Joette Katz Authors Law.com Article Entitled "Coerced Confessions and the Burden of Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt"

Richard Lapointe’s family is set to receive nearly $6 million for his wrongful incarceration of nearly 25 years for the 1987 rape and murder of his wife’s grandmother—acts he did not commit. In 1996, following a direct appeal, LaPointe’s conviction was affirmed in a decision (5-2) that held the state does not have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt—rather than by a mere preponderance of the evidence—that an admission or a confession obtained by the police through an interrogation was not coerced. State v. Lapointe, 237 Conn. 694.

Then, after several habeas corpus petitions, in 2015, the Connecticut Supreme Court determined (5-1-2) that Lapointe was entitled to a new trial because his first habeas counsel’s representation had been constitutionally deficient in that he had failed to establish that the state had withheld certain exculpatory evidence prior to trial in violation of Brady v. Maryland, the disclosure of which would have supported an alibi defense. Lapointe v. Commissioner of Correction, 316 Conn. 225. Ultimately, following new DNA evidence, charges were dismissed and Lapointe was exonerated. He was released from prison, and soon thereafter Lapointe began to suffer from dementia and he ultimately died from COVID.

In the underlying criminal trial, as noted in the habeas appeal, Lapointe’s counsel had “presented evidence to demonstrate that the petitioner was physically, mentally and emotionally incapable of committing, much less concealing, such a brutal and cold-blooded murder, as evidenced by the testimony of numerous psychologists and other witnesses who had known the petitioner at various stages in his life, including childhood friends, employers, fellow parishioners and other members of the community. According to these witnesses, the petitioner's cognitive and motor skills [were] impaired, apparently the result of Dandy-Walker syndrome, and, as a consequence, he [was] slow-witted, easily confused, child-like and gullible.” As described by his mother-in-law, he had the mentality of an eight-year-old.

Additionally, the habeas opinion recited that at the criminal trial, counsel had argued that Lapointe’s admissions had been “the product of a highly manipulative interrogation of an extremely vulnerable and impaired man, who had spent his entire life accommodating and agreeing with others in an effort to gain favor and to avoid conflict.” The state had argued in response that the statement had been freely given, that Lapointe “was not nearly as compromised intellectually as defense witnesses had made him out to be because he had an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 92, which, the state asserted, was ‘nowhere close to being [even] slightly retarded.’”

Ultimately, the Supreme Court relied on much of the evidence of the defendant’s mental deficiencies to conclude that because the state had deprived Lapointe of the alibi evidence, which the jury readily could have credited, he was entitled to a new trial at which a second jury could consider that exonerating testimony. Its conclusion took “due account of the fact that the state's case against the petitioner was relatively weak, founded as it was on highly questionable admissions.” And while the majority opinion included much about law review and social science articles postdating Lapointe’s trial, (reliance upon which the concurring opinion expressly disavowed) it rested very heavily on the jury trial evidence of Lapointe’s mental impairment, cognitive deficiencies, psychiatric and psychological testimony and the state’s interrogation techniques to conclude that Lapointe was “burdened by an unreliable conviction” and thus entitled to a new trial.

In his direct appeal, nearly 20 years earlier, Lapointe had claimed, inter alia, that the trial court improperly had denied his motion to suppress the oral and written statements that he had given to the police. The Supreme Court rejected those claims and affirmed the conviction. Justice Robert Berdon's dissent focused on the burden of proof necessary to admit a statement into evidence—specifically “the necessity for requiring the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, rather than by a mere preponderance of the evidence, that an admission or a confession obtained by the police through an interrogation was not coerced.” The dissent highlighted the evidence that years later would be repeated by the majority and concurring opinions in the habeas appeal.

The dissent in the criminal appeal also pointed out that: “Every state but one in the northeast has adopted a standard of proof in excess of the preponderance of the evidence to determine the voluntariness of a confession.” Pointing to those states and to other states that had come to the same conclusion adopting the reasonable doubt or clear and convincing standard, Justice Berdon implored his colleagues not to place a confession on the same level as any other evidential ruling during the course of a trial. “I am unwilling to accept the risk of an erroneous determination that the confession was voluntary when in fact it may have been coerced. If we permit the prosecution to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that a confession was voluntary, then, to paraphrase Mr. Justice Harlan, (in Lego v. Twomey) we must be prepared to justify the view that it is no more serious in general to admit involuntary confessions than it is to exclude voluntary confessions.... Compelled self-incrimination is so alien to the American sense of justice that I see no way that such a view could ever be justified.” In State v. James, 237 Conn. 390, Justice Berdon argued that “requiring a reasonable doubt standard would not only elevate to its proper position the constitutional right not to be compelled to give evidence against oneself, it would also be consistent with the constitutional requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt in order to find guilt.”

Obviously, at the underlying criminal trial the new DNA evidence was not available, and the Brady violation had not yet been uncovered. Because the materiality of Brady material depends almost entirely on the value of the evidence relative to the other evidence introduced by the state, as the Supreme Court acknowledged in the habeas appeal, Lapointe’s case to the jury was predicated predominantly (if not principally) on his statements to the police. I cannot help but wonder whether, had the majority agreed with Justice Berdon nearly 20 years earlier, and considering the very evidence the court later relied upon in the habeas appeal, Lapointe’s story might have turned out differently. Maybe there’s still time for others to revisit the issue.

Copyright 2025. ALM Global, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Originally published by Connecticut Law Tribune and Law.com [https://www.law.com/ctlawtribune/2025/01/30/coerced-confessions-and-the-burden-of-proof-beyond-reasonable-doubt/], reprinted by permission.