|
Location |
Defendant(s) |
Date of Alleged Crime |
| Hartford County,
CT |
Richard Lapointe |
Mar 8, 1987 (Manchester) |
|
After an
unrecorded nine and one-half hour interrogation, 43-year-old Richard Lapointe confessed
in 1989 to
the 1987 murder of 88-year-old Bernice Martin, his wife's grandmother. Lapointe, a mentally handicapped adult,
signed three contradictory confessions to raping, stabbing, and strangling
Martin. No physical evidence linked Lapointe to the crime or
corroborated any of his incriminating statements. The confessions
contradicted the facts of the crime.
Lapointe
confessed to moving Martin's body, which weighed 160 pounds, yet surgery
he had made him incapable of lifting more than 50 lbs. A timeline of
Lapointe's activities makes it virtually impossible for him to have
committed the crime. The killer's gloves were left behind at the crime
scene, but they were too large to fit Lapointe's hands. Eyewitnesses saw a
large man who did not match Lapointe's description running away from the
crime scene; they insisted that this man was not Lapointe. Lapointe was
convicted of the murder and is serving life without parole plus sixty
years. (www.friendsofrichardlapointe.com) [9/05] |
| Hartford County,
CT |
Ricky Hammond |
Nov 30, 1987 |
|
Ricky
Hammond was
convicted in 1990 of kidnapping and sexual assault. The victim
identified him as her assailant and she even identified his car and its
contents, using apparently police supplied information. A police lab
analyst inferred that hair samples of the assailant matched Hammond.
Hammond had an uncorroborated alibi and had altered several details of his
alibi. Pre-trial blood
and DNA tests exonerated Hammond, but at trial, prosecutor John Malone
claimed the evidence had been contaminated, a claim an appellate court
deemed highly improbable. The state had other
evidence at trial that could have been – but was not – tested. After
further DNA tests were performed, Hammond was retried
and acquitted in 1992. (CBJ) (FJDB) (IPT) (DH) [7/05] |
| Hartford County, CT |
Miguel Roman |
Jan 2, 1988 (Hartford) |
|
Miguel Roman was convicted of murdering his girlfriend, 17-year-old Carmen
Lopez. Three days after relatives last heard from her on Jan. 2, 1988,
Lopez was found bound and strangled in an apartment on Nelson Court in
Hartford. She was six-months pregnant at the time. Roman's
conviction was based on circumstantial evidence and testimony from Lopez's
friends and family, and despite testimony from an FBI investigator about
tests that eliminated him as a suspect. It was alleged that Roman
wanted to kill his unborn baby. DNA tests performed years later showed
that he was not the person who murdered Lopez and was not the father of her
unborn baby. The tests implicated another man, Pedro Miranda, who had
been dating Lopez's cousin at the time of the murder. Miranda is also
accused of killing of 16-year-old Rosa Valentin in 1986 and 13-year-old
Mayra Cruz in 1987. Roman served 18 years in prison before being
released in 2009. (NB
Herald) (NBC
CT) [5/09] |
| Hartford County,
CT |
James Calvin Tillman |
Jan 22, 1988 |
|
James Calvin
Tillman was
convicted of rape because a victim making a cross-racial identification
picked out his picture from a series of photos. Tillman was released in
2006 after a DNA test excluded him as the rapist. In 2007, both houses
of the Connecticut legislature voted unanimously to award Tillman $5 million
for his wrongful imprisonment. (AP
News) (IP)
[9/06] |
| Hartford County,
CT |
Mark Reid |
Nov 8, 1996 |
|
Mark
Reid was
convicted of kidnapping and rape. The victim was abducted in the early
morning hours while walking along Burnside Ave. in East Hartford, then
assaulted in adjacent Martin Park. The victim, a white woman, initially
identified her assailant as a light-skinned black man, 5'7" with freckles,
but Reid was 6' without noticeable freckles. The victim said her assailant
put on a condom before raping her. A hair analyst identified foreign pubic
hairs found on the victim to be of Negroid origin and testified they matched
Reid to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty. DNA tests exonerated
Reid in 2003 and showed the foreign hairs came from a Caucasian. (IP)
(Appeal) |
|
Hartford County, CT |
Michael Cyr |
Feb 28, 2005 (Manchester) |
|
While
intoxicated, Michael Cyr had remotely started his car and sat in the driver's seat
