A 1995 murder case without a body that relies on veteran informant. It wil be interesting to see whether the court permits the defense to call its expert witness on "snitches."
Tad
Lawyers are set for battle in cold-case murder trial
By Karen Florin
Publication: The Day
Published 02/07/2010 12:00 AMUpdated 02/07/2010 02:59 AM0
The state is ready to take its best run at murder suspect George M. Leniart, bringing him to trial Monday despite not having found a victim's body and with a case that relies heavily on jailhouse informants.
Leniart's defense attorney is prepared also. He gave signs during jury selection that he will assert there is no proof a murder even occurred and that he will aggressively cross-examine the jailhouse witnesses, whom he calls "snitches."
Leniart, 44, of Uncasville, is accused of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing 15-year-old April Dawn Pennington of Montville in May 1996. A panel of 12 jurors and four alternates is in place in New London Superior Court, and Judge Barbara B. Jongbloed is presiding.
On the first day of the trial, prosecutors John P. Gravalec-Pannone and Stephen M. Carney are expected to set the scene for the jury with testimony from one of April's family members and from the police officers who first responded to the report that April was missing.
Later in the week, the state plans to call on Patrick "PJ" Allain, a convicted rapist who has told police many times over the years that he and Leniart were with April Pennington on the night she disappeared.
State police immediately suspected Leniart, who was out on bond for the rape and near-strangulation of another teenager when April crawled out the bedroom window of her parents' home on Orchard Drive and disappeared. Detectives scoured the region for April's body without success and conducted hundreds of interviews.
Leniart was convicted of other sex crimes, and the detectives had information from Allain about the events of May 29, 1996. They kept a close eye on Leniart but could never build a case strong enough to prosecute him until several jailhouse informants told them Leniart had confessed to the murder.
One of those informants is Kenneth Buckingham, an accused serial bank robber from Old Lyme. He told authorities in early 2008 that Leniart, his one-time cellmate at Corrigan Correctional Institution, had confessed to killing a teenage girl. Buckingham said Leniart, who was again incarcerated on rape charges, got upset after another prisoner saw a TV news report about Leniart and started calling him a "ripper" or rapist. Leniart allegedly told Buckingham he would rather be known as a murderer, so he described how he strangled Pennington.
Buckingham is not a newly minted informant. In 2007, he testified at the murder trial of Richard Read, who was accused of fatally shooting a Bristol man. The prosecutor in that case said Buckingham's testimony helped convict Read, who is serving a 50-year prison sentence.
Leniart's attorney, Norman A. Pattis, represented Read, so this will be his second time cross-examining Buckingham. Pattis has indicated he wants "another piece" of Buckingham and is seeking the court's permission to solicit expert testimony from Alexandra Natapoff, a Loyola Law School professor and expert on jailhouse informants. Pattis said he contacted Natapoff in Los Angeles after reading her recently published book, "Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice."
The state, meanwhile, has asked the court to allow testimony about Leniart's previous convictions, including the rape and near-strangulation of a 13-year-old girl. Allain was involved in that crime, too, and the state will argue that the similarities in the allegations merit the jury's attention.
Though Leniart is charged with three counts of capital felony and one count of murder, the state is not seeking the death penalty because there is no body.
Posted by Thomas A. DiBiase, No Body Guy