See also: Convicted killer of April Dawn Pennington fights back from prison5-23-2014 Connecticut:
A convicted killer wants to get his name off the state's sex offender registry. George Leniart, 48, is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. He was convicted in 2010 of killing 15-year-old April Dawn Pennington of Montville.
Leniart's attorney, Jennifer Smith of New Haven, filed a request on his behalf this week with the New London Superior Court to remove him from the sex offender list. Leniart is on the list as a result of his conviction for a November 1995 sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl in Montville.
In a plea deal, Leniart pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor and was sentenced to five years in prison. Leniart's request says that because second-degree assault is classified by state law as a non-violent sexual offense, his name should be listed on the offender registry for 10 years after his release from prison.
Leniart was freed in 2001, his request said; therefore his name should have been removed from the list in 2011. Reached Thursday by telephone, Smith declined to discuss why the request was filed. If granted, it will have little practical effect, because Leniart is held at Cheshire Correctional Institution and has a life sentence.
The sex assault case played a key role at Leniart's February 2010 murder trial when the victim, then 28, took the witness stand. The woman tearfully told the jury that when she was 13, she met with Leniart, then 29, at a trailer on his property. They drank together for hours, she said, then he forced himself on her and choked her to near unconsciousness.
The woman did not have to testify in her own case because of the plea bargain Leniart and prosecutors agreed to. She testified at Leniart's murder trial because what prosecutors said happened to Pennington was similar to what she said happened to her.
Pennington disappeared in May 1996, about six months after the earlier incident, after she sneaked out of her parents' home to meet with a classmate named Patrick “PJ” Allain, then 16, and Leniart.
The woman in the sexual assault case testified at the murder trial that she was then Allain's girlfriend and that she was supposed to meet Allain and Leniart on the night she was sexually assaulted, but that Allain did not show up. ..Source.. by John Barry
No comments:
Post a Comment
We use the Disqus Commenting system, please wait for it to load. Also, comments are moderated, please stick to the issue of the post, as we are trying to have an intelligent, relevant discussion which develops the post. Comments deviating from topic of post will not be posted. Thanks