Kent Mawhinney: Plea Deal, Sentence, and Law License Suspension

Former Connecticut attorney Kent Mawhinney’s plea deal in the Jennifer Farber Dulos case was entered on June 13, 2025, in Stamford Superior Court, when the state dropped its conspiracy to commit murder charge and Mawhinney pleaded guilty under the Alford doctrine to a single misdemeanor count of interfering with an officer. Judge Alex Hernandez sentenced him to 11 months, an amount already covered by his pretrial detention, so he left court without any additional time to serve.¹

What Mawhinney Pleaded To

The misdemeanor charge rested on false statements Mawhinney made to police about his contacts with Fotis Dulos on May 24, 2019, the day Jennifer Farber Dulos disappeared. In a June 2019 interview, Mawhinney told investigators he had no contact with Dulos that day. Phone records later showed Dulos called him at roughly 7:47 p.m. that evening, during the window in which Dulos and his girlfriend Michelle Troconis were allegedly disposing of evidence.²

Because the interfering-with-an-officer charge is a misdemeanor, Mawhinney had to waive the statute of limitations to accept the deal.³ The Alford doctrine let him enter the guilty plea without admitting all of the prosecution’s allegations; he acknowledged only that the state had enough evidence to convict him on that count if the case went to a jury.

Why the Conspiracy Charge Was Dropped

Stamford State’s Attorney Paul Ferencek told the court it was “the state’s belief we do not have sufficient evidence to prove the charge of conspiracy to commit murder beyond a reasonable doubt.”² The 7:47 p.m. phone call between Mawhinney and Fotis Dulos existed in the records, but Ferencek acknowledged that “the contents of the communication were never able to be determined.”

Fotis Dulos, who had been charged with murder, felony murder, and kidnapping, died by suicide in January 2020. In a note written before his death, he stated that both Troconis and Mawhinney had “nothing to do with Jennifer’s disappearance.”⁴ Jennifer Farber Dulos’s body has never been found, though a probate judge declared her legally dead in January 2024.⁵

The Evidence That Had Supported the Conspiracy Charge

Mawhinney was arrested on the conspiracy charge on January 7, 2020, the same day Fotis Dulos was charged with murder. Bond was set at $2 million.⁶ Mawhinney was a Bloomfield civil attorney, a personal friend of Dulos, and had represented him in unrelated civil matters. The arrest warrant drew on several strands of evidence:

Two pages of handwritten “alibi scripts” written by Fotis Dulos and Michelle Troconis, found during a June 2019 search of Dulos’s home, contained Mawhinney’s name.⁷
Troconis told detectives Mawhinney was at a meeting with Dulos at the Fore Group offices on the morning of May 24, 2019, and instructed her to answer an incoming call on Dulos’s phone. Troconis herself gave investigators three different versions of that morning’s events.⁶⁷
Roughly a week before Jennifer disappeared, two members of the Windsor Rod and Gun Club — which Mawhinney had helped found on wooded property in East Granby — discovered a freshly dug hole on the property, covered by grill grates and concealed with branches. Inside were a blue tarp and two unopened bags of lime. Mawhinney had contacted a current member weeks earlier asking how to get back onto the property. When state police searched the site with K9 units in August 2019, the hole had been filled back in and no human remains, tarp, or lime bags were recovered.⁸⁹

Prosecutors concluded the combined evidence fell short of what a jury would need to convict beyond a reasonable doubt. The Dulos family, in a statement through spokesperson Carrie Luft, agreed that the arrest warrant contained evidence “sufficient to bring that charge” but said the burden of proof at trial was “great by necessity.”¹⁰

How the 11-Month Sentence Was Already Served

Mawhinney’s time in custody accumulated in two stretches. After his January 2020 arrest, he could not post the $2 million bond and was held pretrial. He was eventually released on bond with GPS ankle monitoring. In September 2022, a probation officer in Derby noticed the strap of his monitor appeared to have been cut during a mandatory check-in, and the monitoring company reported “strap tamper” damage on both sides. Mawhinney said he had trouble charging it, but the officer found no evidence of a charging problem. A judge increased his bond to $1.5 million and returned him to custody.¹¹ He later posted the new bond and was placed on house arrest, a condition lifted in May 2023.¹²

Across those two stretches, Mawhinney spent 11 months and 26 days in custody, which fully satisfied the 11-month sentence Judge Hernandez imposed at the plea hearing.¹³ His defense attorneys also noted at the hearing that he had worn an ankle monitor for nearly five years.

