A Hampden District Court judge set $5,000 bail Wednesday for a 40-year-old West Springfield man accused of raping and kidnapping a homeless woman over the summer, rejecting prosecutors' bid to keep him locked up while he awaits trial. Mihail Lujan was already out on bail at the time of the alleged attack, after the Supreme Judicial Court overturned his 2023 rape conviction involving a nonverbal nursing home patient.
Judge Bethzaida Sanabria-Vega denied the request to revise or revoke Lujan's bail during a hearing on October 7, as reported by MassLive. Lujan's attorney, Northampton lawyer Peter Alexander Slepchuk, said the court reviewed 18 exhibits — including police reports, an affidavit from the alleged victim, and recorded interviews of the complainant and her boyfriend — before reaching its decision. Slepchuk told the outlet the complainant's allegations are not credible. MassLive reported that Lujan had not yet posted bail.
What the Homeless Woman Told Police
According to the police report cited by MassLive, a homeless woman told West Springfield police she met Lujan near the tent she shared with her partner, and that he offered the couple money and food. The woman said Lujan later offered her a shower in his room at the River Inn Motel.
The woman alleged Lujan forced sexual contact during that shower offer, grabbing her hair and forcing his penis into her mouth, the police report states. She said she bit him in response and threatened to stick her fingers in his eyes and jump out the window. She also alleged that after a second shower offer, she saw Lujan without his pants and fled. The report also states Lujan told the woman she owed him for allegedly giving her partner $20.
A Facebook Search Revealed His Past
The woman learned Lujan's name after he attempted to add her as a Facebook friend, and a Google search turned up his prior rape conviction, according to the police report described in the MassLive account. That 2023 conviction stemmed from the sexual assault of a nursing home patient, according to the Hampden District Attorney's Office. The victim was 72 and could not communicate through speech; the nursing home was Wingate. Lujan had been working as part of a contracted cleaning crew. He was sentenced to 10 to 12 years in state prison following a Superior Court trial.
That case had already been delayed for years by a legal defect. The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled in Commonwealth v. Lujan that his initial post-arrest statements were inadmissible because police questioned him through an untrained Russian interpreter, even though Lujan's primary native language was Moldovan, according to court records on Justia Law. The interpreter reportedly altered questions, suggested responses, and relied on pantomime during questioning. Massachusetts law, under General Laws Chapter 221C, Section 2, guarantees non-English speaking defendants a qualified, court-appointed interpreter throughout criminal proceedings, according to Mass.gov.
Conviction Overturned, Then New Allegations
The Supreme Judicial Court vacated Lujan's 2023 rape conviction in a decision issued December 10, 2025. Lujan was out on bail during the recent alleged incidents involving the homeless woman.
The nursing home case had also produced a separate civil track. The victim's family filed a civil negligence lawsuit against Wingate Healthcare Inc. and Lujan in 2016, and the case was settled in 2018 after a judge ordered close to $200,000 for the family's pain and suffering, as reported by MassLive. Wingate Healthcare Inc. was the nursing home where the elderly woman was living at the time.
Bail Set at $5,000
Judge Sanabria-Vega denied prosecutors' request to revise or revoke Lujan's bail at the hearing, setting it instead at $5,000.
Following his 2023 conviction, the Hampden District Attorney's Office had noted that Lujan was a Moldovan national who emigrated to the United States shortly before his 2013 arrest and was slated for federal deportation proceedings once his sentence was completed.
