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Fifteen years after a jury convicted Richard A. Lapointe of the rape
and murder of his former wife's grandmother in Manchester, a great many
questions remain.
As Lapointe seeks a new trial for the second time in the case, his
current defense team asserts the fault for so many unanswered questions
lies with the conduct of his past lawyers who never asked for the
answers.
Lapointe's current lawyers are trying to convince Vernon Superior Court
Judge Stanley T. Fuger that the lawyers who represented Lapointe at his
original trial in 1992 - Public Defenders Patrick Culligan and
Christopher Cosgrove - erred in not bringing pivotal exculpatory
evidence before the jury. They also assert that Henry T. Vogt, the
lawyer who handled
Lapointe's first bid for a new trial in 2000, was ineffective.
Lapointe is serving a life sentence in the 1987 rape and slaying of his
wife's grandmother, Bernice Martin, 88, at her apartment at Mayfair
Gardens, a senior housing complex on North Main Street in Manchester.
Firefighters responding to a smoky blaze at her apartment found her
body. She had been bound, raped, and stabbed, and her couch was set on
fire, near where her body was found.
The case garnered national attention as serious questions were raised
about whether Lapointe's confession, given two years after the crime
amid an intensive 9½ hour interrogation by Manchester police, was
coerced.
Lapointe was born with a brain malformation, and has been described as
having mental retardation, though the extent and nature of his cognitive
deficit has been debated in the courts.
On Tuesday in Vernon Superior Court, Culligan and Cosgrove testified
about how they handled the criminal trial.
Lapointe's lawyer, Paul Casteleiro, asked Culligan, who is the state's
leading public defender in death penalty cases, why he decided to call
Lapointe, who suffers from a brain disorder and is said to have
cognitive impairments, to testify in his own defense at the original
trial.
"We believed that if Mr. Lapointe testified, all he could be is
himself," Culligan said.
Culligan described Lapointe as a "very likable client and yet an
exceedingly difficult client."
He was good-natured, with an "almost childlike sense of humor," but he
was also gullible, could not recall facts discussed the day before, and
had difficulty focusing on aspects of his case his lawyers needed to
discuss, according to Culligan.
"It's my impression that his ability to reason and think things through
was akin to that of a 12-year-old," Culligan testified.
He said he knew Lapointe might get confused on the witness stand, and
might contradict himself or get tripped up during cross-examination, but
he wanted to "give the jury the opportunity to see him as a human being
and someone with limited cognitive abilities."
Culligan said he and Cosgrove decided that though there were risks
associated with putting Lapointe on the stand, they hoped the move would
at the least convince a jury not to sentence him to death.
"We were putting as much or more emphasis on the penalty phase of the
trial as the guilt phase," he testified.
Lapointe's testimony explaining that he signed confessions to the crime
because he wanted to be allowed to go to the bathroom, get food, and go
home, failed to convince the jury of his innocence. The same jury spared
him the death penalty, however.
Culligan said Lapointe was telling the truth that he didn't commit the
crime, even if the scenario didn't ring true with jurors.
"I have never believed that Mr. Lapointe was guilty of these crimes,"
Culligan said.
Lapointe signed three confessions, each with more detail than the
former. His supporters suggest police could have manipulated him - the
interrogation was not recorded, investigators have maintained.
Casteleiro also grilled Culligan on why he did not have Lapointe's
former wife testify at trial.
During a pre-trial hearing and in statements to police, Karen Martin,
who was married to Lapointe at the time of her grandmother's slaying,
said Lapointe was with her during the afternoon and evening of the
crime, with the possible exception of 30 to 45 minutes between 6:15 p.m.
and 7 p.m.
But between Lapointe's 1989 arrest and 1992 trial, "his wife's
relationship with him had significantly deteriorated," Culligan said.
She filed for divorce, and went from advocating his innocence to wanting
nothing to do with his defense, Culligan said.
In fact, at a pre-trial hearing, she testified that Lapointe admitted to
her he "did it," but later she testified he said no such thing.
Also at the pre-trial hearing she testified for the first time about the
30- to 45-minute time span when she was giving their son a bath and
couldn't be sure of Lapointe's whereabouts.
But Culligan never discussed with her how she would answer questions
about Lapointe's activities the day of the crime if he did call her as a
witness, he acknowledged. He said she had moved in with a family member
who effectively barred him from speaking with her.
Culligan also acknowledged that he never presented the jury with
evidence that certain details in Lapointe's statements to police didn't
make sense.
For example, Lapointe told police Bernice Martin was wearing a pink
housecoat when he attacked her - but the evidence indicates she wasn't.
He also told police that he used his hands to choke her - but the
evidence showed she was strangled by fabric tied around her neck.
In addition, Culligan admitted he never raised the issue of unidentified
pubic hair found at the scene, or a pair of men's gloves found in the
victim's apartment. The gloves were clearly much too large for
Lapointe's hands.
Cosgrove, the other public defender who represented
Lapointe at his original trial, testified Tuesday that he never
confronted former Manchester Detective Michael Morrissey with evidence
he lied on the witness stand, and
said he couldn't remember why he hadn't.
At trial, Morrissey claimed he never mentioned specific evidence to
Lapointe's former wife, Karen Martin. A tape recording of the interview
with her showed that assertion was not truthful.
In fact, when Morrissey interviewed Lapointe's then-wife, he told her,
falsely, that DNA evidence had implicated Lapointe. He told a series of
other lies indicating Lapointe's guilt in an apparent effort to elicit
information from her.
Lapointe's current lawyers maintain that Cosgrove's failure to direct
the jury's attention to a glaring example of manipulative police tactics
in the investigation compromised his defense.
Fuger also heard testimony Tuesday from Howard C. Adelman, a forensic
pathology expert who testified he believes Bernice Martin died 30
minutes before she was discovered by firefighters, who pulled her from
her smoke-filled apartment.
That, coupled with a defense theory that a police investigator's note
indicates the fire burned for between 30 to 40 minutes, shows she was
attacked while Lapointe was at home with his wife, they argue in their
petition for a new trial.
However, in testimony Monday, the investigator, former Manchester
Detective Michael Ludlow, who wrote the note on the fire's duration,
testified the defense had misinterpreted its meaning - it was a minimum
burn-time, not a time range, he said.
During cross-examination Tuesday, Adelman acknowledged he couldn't be
sure how long it took Bernice Martin to die, seeming to undermine the
contention that her time of death sheds light on the time of her attack.
Lapointe's lawyers maintain that the note suggesting the fire's duration
should have been turned over to the defense before the original criminal
trial, and Culligan agreed.
"It would have led us to do more investigation," he testified.
At the time, "nothing about the fact of the fire seemed to be in
controversy or needed to be explored," he recalled. |