated from the online account shared by her and members of her family and that the comments were posted by her daughter," Pfeifer said in his ruling.

He said the "unfortunate postings" impede Saffold's ability to resolve legal issues in the case that would appear to be objective and fair.

While there's no evidence of Saffold's actual bias, Pfeifer said, "disqualification is appropriate where the public's confidence in the integrity of the judicial system is at stake."

Pope, Vatican Officials Targeted in New Suit by U.S. Sex Abuse Victims

The lawsuit this time is accusing the pope himself of wrongdoing. A federal suit, filed on Thursday in Milwaukee, alleges that Pope Benedict XVI and senior Vatican officials covered up allegations that a Wisconsin priest molested at least 200 children at a school for the deaf in suburban Milwaukee.

The lawsuit contends that the Rev. Lawrence Murphy, while teaching at St. John's School for the Deaf from 1950 to 1974, sexually abused about 200 boys at the school. The alleged abuse included incidents in the confessional, where Murphy allegedly solicited sex from the students. Murphy died in 1998.

The lead plaintiff, identified in court papers as John Doe 16 of Illinois, contends that he was abused over a number of years, that he wrote two letters to Vatican officials in 1995 reporting the abuse, and that nothing was done.

The plaintiff's lawyer, Jeff Anderson, said, "He implored the cardinal to read the letter to the pope and to take action, and it fell on silent and deaf ears."

Anderson of Jeff Anderson & Associates in St. Paul, Minn., is seeking injunctive relief, hoping to force the Vatican to open what he claims are confidential files that contain details of priest abuse allegations and monetary settlements. He is also seeking unspecified monetary damages and a jury trial.

"We are attempting to pierce a fortress, a sovereign state, that demands and requires absolute secrecy, putting the reputation of the clergy and the Catholic Church above the well-being of the kids," said Anderson, who recently told The Washington Post that he's filed more than 1,500 lawsuits against the church during his career.

Anderson said he is trying to hold the pope accountable because, as he sees it, "the pope's in charge." He said, "The pope is the guy who is demanding these [secrecy] protocols. The pope is the guy who is ultimately responsible for this and has to be held accountable."

The Vatican had no comment on the lawsuit.

Anderson admitted he's facing an "enormous legal challenge" -- the state of the Vatican City can claim sovereign immunity. But he said he could overcome that defense with two legal arguments.

Under a tort exception, he plans to argue that because the Catholic Church allegedly engaged in systematic activity that injured a large number of people in the United States, it subjected itself to the jurisdiction of the United States and can be held liable here.

Under a commercial activity exception, he plans to argue that the Catholic Church is a massive business organization, commercially present in the United States, and therefore not immune from litigation.

The defendants are the pope, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Cardinal Angelo Sodano and the Vatican City. Bertone was deputy to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, at the time of the allegedly inadequate investigation in the mid-1990s.

The lawsuit claims that Ratzinger, Bertone and Sodano all knew about the allegations against Murphy, but kept them secret.