The state Supreme Court has issued a decision that will keep convicted killer George Leniart in prison while legal issues are considered by a lower court.

New London prosecutor Stephen M. Carney said he is reviewing the four separate opinions issued by the high court justices but for now it appears to be good news for the state.

Leniart, now 53, is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for kidnapping, raping and fatally strangling 15-year-old April Dawn Pennington in May 1996. In 2010, a jury in New London Superior Court found him guilty of murder and three counts of capital felony, even though the victim's body was never recovered.

The victim, a sophomore at Montville High School, had disappeared after kissing her parents goodnight, putting a teddy bear under the sheets of her bed to make it appear occupied and sneaking out of the family home on Orchard Drive.

Her family has since moved to Pleasant Garden, N.C., and has continued to monitor the case from afar.

"Even in his appeal, there was never deniability that he committed the crime," said April's father, Walter Pennington, after learning of Friday's decision. "In my mind, he's guilty as sin and he should pay for it before he does it to somebody else."

State police detectives considered Leniart, a convicted sex offender, a grave threat to society and celebrated his conviction. Investigators had never recovered the victim's body, but worked for 12 years to build a case against Leniart.

At his sentencing, Judge Barbara Bailey Jongbloed called Leniart  "a sexual predator in the true sense of the word." Carney, who had tried the case with prosecutor John P. Gravalec-Pannone and argued the appeals, said at sentencing, "The state will be here for all time to assure that for all time the defendant will not be released."

In June 2016, the Appellate Court overturned Leniart's conviction and ordered a new trial. The appellate judges wrote that the trial judge, Barbara Bailey Jongbloed, should have allowed the defense to introduce a videotaped interview of Patrick "PJ" Allain, a high school classmate of the victim who was with her and Leniart on the night of the crimes. The appeals court judges also wrote that the trial judge improperly excluded defense testimony from an expert on the reliability of jailhouse informant testimony.

The Supreme Court accepted the state's appeal of those issues and agreed to re-examine the Appellate Court's decision on the "corpus delecti" rule, which prohibits introduction of a confession unless the prosecution introduces independent evidence to prove the crime actually occurred.

Seven justices heard arguments in the Leniart case in May 2018 and on Friday issued four separate opinions.

The majority opinion states that the Appellate Court incorrectly reversed his conviction. The majority opinion was written by Justice Raheem L. Mullins with concurrence from Chief Justice Richard A. Robinson, Justice Maria Araujo Kahn and Senior Justice Christine S. Vertefeuille. Kahn wrote a separate concurrence addressing the polygraph issue that was raised on appeal. Justice Richard N. Palmer, joined by Justice Andrew J. McDonald, wrote an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part with the majority.

Justice Gregory T. D'Auria also wrote a decision concurring in part and dissenting in part with the majority.

"The Supreme Court reversed the Appellate Court on certain issues and has told that court to consider the defendant's remaining claims," Carney said.

On the issue of corpus delecti, the justices wrote in the majority opinion that there was sufficient corroborating evidence, independent of confessions, of the victim's death and of the credibility of those confessions for the jury to have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The justices wrote that the Appellate Court had incorrectly concluded the trial judge's exclusion of a pre-polygraph video recording of key witness Allain was a harmful error.

Though polygraphs are inadmissible in court, Leniart's attorneys argued the interview would have helped the jury determine Allain's credibility. During the interview a state trooper told Allain the test would determine whether he would help the state catch "the big fish," Leniart, and be treated leniently, or would be fully prosecuted.

The justices wrote it was "a close call."

"The defendant failed to meet his burden of demonstrating that the exclusion of the video substantially affected the verdict because the polygrapher had repeatedly emphasized the importance of telling the truth while making only infrequent, potentially troubling remarks," the opinion says.

Also, the court wrote, Allain's testimony under cross-examination had "provided strong evidence of the powerful incentives that he had to cooperate with the state."

The majority wrote that the Appellate Court incorrectly concluded the trial judge abused her discretion in precluding the defense from eliciting testimony from Alexandra Natapoff, a renowned expert on the reliability of jailhouse informants, because the subject matter was within the general knowledge of the jury.

The court did, however, determine the trial judge incorrectly concluded Natapoff's testimony would have invaded the "exclusive province of the jury" to determine the credibility of witnesses, since Natapoff admitted she had no knowledge of this particular case and would not be commenting on the testimony of specific witnesses.

The court determined that the Appellate Court should now consider Leniart's constitutional claim that he was denied due process with the exclusion of Natapoff's testimony and the pre-polygraph interview. The Appellate Court had only considered evidentiary issues in rendering its earlier decision, the court wrote.

The Leniart decisions were published as state police are attempting to solve the suspected homicide of Jennifer Farber Dulos, a mother of five who disappeared from her New Canaan home  on May 24. Her body has not been found despite extensive  searches in several towns, but troopers are attempting to build a case against her estranged husband, Fotis Dulos. He is represented by Norman A. Pattis, the same attorney who had battled on behalf of Leniart at his trial in 2010.

Pattis could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Leniart case would be difficult, though not impossible, to try 23 years after the crime occurred. Two of the most compelling witnesses would presumably be available to testify: Allain, who is currently incarcerated for a violation of probation, and a woman who in 1995, at age 13, had been sexually assaulted and strangled by Leniart under similar circumstances.

Allain had offered chilling testimony at the trial that he and Leniart had sexually assaulted the teen in Leniart's pickup truck after Pennington sneaked out of her parents' home.

Allain testified that when Leniart dropped him off at home, the girl was still in the truck. He said Leniart told him the next day that he had killed April and disposed of her body.

The rape victim had testified that when she was 13 years old, Leniart, who called himself "Chris," raped and strangled her in a trailer at his parents' home on Massapeag Side Road in Montville. She said she and the then 30-year-old man drank together for several hours while waiting for her boyfriend — Allain — and that she attempted to leave when she found out her boyfriend would not be coming.

April Pennington's friends and family often post photos, thoughts and memories of her on a Facebook page, Remembering April Dawn Pennington.

k.florin@theday.com