Rabbi Jacob A. Max, the founder of a Pikesville synagogue who was found guilty last month in Baltimore County District Court of sexually molesting a woman, will not appeal his conviction, his lawyer said Wednesday.
"Rabbi Max has decided that he does not wish to put everyone through the trauma of a complete retrial," said the lawyer, David B. Irwin, who noted that appeals of District Court cases are not just reviews of the record but full trials, usually in front of juries, in Circuit Court.
Irwin reiterated his client's denial in April that he had molested the 44-year-old woman.
She told police that Max, who is 85, fondled her breasts on two occasions Dec. 4 in the lunch room of a Pikesville funeral home where she worked and the rabbi sometimes presides over ceremonies.
The rabbi was convicted April 13 in a bench trial and was sentenced by Judge Nancy Purpura to a suspended one-year prison term and one year of unsupervised probation.
Irwin said at the time that the woman's accusations were motivated by a desire for money, even though, since it was a criminal case, she was not compensated.
Kathleen Cahill, a Towson lawyer who was retained by the victim to help her through the criminal proceeding, said her client is "very pleased that she doesn't have to go through another trial, but she was surely ready to if that's what she had to do."
It was unclear Wednesday whether the woman would file a civil lawsuit against Max, but Cahill said her client "will be well advised" to consider that option.
In 1952, Max founded the Liberty Jewish Center, a Modern Orthodox synagogue now known as the Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah Hebrew Congregation on Rockland Hills Drive.
Max retired in 2001, when the site of the congregation was named after him, but still officiates at some ceremonies. He and his wife, Eileen, have been married 25 years.
