BENNINGTON — State police have charged a Bennington criminal defendant with obstruction of justice, accusing him of lying about his health condition over a 22-year-period to evade prosecution on a child sexual assault case.
Leonard Forte, 79, has been cited to appear in Bennington Superior criminal court on Wednesday to answer to two counts of obstruction of justice, according to a Vermont State Police release.
Forte has three pending charges of sexual assault, dating back to 1987. A former investigator with New York’s Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, he is accused of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl at his vacation home in Landgrove.
In 1988, he was found guilty on all charges by a Bennington County jury. He appealed the conviction, and the presiding judge ordered a new trial, saying the female prosecutor had prejudiced the jury by being too emotional.
Between 1989 and 1996, the Vermont Attorney General’s Office twice went to the state Supreme Court to have the new trial order set aside and to get Forte’s conviction reinstated, according to the news release issued Wednesday afternoon.
When these efforts didn’t succeed, the attorney general’s office refiled the sexual assault charges in 1997. Forte, who at that time said he was waiting for a heart transplant, claimed he was too sick to stand trial. The state and Forte agreed he would provide the prosecution with a medical update every six months.
From 1997 until November 2019, the state said it relied on Forte’s medical records — including his admission to hospice in 2016 — that he was physically unable to travel back to Vermont to be retried. But a November 2019 investigative report in USA Today “called into question Forte’s claims of his dire physical condition.” At this point, Forte had moved from Long Island, N.Y. to LaBelle, Fla.
The VSP Bureau of Criminal Investigations, in collaboration with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, investigated Forte’s claims of physical incapacity. “Investigators determined that Forte misrepresented his health claims and his inability to travel to Vermont,” state police said, explaining how his new charges came about.
Lead defense attorney Susan McManus declined to comment on Forte’s new charges Wednesday, saying the paperwork had not yet been filed in court as of the end of the business day.
It’s unclear how Forte will appear in court next week. At his last hearing, on June 3, his attorneys told the Bennington Superior Court that he was too ill to participate. He apparently suffered a fall at home, which led to a multiday hospitalization, then a stay at a nursing and rehabilitation facility.
ISSUES PENDING IN COURT
His attorneys requested an evaluation of his mental competency following the fall, which presiding judge Cortland Corsones has granted, according to court records.
Meanwhile, the defense and prosecution are still waiting for the judge’s ruling on Forte’s request to have his decades-old felony charges dismissed. In a three-part hearing held between March and June, he presented evidence to back up his claims that he is too sick to stand trial.
Two doctors who testified for the defense said Forte has significantly reduced heart function, a large scar in his heart, a leaky valve and an abnormal heartbeat. They said Forte also has artery disease, lung disease, Stage 3 chronic kidney disease, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety, depression and has experienced a stroke.
The attorney general’s office, which is prosecuting Forte, believes he is trying to evade justice. The lead prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Linda Purdy, has repeatedly characterized his claims of physical incapacity as an “enterprise of deceit and lies.”
The state presented evidence that included surveillance video by Florida police, which captured Forte doing activities outside the house in January, when he claimed to be homebound.
Prosecutors also said Forte had traveled with his wife around and outside Florida multiple times, including an instance when he told the court he was in hospice care but was actually in New York City.
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