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Why Richard Lapointe deserves a new trial
By David R. Cameron
On Tuesday, Richard Lapointe’s habeas hearing will resume for three days in the Rockville Superior Court. He was convicted in 1992 of sexually assaulting and murdering Bernice Martin, his wife’s 88-year-old grandmother, in her apartment in the Mayfair Gardens housing complex on North Main Street in Manchester on March 8, 1987. He was sentenced to life without parole.
After the Connecticut Supreme Court upheld his conviction, his lawyer filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus that, if granted, would result in a new trial. The petition was denied in 2000.
A new team of lawyers filed another habeas petition, claiming Lapointe’s lawyer in the first habeas hearing provided ineffective assistance by failing to allege that the state had suppressed exculpatory evidence regarding the time a fire in Martin’s apartment was set and that his trial counsel had provided ineffective assistance by failing to employ available evidence to establish the unreliability of three statements he signed during the course of a 9½-hour interrogation on July 4, 1989.
In 2007, after a four-day hearing, Judge Stanley T. Fuger Jr. granted the state’s motion for dismissal and denied the petition. His decision was appealed to the Connecticut Appellate Court.
Last year the court ruled Fuger improperly granted the motion for dismissal with respect to certain aspects of the petition and remanded the case for further proceedings — which is why Lapointe and his lawyers were back in court, before Judge John J. Nazzaro, for five days in May and will be back for three more days this week.
The Appellate Court concluded Lapointe had submitted sufficient evidence to establish a prima-facie case that a detective’s notes about the burn time of the fire were exculpatory. The notes, based on the detective’s conversation with a state police officer and a fire marshal, indicated the fire had been set at least 30 to 40 minutes before it was called in — by Lapointe — shortly before 8:30 p.m. It said they are exculpatory because there is evidence that, if credited, can account for Lapointe’s whereabouts, albeit tenuously, for the full window of time between 5:45 p.m., when Martin was last seen alive, and 8 p.m.
The Appellate Court also concluded Lapointe had submitted sufficient evidence to establish a prima-facie case that his trial counsel failed to employ available evidence to challenge the credibility of his confession and suggest that someone other than Lapointe committed the crime.
No one who knows the facts of the case and has read the three statements prepared by the detectives who interrogated him could possibly claim they constitute a credible confession.
The first consists of two sentences: “On March 8, 1987 I was responsible for Bernice Martin’s death and it was an accident. My mind went blank.” It was hardly an accident; she was tied up, beaten, brutally assaulted, stabbed in the stomach and back, and strangled.
The second statement includes this sentence: “If the evidence shows that I was there, and that I killed her, then I killed her, but I don’t remember being there.”
The third includes a number of statements about what she was wearing, how she was assaulted, where she was stabbed, and how she was strangled that do not correspond to the facts in the case.
Michael Morrissey, one of the detectives who interrogated Lapointe, prepared a lengthy investigative report on the interview he conducted (and secretly recorded) with his wife and the interrogation. He noted that on four separate occasions during the interrogation Lapointe, who suffers from Dandy-Walker syndrome, a congenital brain malformation, said he was suffering from a “black out” and could not recall anything more. It also states that at one point he totally recanted the previous statements and said he had never gone to Martin’s apartment.
The fact that a prima-facie case has been established that Lapointe’s lawyer in the first habeas petition failed to allege that the state suppressed exculpatory evidence and that his trial counsel did not employ available evidence to challenge the credibility of the confession should, and perhaps will, lead Nazzaro to vacate his conviction and order a new trial.
There is another reason why Lapointe deserves a new trial: There is good reason to believe that someone else may have assaulted and murdered Martin. But it is clear that no effort will be made to reopen the investigation and ascertain whether someone else committed the crime unless there is a new trial.
A pair of black knitted men’s gloves with leather palms and fingers, too large for Lapointe, was found in the bedroom, one on the floor and the other on the bed. Both had strands of Martin’s hair on them. In May, a forensic scientist testified the glove on the bed contained a mixture of three DNA profiles, none of which matched Lapointe’s.
Martin had worn a blue sweater that day. It was found on the bedroom floor. There was a pubic hair on it that came from someone other than Martin or Lapointe. There were head hairs on the bed that came from someone other than Martin or Lapointe.
