In a majority opinion released in the appeal Monk v. Episcopal Diocese of Dallas, the Court said the panel’s handling of the case “substantially prejudiced” Monk’s right to a fair proceeding and violated several provisions of Title IV, the church’s disciplinary canons.
Monk, former rector of St. John’s, Corsicana, faces both canonical charges and a pending Texas criminal indictment alleging misappropriation of substantial church funds and fraudulent use of a parishioner’s credit card; he has denied the canonical allegations.
The Court of Review stopped short of addressing the merits of the financial misconduct findings and instead focused on process. It held that the Dallas panel erred by refusing a short continuance after Monk’s lead counsel fell ill with Covid, pressing ahead with a hybrid hearing in which the lawyer, appearing virtually, repeatedly told the panel he could not hear the proceedings, and then continuing after Monk and his counsel left.
That sequence, the Court said, amounted to the “effective exclusion” of defense counsel and violated Monk’s canonical right to present evidence, cross-examine witnesses, and argue his case under Canon IV.13.10.b.6, as well as a diocesan canon that requires all participants in electronic meetings to be able to hear each other at the same time.
The Court also found that the Dallas panel failed in its duty to create a reliable verbatim record for appeal. Instead of using a trained court reporter at the hearing, the panel relied on mobile phones to record the session and later had a reporter transcribe the audio; the resulting 77‑page transcript contained “several hundred” “inaudible” gaps, disputed wording, and no clear indication of which documents were actually admitted into evidence or whether witnesses were properly sworn, the Court said.
Subsequent corrections to the transcript were made by the panel president, and, according to the Court, with input from the Church Attorney but without notice to Monk’s counsel, contributing to what the majority called an “unreliable” record that undermined Monk’s right of appeal.
A further major issue was the use of the Navarro County district attorney, who is prosecuting Monk in the parallel criminal case, as a key witness at the church hearing. The Court criticized the Church Attorney for calling the prosecutor to summarize testimony from secret grand jury proceedings and to convey the conclusions of a state forensic accountant whose underlying report and work were not disclosed to Monk or his lawyer in advance or at the hearing.
Because the accountant did not testify and her report was never produced, Monk could not meaningfully cross-examine on methodology, documents relied upon, or qualifications, nor prepare rebuttal expert testimony, the Court said. It held that this use of the prosecutor, together with the nondisclosure of the forensic report, violated Monk’s rights under Canon IV.13.10.b.6 and was “highly prejudicial.”
The majority also flagged a separate canonical violation in how the case was framed for the Hearing Panel, though it did not treat that issue as a ground of reversal only because it was not raised below or on appeal. When the Church Attorney filed the required Statement of Offenses in September 2024, he attached ten investigative reports prepared earlier in the Title IV process, despite Canon IV.13.2.a barring “any materials from any prior proceedings under Title IV” from being given to the Hearing Panel.
That rule exists to prevent the panel from being influenced by investigative material outside the evidentiary hearing; the Court described the violation as “serious” and “highly prejudicial” in principle and warned against repeating it on remand.
On the standard of review, the Court rejected the Diocese’s argument that Monk’s partial departure from the hearing limited the appeal to “plain error” review under Canon IV.15.5(a), as in the earlier case Watkins v. Diocese of Alabama.
The majority held that Monk had “good cause” to cease participation once his ill counsel, appearing remotely, was unable to hear the proceedings and the panel insisted on continuing, and therefore applied the broader Canon IV.15.5(b) standard, which allows relief where canonical violations or procedural errors “substantially prejudiced” the respondent.
Monk’s three other appellate claims were rejected. The Court held that the Dallas panels had jurisdiction despite changes in the named complainant; that Title IV contains no requirement to stay disciplinary proceedings during related criminal cases, and that the decision not to stay here was within the bishop’s and panel’s discretion; and that aside from the forensic accounting materials addressed directly, Monk’s complaints about limits on pre‑hearing discovery did not justify overturning the decision.
The remand order includes detailed conditions for any new diocesan hearing. Among them, the investigative reports are not to be sent to the new panel; no member of the original panel may sit again; no attorney involved in the criminal prosecution may testify; the indictment itself will be inadmissible, though the fact of any unresolved charges may be presented; and any financial testimony must come from witnesses who personally examined the underlying documents, with full advance disclosure of their reports and the records they used.
The Court directed that the Diocese hire a trained, neutral court reporter to swear witnesses and produce an accurate transcript, that both sides be allowed to review and propose corrections to the transcript, that each party name backup counsel in case of unavailability, and that the new hearing be conducted in person. It also set a timetable requiring the Church Attorney to specify and disclose the financial accounts, transactions, dates and documents to be used at least 60 days before any hearing, with Monk to identify his own financial evidence 30 days before, and allowed additional depositions of accounting witnesses outside the usual two‑deposition limit for fact witnesses.
Canon Gregory Jacobs, a member of the Court, concurred in the result but wrote separately to criticize the Church Attorney’s Statement of Offenses as lacking the specificity needed to give Monk fair notice of the charges. Jacobs said the statement named neither dates, places, amounts nor the particular canons allegedly violated, and instead improperly relied on attaching investigative reports already generated under Title IV, which both violated Canon IV.13.2.a and left Monk “quite literally not knowing who, what, when, or where the allegations would have occurred.”
He further argued that the absence of dates prevented the Hearing Panel from assessing whether some charges were time‑barred under Canon IV.19.4.e, which limits the initiation of proceedings for certain offenses to misconduct occurring within the preceding two years, and concluded that these failures also substantially prejudiced Monk.
Four members of the Court — Dr. Delbert Glover, the Rev. Giovan King, Bishop E. Mark Stevenson, and the Rev. Marisa Thompson — dissented. While acknowledging what they called “profoundly flawed” procedures and sharing the majority’s concern over the transcript, recordkeeping and use of the district attorney as a witness, the dissenters said Monk’s decision to leave the hearing after the opening statement meant he “otherwise fail[ed] to participate” under Canon IV.15.5(a) and so was entitled only to a narrow “clear error” review.
In their view, on that limited standard the evidence in the existing record — particularly bank documents and testimony by diocesan and accounting witnesses — was sufficient to support the Hearing Panel’s findings, and they were not left with a “definite and firm conviction” that the panel was mistaken in concluding Monk had misappropriated funds and violated the canons.
The dissenters stressed that Title IV is an ecclesiastical disciplinary process rooted in the promises of ordination and the duty of clergy to “cooperate” with investigations, rather than a secular criminal proceeding in which a defendant may choose not to participate.
They urged the wider church to provide better training for hearing panels, especially on evidentiary procedure and record‑making, but said that had Monk remained and participated to the best of his ability, they would have joined the majority in ordering a new hearing.