Connecticut to award $5.9 million to family of disabled man wrongfully imprisoned for 1992 murder conviction

Connecticut is set to pay nearly $5.9 million to the family of a disabled man who was wrongly imprisoned for more than two decades before he was freed in 2015 when his 1992 conviction in the murder and rape of an 88-year-old grandmother was overturned.

Richard Lapointe, who died at age 74 in 2020, had Dandy-Walker syndrome, a rare congenital brain malformation that his lawyers say was a factor in his false confession. Lapointe was never declared innocent, but his lawyers and the state attorney general’s office eventually agreed to settle after years of legal battles.

The state claims commissioner’s office on Jan. 2 set the money to be awarded to the family, although it still needs to be approved by the legislature. The claims commissioner’s office determines whether people can file lawsuits against the state or receive money under the state’s wrongful incarceration law.

Claims Commissioner Robert Shea Jr. said his office agreed that the award is “reasonable and appropriate.”

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Lapointe’s attorney, Paul Casteleiro, said the award is “a recognition by the state of the wrong it committed in prosecuting and imprisoning an innocent man. Sadly, Richard did not live long enough to witness his final vindication.”

“The award is by no means adequate compensation for what was done to Richard Lapointe,” Casteleiro said Friday, adding that the state destroyed his client’s life “for a crime he did not commit.”

The attorney general’s office said in a statement Friday that it “negotiated a resolution of this claim in the interests of all parties. This reflects that process.”

In 1987, Lapointe’s wife’s grandmother, Bernice Martin, was found stabbed, raped and strangled in her burning apartment in Manchester, Connecticut.

Lapointe was convicted in Martin’s murder in 1992 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release. Key evidence in the case included Lapointe’s confessions during a nearly 10-hour interrogation by Manchester police.

His lawyers argued his mental disability attributed to him giving false confessions and that the confession was coerced without his lawyers present.

The state Supreme Court ruled 4-2 in a 2015 decision that Lapointe was deprived of a fair trial since prosecutors did not disclose notes by a police officer that may have supported an alibi defense. Later that year, prosecutors said new DNA testing did not implicate Lapointe and all the charges were dropped.

Nobody else has been charged in Martin’s killing.

Lapointe was released from custody a short time later and exited the Hartford courthouse wearing a black T-shirt that read “I didn’t do it” as he threw his hands into the air in triumph.

“Of course I didn’t do it,” Lapointe said at the time. “That wasn’t me. I wouldn’t do nothing like that to nobody. I wouldn’t even kill my worst enemy.”

Casteleiro said the case against Lapointe destroyed his family, who shunned him.

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Before Martin’s death, Lapointe and his wife, who has cerebral palsy, “were making a life together. They were doing okay,” Casteleiro said. But after his arrest, his wife divorced him, and he lost all contact with his son, who was young at the time.

After his release from prison, Lapointe began suffering from dementia, was placed in a nursing home in East Hartford and died after a battle with COVID-19, according to his lawyers.

Lapointe has been supported by several advocates, including the groups Friends of Richard Lapointe and Centurion, an organization Casteleiro works for that helps the wrongly convicted.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.