Conversation with God caused Capano lawyer to quit

The News Journal

Defense attorney Joseph A. Hurley vowed he'd take it to his grave.

But he didn't.

On Friday night, he shared for the first time exclusively with The News Journal why he quit Thomas J. Capano's legal team six months before the October 1998 murder trial began.

Defense attorney Joseph A. Hurley speaks Friday at his office on King Street in Wilmington.

He said it was his moral conscience — not a Capano confession about murdering Anne Marie Fahey, as many had believed.

Hurley said he had a moment of self-reflection and clarity while attending a funeral Mass at St. Helena's Catholic Church in Penny Hill for public defender James F. McCloskey Jr. on April 6, 1998.

Hurley said he'd never asked Capano if he killed Fahey after their 1996 date in Philadelphia.

"I didn't want to ask him and hear the answer," said Hurley, who is highly regarded and has handled numerous high-profile cases since becoming a criminal defense attorney in 1974.

But on that April morning, sitting in a pew at his childhood church, Hurley said, he had a conversation with God.

"I can only surmise that there was something making me feel like I was falling into an evil pit, and this conversation, if that's what you have with God, [went] 'Joe, you're not like this. You can't be this way.'"

"I think I was probably facing the reality [Capano] was, in fact, guilty of premeditated murder," Hurley said.

He left the church, went to see Capano in prison and quit.

No longer considering Capano a friend, Hurley said, he never saw him again.

"Killing a human being? No,” Hurley said. "That's the end of friendship."

Capano was convicted of murdering Fahey in January 1999. He died in 2011 at a prison near Smyrna where he was serving a life sentence.

"I said I'd take it to my grave,” Hurley explained, "and I would of had [Capano] not reached his before."

Contact Esteban Parra at (302) 324-2299, eparra@delawareonline.com or Twitter @eparra3. Contact Patricia Talorico at (302) 324-2861, ptalorico@delawareonline.com or Twitter @pattytalorico.