Court Denies Wood's Bid to Pry Open Board of Inquiry Files; Six-Day Trial Set for September 7
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By David W. Virtue, DD
August 7, 2026
CHARLESTON, SC — The ecclesiastical court that will try ACNA Archbishop Steve Wood next month has slammed the door on his attempt to obtain the confidential files of the Board of Inquiry that recommended charges against him, ruling that the Board's work is sealed — as to both its participants and its contents — and that the court “will not breach that confidentiality.”
The order, denying Wood's Motion to Compel Production of Board of Inquiry Investigation Documents, was signed by the Rt. Rev. Ryan Reed, President of the Court for the Trial of a Bishop, and by presiding officer Katherine R. Grosskopf. It leaves the archbishop's six-day trial on track to begin September 7 in Charleston, with each side allotted fifteen hours to present its case, cross-examine witnesses, and argue before the court.
The court could have rested on confidentiality alone. It said so plainly. But “in the interests of transparency for the good of the Church,” it chose to lay out its reasoning — and in doing so drew a bright line between two processes that Wood's motion had sought to blur.
A Closed System
The Board of Inquiry, the court explained, had one job and one job only: to review the accusations and decide whether there was enough evidence that a canonical offense may have occurred. It did that. Its investigation, the order states, “does not overlap with this Court's inquiry. It is its own closed system, and this Court will not second-guess its processes nor with it breach the confidentiality.”
The analogy the court reached for is one every reader will recognize. The Board of Inquiry, it said, “is like a Grand Jury proceeding in the secular system.” Grand jury evidence and proceedings are kept secret and stand entirely apart from any trial that follows. So it is here. The trial court does not see the evidence the Board reviewed. It does not speak to the Board's members. It will decide the matter of Archbishop Steve Wood, the order says, “solely on the Presentment pleading, the responses by the archbishop, and the evidence submitted at trial.”
The Back Door
At the heart of Wood's motion was an insinuation. The Provincial prosecutor has stated that she turned over everything the Board of Inquiry handed her, and Wood conceded — the court was careful to note — that he is not suggesting she withheld anything. Yet the Archbishop pressed on: he had, he said, “been contacted by a witness who submitted exculpatory and/or impeachment information to the BOI through the Director of Safeguarding and Canonical Affairs.” The implication was that favorable evidence had reached the Board, never reached him, and that the province had somehow behaved improperly.
The court was unmoved, and it dismantled the argument with a single observation: by his own words, Wood knows who the witness is. That witness knows what he or she submitted. That evidence can be handed to the archbishop directly, and the witness can be called to testify at trial — provided he or she has made himself available for deposition. “Therefore,” the order reads, “there is no need to breach the confidentiality of the Board of Inquiry process, and this Court will not entertain what seems to be a back-door way of casting doubt on the Board of Inquiry process.”
It is a sharp rebuke, and a revealing one. The court plainly read the motion not as a genuine discovery dispute but as an attempt to relitigate the very existence of the charges by impeaching the body that brought them.
No Surprises
The order closes by reaffirming the rules of engagement. The court has already directed that all documentary evidence either side might submit be exchanged between the parties, and that every witness either side wishes to call make himself available for deposition. The conclusion follows with the cadence of a gavel: “There will be no surprise evidence submitted at trial. There will be no surprise witnesses. Both parties have had AMPLE time to review all evidence and prepare their cases.”
The trial will run six days beginning September 7, 2026. The Scheduling Order of July 6, 2026 remains in effect.
For an archbishop who came to the office as a reformer, the ruling is a setback on procedure that carries a heavier symbolic weight. Wood cannot go behind the Board of Inquiry. He must meet the charges on the trial floor, in the open, on the evidence — the same standard to which the province's clergy and laity have been held. The court has made clear it will not permit the trial of a bishop to become a trial of the process that produced him.
VirtueOnline will continue its coverage as the September 7 trial approaches.
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