A Manchester woman, Paulette DeRocco, told police that as she drove by Mayfair Gardens at about 8 p.m. that evening a man came running out of the driveway and into the street. He was running “like he was being chased by a pack of dogs” and she had to swerve to avoid hitting him. He continued running through the nearby intersection with Main Street and disappeared behind the large brick building on the southeast corner of the intersection.
The man was white, 35 to 40, 5-feet-10 or 5-11, had a medium build, straight black disheveled hair, and wasn’t wearing glasses. Lapointe is significantly shorter and smaller, wears thick glasses, and, because of his disabilities, cannot run fast.
Three days after the murder, a middle-aged woman was sexually assaulted in her home in South Windsor a few miles away. Frederick Merrill, who had a criminal record, was arrested the next day. He resembled the man DeRocco had seen running out of the complex and had been seen that weekend — March 8 was a Sunday — in Kelly’s Pub just around the corner from Mayfair Gardens on North Street.
Merrill escaped, was arrested again, escaped again, and disappeared. Some time later he surfaced in Canada, where he was arrested and incarcerated for a number of crimes including sexual assault. Eventually, he was returned to Connecticut. He pleaded guilty to the South Windsor assault in 2003 and is currently serving a 20-year sentence.
In 1996, soon after CBS ran a “60 Minutes” segment on the Martin case, some unusual similarities between that case and the South Windsor assault came to light.
A member of the South Windsor woman’s family who had not known about the Martin case contacted Tom Condon of the Hartford Courant and described details about the assault that had never been made public.
The South Windsor woman was severely beaten with a flashlight. Her arms and ankles had been tied tightly with pieces torn from a sheet. She had been sexually assaulted with a metallic object. Merrill was carrying a bundle of sheets toward a kerosene heater when he was interrupted by another family member who had been sleeping in another room.
Martin was beaten and sexually assaulted with a blunt instrument. She was tied up tightly with strips of cloth torn from two shirts. The couch in Martin’s apartment was set on fire as were some towels in the kitchen.
The question before Nazzaro is not whether Lapointe is guilty or innocent. It is whether his counsel in the first habeas hearing provided ineffective assistance and whether, as a result, his conviction should be vacated and he should receive a new trial.
Will he receive a new trial? Perhaps.
Should he receive a new trial? Absolutely.
David R. Cameron is a professor of political science at Yale University. He has written about wrongful convictions and cold cases in Connecticut.
After the Connecticut Supreme Court upheld his conviction, his lawyer filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus that, if granted, would result in a new trial. The petition was denied in 2000.
A new team of lawyers filed another habeas petition, claiming Lapointe’s lawyer in the first habeas hearing provided ineffective assistance by failing to allege that the state had suppressed exculpatory evidence regarding the time a fire in Martin’s apartment was set and that his trial counsel had provided ineffective assistance by failing to employ available evidence to establish the unreliability of three statements he signed during the course of a 9½-hour interrogation on July 4, 1989.
In 2007, after a four-day hearing, Judge Stanley T. Fuger Jr. granted the state’s motion for dismissal and denied the petition. His decision was appealed to the Connecticut Appellate Court.
Last year the court ruled Fuger improperly granted the motion for dismissal with respect to certain aspects of the petition and remanded the case for further proceedings — which is why Lapointe and his lawyers were back in court, before Judge John J. Nazzaro, for five days in May and will be back for three more days this week.
The Appellate Court concluded Lapointe had submitted sufficient evidence to establish a prima-facie case that a detective’s notes about the burn time of the fire were exculpatory. The notes, based on the detective’s conversation with a state police officer and a fire marshal, indicated the fire had been set at least 30 to 40 minutes before it was called in — by Lapointe — shortly before 8:30 p.m. It said they are exculpatory because there is evidence that, if credited, can account for Lapointe’s whereabouts, albeit tenuously, for the full window of time between 5:45 p.m., when Martin was last seen alive, and 8 p.m.
The Appellate Court also concluded Lapointe had submitted sufficient evidence to establish a prima-facie case that his trial counsel failed to employ available evidence to challenge the credibility of his confession and suggest that someone other than Lapointe committed the crime.
No one who knows the facts of the case and has read the three statements prepared by the detectives who interrogated him could possibly claim they constitute a credible confession.
