State Supreme Court denies Leniart 2nd appeal

He is serving life for 1996 kidnapping, sexual assault, murder of April Dawn Pennington

The Connecticut Supreme Court has refused to take up, for the second time, an appeal in the case of George Leniart, who is serving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for kidnapping, raping and fatally strangling 15- year- old Montville resident April Dawn Pennington in May 1996.

Leniart, 54, is incarcerated at the Cheshire Correctional Institution. He has been pursuing every avenue of appeal since he was convicted in 2010 of three counts of capital felony and one count of murder. Leniart still has a pending habeas appeal that is scheduled for trial in 2023.

His case had first been argued before the Supreme Court in 2018 after the Appellate Court reversed his conviction. The high court’s decision in 2019 kept Leniart in prison while the Appellate Court reconsidered a portion of the case.

The latest effort involved an appeal of a June 2020 state Appellate Court decision indicating Leniart had not been denied his constitutional right during his trial in New London Superior Court, when Judge Barbara Bailey Jongbloed ruled that a 90- minute video of an interview of a key witness was inadmissible.

The Supreme Court issued an order Nov. 10 indicating that it was denying Leniart’s petition for certification to appeal from the Appellate Court. His attorney, Lauren Weisfeld, declined to comment.

In the appeal, Leniart’s attorney had argued that showing the jury the recorded interview of Patrick “PJ” Allain, a high school classmate of Pennington, conducted by state Trooper Timothy Madden prior to a polygraph examination, would have helped jurors assess his credibility. During the pre-polygraph interview, Madden suggested that Allain, a potential suspect in the teen’s murder, could be convicted and sentenced to death but assured him that he would receive favorable treatment if he cooperated with the police.

At Leniart’s trial, Allain admitted he was testifying for the state in an effort to have his own sentence reduced for an unrelated sexual assault. Allain was released from prison early, but is now back in state custody serving a fouryear sentence for violation of probation, according to Department of Correction records.

Judge Robert J. Devlin wrote in the appellate decision, also signed by Judge Michael R. Sheldon, that Leniart’s attorney, Norman A. Pattis, had conducted a lengthy cross- examination of Allain that enabled the jury to assess Allain’s credibility.