The brain-damaged man convicted of brutally raping, torturing and murdering his ex-wife's 88-year-old grandmother nearly 30 years ago has been granted a new trial.
Richard Lapointe was convicted in 1992 of killing Bernice Martin, who was found raped, stabbed and strangled in her burning Manchester apartment.
A lower court overturned his conviction in 2012 when his attorneys argued that DNA evidence proved Lapointe's innocence and called his initial defense team ineffective.
The Connecticut Supreme Court took that claim a step further, calling Lapointe's defense "constitutionally deficient" in a 4-2 ruling released Tuesday.
The court said prosecutors suppressed key evidence that put Lapointe at home watching television during the time Martin's apartment went up in flames, depriving him of a credible alibi and "gravely undermining the reliability of the verdict against him."
"Although there is abundant evidence in the record concerning the petitioner’s simplemindedness, his peculiarities and his very rigid way of thinking, one searches the record in vain for evidence that he ever was physically violent, that he suffered from a mood disorder, psychosis, drug addiction or anything else that could explain why, after visiting the victim every Sunday for years, he suddenly went back to her apartment on the Sunday in question and brutally murdered her, without his wife noticing either that he had left their house or any change in his demeanor or appearance upon his return," the Supreme Court stated.
Lapointe was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release, setting off efforts by high-profile supporters such as writers Arthur Miller and William Styron to prove his innocence.
Local
"Because the record demonstrates convincingly that [Lapointe] is burdened by an unreliable conviction, he is entitled to a new criminal trial," the court said in Tuesday's ruling.