with the driver's side door open. He was subsequently arrested for “driving
while intoxicated,” although he never drove the car, nor did he put keys in
the ignition. After unsuccessfully trying to dismiss the charge, Cyr made a
conditional no contest plea to the charge, which allowed him to challenge it
later. He was sentenced three years imprisonment with two of the years
suspended, three years probation, and a $2000 fine. In 2007, an appeals
court reviewed the conviction. It noted that the state had produced no
evidence that Cyr had the car's ignition keys on him or that Cyr's car was
capable of motion without the keys. It then reversed the conviction, citing
insufficient evidence that Cyr was operating a motor vehicle under the
meaning of the Connecticut “driving while intoxicated” statute. (Connecticut
v. Cyr) [1/08] |
| Litchfield County, CT |
Peter Reilly |
Sept
28, 1973 (Falls Village) |
|
Peter
Reilly was
convicted of killing and mutilating his mother, Barbara Gibbons, after being
coerced by the state police into confessing. Playwright Arthur Miller,
author William Styron, and the NY Times came to his defense. The prosecutor
handling Reilly's second trial discovered that the former prosecutor's files
contained documents showing that Reilly arrived at the scene of the murder
only minutes before the police and thus could not have committed the crime.
Reilly was cleared in 1976. (InjusticeBusters)
[9/05] |
| New
Haven County, CT |
William B. Coleman |
2002 (Waterbury) |
|
William B.
Coleman was
convicted of raping his wife. His wife made the allegation after Coleman
filed for sole custody of their children, and the wife had hired a divorce
lawyer. Coleman's lawyers argued that his wife made the rape allegation as
a ploy to gain sole custody of their two children. The conviction was based
solely on wife's testimony. Coleman was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment,
sentence to be suspended after he serves 8 years. (TruthInJustice)
[7/05] |
| New
London County, CT |
Delphine Bertrand |
Dec 24, 1943 (Old Lyme) |
|
Delphine
Bertrand and
three men visited James Streeto on the night of his murder. Bertrand and one
of the men then went to have sex in another part of the house. While they
were gone, the two remaining men killed Streeto. Bertrand pleaded guilty to
manslaughter in April 1944 because she preferred being branded a killer than
to having her sex life revealed during trial. In 1946, after the two actual
killers confessed, the indictment against Bertrand was dismissed. (FJDB)
(ISI) (DH) [12/07] |
| New
London County, CT |
Julie Amero |
Oct 19, 2004 |
|
While serving as a substitute
teacher at the Kelley Middle School in Norwich, Julie Amero accessed the classroom
computer. The computer was infested with adware, spyware, and other
malware. It also had a browser that did not protect against pop-ups. While
accessing an innocent web site, the computer launched into an endless cycle
of pop-up window ads for porn sites, that was impossible to get out of. The
pop-ups displayed images of naked men and women, couples performing sexual
acts, and "bodily fluids." Up to 10 students saw the pop-ups, even though
Amero tried to shield them by pushing them away or blocking their view.
Amero reported the incident to others, including an assistant principal, who
told her not to worry.
Amero was
later prosecuted for the incident and convicted in 2007 of multiple felonies
involving the endangerment of children. Norwich Detective Mark Lounsbury, a
computer crimes officer, testified as an expert witness for the
prosecution. He maintained that Amero was intentionally surfing for
pornography and must have "physically clicked" on pornographic links to
unleash the pornographic pictures. Lounsbury's testimony that pop-ups
require clicks contradicts the experience of millions of computer users.
Lounsbury admitted under cross-examination that the prosecution never even
checked the computer for malware.
Following her conviction, but
prior to sentencing, the computer was checked by the Connecticut State
Patrol. It determined that the pop-ups were caused by malicious adware
that infected the computer before Amero had access to it.
In June 2007, the trial judge overturned Amero's conviction on the grounds
that the jury relied on false testimony. Amero had faced up to 40
years of imprisonment. (Norwich Bulletin 1-6-07) (FJDB) [2/07] |
|