What Mawhinney and His Lawyers Said

Outside the courthouse, Mawhinney told reporters he did not know where Jennifer Farber Dulos is. “No. If I did, I would tell them,” he said. “Obviously, it’s a tragedy. But, you know, I have as much responsibility for that tragedy as you do.”¹⁴

Defense attorney Lee Gold said Mawhinney had been “vindicated.” Co-counsel Jeffrey Kestenband said the state had “acknowledged in court that there was insufficient evidence to prove the conspiracy allegation.”³

Reactions From the Families

The Farber Dulos family, through Carrie Luft, expressed “full support of the state’s attorneys’ decision” and thanked prosecutors Paul Ferencek, Michelle Manning, and Sean McGuinness. The statement said another “lengthy, complex jury trial would come at a substantial cost, financial as well as emotional, to all involved,” and emphasized that dropping the charge “does not absolve Kent Mawhinney of conspiracy to murder.” The family renewed a plea for anyone with information about Jennifer’s remains to come forward, calling her death a “systematically planned, ruthlessly executed murder.”¹⁰

Michelle Troconis’s family called the decision “deeply disturbing and unjust.” They characterized it as “selective prosecution” and said it reinforced their view that the case had been about “scapegoating Michelle from the start.”¹⁵ Troconis was convicted at trial in March 2024 on conspiracy to commit murder and evidence-tampering counts and sentenced to 20 years, suspended after 14 and a half years.¹⁶

Law License Suspension

Mawhinney’s Connecticut law license had been under an interim suspension since January 28, 2020, imposed shortly after his arrest because his incarceration prevented him from serving clients.¹⁷ In December 2025, Judge Patrick L. Carroll II formally suspended his license for one year, retroactive to June 13, 2025 — the date of the plea. The court found by clear and convincing evidence that the guilty plea to interfering with an officer constituted a “serious crime” under the rules governing attorney conduct.¹⁸ At the plea hearing, Mawhinney confirmed he does not intend to practice law again.¹

1
WFSB. Kent Mawhinney Returns to Court Amid Ongoing Jennifer Dulos Case
2
Connecticut News 12. State Not Moving Forward With Conspiracy Charge for Kent Mawhinney
3
Stamford Advocate. Jennifer Dulos New Canaan Death Kent Mawhinney
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ABC News. Fotis Dulos Alleged Suicide Note Leaves Questions
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WTNH. Attorney Charged With Violating Protective Order
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NBC Connecticut. Jennifer Dulos Case: Who Is Attorney Kent Mawhinney
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CBS News. Jennifer Dulos Fotis Dulos Alibi
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NBC Connecticut. Mawhinney Arrest Warrant Details Strange Find at Gun Club
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Oxygen. Kent Mawhinney Linked to Makeshift Grave in Jennifer Dulos Murder Case
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WTNH. Jennifer Farber Dulos Family Releases Statement After Kent Mawhinney Pleads Guilty to Lesser Charge
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Hartford Courant. Kent Mawhinney Back in Custody After Allegedly Tampering With GPS Monitor
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Stamford Advocate. Jennifer Dulos Kent Mawhinney GPS Monitor Removed
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Brooklyn News 12. State Not Moving Forward With Conspiracy Charge for Kent Mawhinney
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CBS News. Jennifer Dulos Kent Mawhinney Plea Deal
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NBC Connecticut. Kent Mawhinney Jennifer Dulos Disappearance
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CBS News. Michelle Troconis Sentencing
17
NBC Connecticut. Attorney Charged in Dulos Case Suspended From Practicing Law
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Hartford Courant. CT Attorney Connected to Jennifer Farber Dulos Case Has Law License Suspended