Brain-Damaged Man Wins New Trial In Two-Decades-Old Killing
Source: NPR
Brain-Damaged Man Wins New Trial In Two-Decades-Old Killing
03:36 am October 2, 2012
by Joseph Shapiro
Richard Lapointe confessed in 1989 that he stabbed, raped and killed his wife's 88-year-old grandmother two years earlier. But in the 23 years since, experts in criminal justice have come to better understand how sometimes people make false confessions — especially someone with brain damage, like Lapointe. On Monday, Connecticut's state Appellate Court ordered a new trial, saying prosecutors wrongly withheld potentially important evidence.
"It's one of the iconic cases in the annals of false confessions," said Steve Drizin, legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions and a law professor at Northwestern University Law School.
When police in Manchester, Conn., asked Lapointe to come to the station house — just before he was planning on going to a Fourth of July picnic with his wife and their son — officers took him to a small room with charts on the walls. One chart listed types of evidence: "Fingerprints," "DNA," "Pubic Hair." After each item was a big red check mark.
It was all phony; just a trick to coax a confession.
Read more: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/10/01/162125183/brain-damaged-man-wins-new-trial-in-two-decades-old-killing
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