“It is so hard to believe, that maybe he didn’t.”Others — the playwright Arthur Miller was one — felt the same and began pushing for a re-examination. At the instigation of Robert Perske, an advocate for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, Friends of Richard Lapointe was formed, and eventually Centurion Ministries, which fights wrongful convictions, became involved. Little, too, was understood about Dandy-Walker syndrome, Mr. Lapointe’s condition, which his supporters said left him easily persuaded and eager to please and would have made him susceptible to manipulation by the police. “The Richard Lapointe case was a top-to-bottom failure of the Connecticut criminal justice system, compounded by some bad luck,” Mr. Condon, who covered the case extensively for The Courant and now writes for The Connecticut Mirror, said by email. Paul Casteleiro, one of the lawyers who took up the case, said Mr. Lapointe’s innocence was obvious to anyone who juxtaposed the crime and the man.

Source: New York Times August 08, 2020 17:37 UTC