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Courant.com
Lapointe Case A Terrible Travesty
Rick Green
May 7, 2010
For the past four days I've watched a mentally disabled man sit in a Rockville
courtroom doing simple word puzzles while lawyers, DNA experts and assorted
criminalists debated the complicated circumstances surrounding the horrific
crime he was convicted of.
Did Richard Lapointe expertly torture, tie up, rape and murder 88-year-old
Bernice Martin and set her apartment on fire during a break from his Sunday
evening TV watching on March 8, 1987?
I don't know what happened. But I cannot see how this gullible former dishwasher
with Dandy-Walker syndrome committed the brutal felony murder he was convicted
of in 1992.
There was no motive. There was no evidence of any history of violent behavior.
There was a man with an IQ of 80, with a syndrome that makes him easily
manipulated. There were police investigators who thought nothing of exploiting
this.
Shameful doesn't begin to describe this travesty.
The most controversial aspects of the Lapointe conviction have been on display
all week in Judge John Nazzaro's court. Nazzaro —who has listened intently and
closely questioned witnesses — must decide whether Lapointe deserves a new trial
based on whether certain evidence was suppressed.
We've heard about the pathetic performance of his original lawyers, who failed
to exploit a pubic hair found on the victim's clothing that didn't belong to
Lapointe or Martin, who virtually ignored the significance of a pair of gloves
found at the murder scene belonging to neither Lapointe nor Martin.
I cannot know what lurks behind Lapointe's bland demeanor. But 21 years later,
it is difficult to hear about the "confessions" that Manchester police extracted
from a man his lawyers and friends say will believe what you tell him to
believe.
"The police had intentionally tricked Mr. Lapointe," one of his lawyers at the
1992 trial, Public Defender Patrick J. Culligan, reminded Nazzaro when he
testified this week. Manchester police investigators created phony props and
false information "for the purpose of persuading Mr. Lapointe that the police
had assembled evidence of his guilt."
Lapointe has a malformed brain. He is easily duped.
No wonder police made no audio or video recording of their nine-hour
interrogation of Lapointe. When they interviewed Lapointe's wife, police
surreptitiously taped the entire encounter.
On Thursday, with Karen Martin, now Lapointe's ex-wife, on the stand, lawyers
played her July 4, 1989, recorded interview with police Officer Michael
Morrissey. As Martin, who is disabled herself, defended Lapointe, Morrissey told
her "we are not looking to sell him down the river and write him off."
"I am looking for an explanation here, Karen," Morrissey told her. "I don't want
to bring you into it."
Unsettling contradictions between Lapointe's confessions and the reality of the
crime scene have never been clarified. Lapointe said that Martin wore a pink
housecoat and they drank a cup of coffee before the murder, which Lapointe said
occurred on a couch.
Bernice Martin wore a blue sweater and dark slacks that night. No coffee cup was
ever recovered from the crime scene. The murder occurred on her bed, where a
violent struggle took place. Lapointe said he strangled Martin with his hands,
but the medical examiner said she was asphyxiated with a blunt object.
The discovery that the state didn't reveal critical notes from a police
investigator that suggest a "possible" 30- to 40-minute burn time for the fire —
evidence that supports Lapointe's alibi — was what brought the Lapointe case
back to court this week.
State prosecutors spent the week meticulously challenging this. Former
investigators called to testify about this critical evidence came down with a
case of forgetfulness on the witness stand.
All of this can make you believe that something really ugly happened to Lapointe.
"We want the judge to understand that the state's case against him is not solid.
Richard Lapointe could not have committed it," said Kate Germond, associate
director and investigator with Centurion Ministries, whose lawyers are
representing Lapointe.
"The Richard Lapointe story really ought to be titled 'They Should've Been
Ashamed,'" Germond said. Police "knew they could get an easy confession. A
confession trumps everything."
We think justice is about assessing right and wrong. Without dramatic action
from the judge, the Lapointe case will remain a decadeslong miscarriage of
justice.
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