State Dropping Manslaughter Charge in Assisted Suicide Case

The state is dropping the most serious charge against a Massachusetts man accused of assisting in the death of his ailing father, a retired West Hartford lawyer and former interim Superior Court judge.

Bruce F. Brodigan of Somerville, MA, who had pleaded not guilty to second-degree manslaughter, also will be allowed to apply for the state’s accelerated rehabilitation program on three lesser charges.

Hartford Superior Court Judge Arthur P. Gold accepted the state’s decision Tuesday and said in court documents that the will be “reopened and pursued” if Brodigan is not successful in the pretrial intervention program.

Defense attorney Hubert J. Santos and assistant state’s attorney Thomas Garcia signed off on the agreement.

Santos and Garcia did not respond to requests for comment.

Brodigan, 56, was scheduled to return to Superior Court May 24. If he is found eligible for accelerated rehabilitation, he is expected to plead guilty to tampering with evidence, making a false statement and interfering with police. He remained free on a $250,000 bond.

Brodigan’s father, George D. Brodigan, died Sept. 14 in his bed at 50 Timberwood Road, said. He was 82 and had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease about four years earlier, police said.

He later acknowledged to investigators that he and his husband, Tom Grasso, were in the bedroom when the elder Brodigan allegedly took his life with a lethal cocktail of pills and alcohol, police said.

In a 12-page arrest warrant, West Hartford police Det. Dawn Lascari said Brodigan revealed that “his father confided in him that he planned to take his own life before he became completely incapacitated.”

Brodigan died of an overdose of alcohol and amitriptyline, which was prescribed to Bruce Brodigan, police said. The state Medical Examiner’s Office was unable to determine the manner of death.

“Bruce described witnessing George Brodigan’s suicide as the ‘most beautiful, loving moment I had with my father’ during his life,” Lascari said in the affidavit.

Brodigan turned himself in to West Hartford police on Jan. 5.

A 1969 Connecticut statute made assisted suicide a Class C felony.

George Brodigan was a Marine Corps veteran who started his own law firm in 1975 after many years in corporate litigation for Travelers Insurance Cos., according to his obituary. He was an interim Superior Court judge in 1985 and ’86.