WACO, Texas (ABP) — A former Baptist preacher sentenced to 65 years for murdering his wife plans to appeal his conviction.
Local media in Waco, Texas, reported that an attorney representing Matt Baker filed a notice of appeal with 19th State District Court Judge Ralph Strother Jan. 25. Strother, the judge who presided over Baker's Jan. 12-21 murder trial, appointed an attorney at McClennan County's expense to represent Baker in his appeal to the Texas 10th Court of Appeals.
Two attorneys who represented Baker at the trial withdrew after the sentence was announced. One of the lawyers told media that his client lied to him, and he could not effectively represent someone he does not trust.
Baker, 38, must serve at least half of his sentence before he is eligible for parole.
Matt Baker is not eligible for parole until 2042.
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Baker, a seminary-educated minister who worked as pastor of several Baptist churches in central Texas before his arrest, was convicted Jan. 20 of drugging and suffocating his wife, Kari, at their home in 2006.
Earlier in the trial, prosecutors said they had evidence of at least 13 women who claimed Baker made improper sexual advances toward them between 1991 and 2006.
That fact prompted some observers to question how a man with such a checkered reputation could move so easily up the ladder as a Baptist preacher.
According to a March 2008 Texas Monthly cover story, Baker was accused of sexual misconduct several times early in his career, but supervisors believed his story that he was innocent and allowed him to move on without warning future employers about the allegations.
Lora Mueller, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service from New York, testified during the penalty phase of the trial that Baker tried to sexually assault her while both worked as assistant athletic trainers for Baylor University in 1991. Mueller said she reported the attack to Baylor officials, but nobody would believe her.
After that Baker received an internship at First Baptist Church in Waco where, according to the Texas Monthly article, he was accused of grabbing a female custodian in a bathroom and telling her he wanted to have sex. Because church leaders did not have any concrete evidence, they did not fire him or report him to the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
Baker was fired in January 1996 from a job at the Waco Family YMCA, after allegedly groping a female counselor. That fall he was admitted to Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary, where he began the first of five pastorates that ended when Crossroads Baptist Church in Lorena, Texas, fired him after learning about his reputation in 2006.
Christa Brown, Baptist outreach director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said "it shouldn't take a murder" for a church to find out its minister is a sexual predator.
Wade Burleson, an Oklahoma pastor and blogger, said someone high in the denomination "needs to issue some kind of statement that takes responsibility for letting this pastor slip through the cracks when attempted rape and other sexual crimes were reported to religious authorities, but nothing was done to him."
In 2007 Burleson, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., made a motion that the Southern Baptist Convention study the feasibility of establishing a national registry of "clergy and staff who have been credibly accused of, personally confessed to, or legally been convicted of sexual harassment or abuse."
The SBC Executive Committee recommended against creating such a database, saying it would be ineffective because the convention lacks authority to require churches to report occurrences of known or suspected sexual abuse.
The SBC website includes links to resources to help congregations exercise due diligence in hiring staff or choosing volunteers.
It isn't clear how much Kari Baker knew about her husband's alleged exploits, but she reportedly thought he was having an affair shortly before her death in April 2006. Her mother, Linda Dulin, told the Texas Monthly that Kari told her about a couple of accusations leveled against Matt in the 1990s but said the allegations were false.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.