ICYMI: CT Supreme Court Grants Lapointe a New Trial in 1989 Murder Case

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the past week. We’re republishing it here in case you missed it:

Richard Lapointe, a mentally disabled Manchester man convicted of murdering his wife’s 88-year-old grandmother, then setting fire to her home to cover it up, is entitled to a new trial, the Connecticut Supreme Court decided, according to various news accounts.

The court majority ruled that Lapointe, now 69 years old, was denied justice when prosecutors failed to inform his defense lawyers about a police officer’s notes concerning how long the fire would have burned before it was discovered. Lapointe could have put up a defense that he was at home when the fire was started, the court said.

In 2012, a lower court overturned Lapointe’s conviction, but prosecutors appealed that decision to the state Supreme Court, which decided the notes could have been the basis of an effective defense. Lapointe, said to be a very suggestable man due to a mental disability caused by a rare disease, confessed three times to the murder, but with inconsistent statements, according to a report in the Hartford Courant.

Lapointe’s case attracted a number of supporters, some of whom formed the Friends of Richard Lapointe group (its website Home page, as of Wednesday evening, appeared not to have been updated in years). Authors Arthur Miller and William Styron supported the cause of getting his conviction overturned, according to the WNPR website.