The first consists of two sentences: “On March 8, 1987 I was responsible for Bernice Martin’s death and it was an accident. My mind went blank.” It was hardly an accident; she was tied up, beaten, brutally assaulted, stabbed in the stomach and back, and strangled.
The second statement includes this sentence: “If the evidence shows that I was there, and that I killed her, then I killed her, but I don’t remember being there.”
The third includes a number of statements about what she was wearing, how she was assaulted, where she was stabbed, and how she was strangled that do not correspond to the facts in the case.
Michael Morrissey, one of the detectives who interrogated Lapointe, prepared a lengthy investigative report on the interview he conducted (and secretly recorded) with his wife and the interrogation. He noted that on four separate occasions during the interrogation Lapointe, who suffers from Dandy-Walker syndrome, a congenital brain malformation, said he was suffering from a “black out” and could not recall anything more. It also states that at one point he totally recanted the previous statements and said he had never gone to Martin’s apartment.
The fact that a prima-facie case has been established that Lapointe’s lawyer in the first habeas petition failed to allege that the state suppressed exculpatory evidence and that his trial counsel did not employ available evidence to challenge the credibility of the confession should, and perhaps will, lead Nazzaro to vacate his conviction and order a new trial.
There is another reason why Lapointe deserves a new trial: There is good reason to believe that someone else may have assaulted and murdered Martin. But it is clear that no effort will be made to reopen the investigation and ascertain whether someone else committed the crime unless there is a new trial.
A pair of black knitted men’s gloves with leather palms and fingers, too large for Lapointe, was found in the bedroom, one on the floor and the other on the bed. Both had strands of Martin’s hair on them. In May, a forensic scientist testified the glove on the bed contained a mixture of three DNA profiles, none of which matched Lapointe’s.
Martin had worn a blue sweater that day. It was found on the bedroom floor. There was a pubic hair on it that came from someone other than Martin or Lapointe. There were head hairs on the bed that came from someone other than Martin or Lapointe.
A Manchester woman, Paulette DeRocco, told police that as she drove by Mayfair Gardens at about 8 p.m. that evening a man came running out of the driveway and into the street. He was running “like he was being chased by a pack of dogs” and she had to swerve to avoid hitting him. He continued running through the nearby intersection with Main Street and disappeared behind the large brick building on the southeast corner of the intersection.
The man was white, 35 to 40, 5-feet-10 or 5-11, had a medium build, straight black disheveled hair, and wasn’t wearing glasses. Lapointe is significantly shorter and smaller, wears thick glasses, and, because of his disabilities, cannot run fast.
Three days after the murder, a middle-aged woman was sexually assaulted in her home in South Windsor a few miles away. Frederick Merrill, who had a criminal record, was arrested the next day. He resembled the man DeRocco had seen running out of the complex and had been seen that weekend — March 8 was a Sunday — in Kelly’s Pub just around the corner from Mayfair Gardens on North Street.
Merrill escaped, was arrested again, escaped again, and disappeared. Some time later he surfaced in Canada, where he was arrested and incarcerated for a number of crimes including sexual assault. Eventually, he was returned to Connecticut. He pleaded guilty to the South Windsor assault in 2003 and is currently serving a 20-year sentence.
In 1996, soon after CBS ran a “60 Minutes” segment on the Martin case, some unusual similarities between that case and the South Windsor assault came to light.
A member of the South Windsor woman’s family who had not known about the Martin case contacted Tom Condon of the Hartford Courant and described details about the assault that had never been made public.
The South Windsor woman was severely beaten with a flashlight. Her arms and ankles had been tied tightly with pieces torn from a sheet. She had been sexually assaulted with a metallic object. Merrill was carrying a bundle of sheets toward a kerosene heater when he was interrupted by another family member who had been sleeping in another room.
Martin was beaten and sexually assaulted with a blunt instrument. She was tied up tightly with strips of cloth torn from two shirts. The couch in Martin’s apartment was set on fire as were some towels in the kitchen.
The question before Nazzaro is not whether Lapointe is guilty or innocent. It is whether his counsel in the first habeas hearing provided ineffective assistance and whether, as a result, his conviction should be vacated and he should receive a new trial.
Will he receive a new trial? Perhaps.
Should he receive a new trial? Absolutely.
David R. Cameron is a professor of political science at Yale University. He has written about wrongful convictions and cold cases in Connecticut.
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