New Dippolito trial already awash in legal jostling
Dalia Dippolito’s prosecutors know they need more than incriminating videos and audio recordings to convict her of trying to hire a cop posing as a hitman in an alleged plot to kill her newlywed husband in the summer of 2009.
A retrial on a murder-forhire charge ended with a hung jury in December, a result attributed to the defense’s new strategy of accusing the Boynton Beach Police Department of corruption.
So with the third trial on tap with jury selection June 2, prosecutors pressed Wednesday to restrict what Dippolito’s lawyers are allowed to say regarding policing to the jurors.
The prosecutors also announced plans to add evidence they left out of the last trial, including videos of Dippolito being interrogated at the police station and an allegation that she tried to steal a gunas part of her murder planning.
In turn, the defense looked to expand its attack with new witnesses and a claim that Dippolito, 34, may have acted as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder caused by an abusive marriage.
The defense attorneys are fighting to keep out of the trial an allegation that Dippolito tried to hire a Riviera Beach hitman named “Larry” months before she met the undercover cop.
The run-up to Round 3 has been acrimonious, with lawyers trading shots. First, thedefense blasted the State Attorney’s Office for continuing a politically motivated prosecution, which has kept Dippolito confined to house arrest for more than seven years.
The prosecutors responded by seeking to boot one of Dippolito’s lawyers off the case for improper conduct.
Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley rejected that idea, but inMarch he placed a gag order on de-
fense counsel from speaking with reporters about the high-profile case.
On Wednesday, Kelley granted a request from the prosecutors to forbid the defense from making any remarks in the next trial that the jury should “send a message to law enforcement across the country” with an acquittal. That’s essentially what Dippolito lawyer Brian Claypool said at the last trial.
“You cannot argue to send a message to anyone,” Kelley said. He ruled Claypool and co-counsel Greg Rosenfeld’s accusations against police must be restricted to the cops specifically involved in the case.
In the last trial, the defense called Dippolito the real victim. Claypool accused Boynton Beach police of manufacturing the crime, essentially setting up Dippolito in order for the agency to achieve “fame and notoriety” through a partnership with the “Cops” TV program.
“This case is about holding law enforcement accountable, not only here but everywhere,” Claypool told the jury. “If you find Dalia Dippolito guilty, you are casting a vote for police corruption.”
Prosecutors Laura Laurie and Craig Williams also took issue with another comment Claypool made at the last trial — that Dippolito is the mother of a baby boy. The prosecutors said it was an improper comment designed to garner sympathy from the jury. Kelley agreed.
“I’m not going to have that again,” the judge warned Wednesday.
Kelley has ordered summonses for 300 prospective jurors. The extraordinarily large pool is needed partly because of a need to find jurors able to serve on a trial that could run two weeks or longer. Another reason is that because of the extreme publicity in the case, the lawyers want to choose jurors with no knowledge of Dippolito.
The jury will see a video of Dippolito at a polices taged crime scene, reacting after officers lied that her husband had just been killed in the couple’s townhome. The footage became an internet sensation and was used at her previous trials.
Other key prosecution evidence is a police video of Dippolito telling the undercover cop she was “5,000 percent sure” about arranging the murder.
Kelley said he and the lawyers will individually question prospective jurors who advise they have heard about the case. The judge took the same precaution for the last trial.
Dippolito is facing a 20-year prison sentence if convicted of the charge, solicitation to commit firstdegree murder with a firearm. In 2014, a state appellate court threw out Dippolito’s 2011 conviction and sentence because of a finding that the entire jury pool was tainted by hearing an allegation she once tried to poison her husband with antifreeze. That allegation will not be allowed in the upcoming trial. Norwill an allegation that Dippolito once worked as an escort.
But both sides are likely to call more witnesses. In the last trial, prosecutors used just two witnesses — the cop who posed as the hitman and the lead detective.
This time they might call Michael Dippolito to testify against his former wife. After the last trial, he expressed concerns that the jury didn’t get the “full story.”
“She attempted to hire people to kill me before,” he said at a news conference. “She tried poisoning me; she tried to get me put in jail. I mean, she did a lot of things that didn’t come up [in the retrial.]”
Dippolito’s lawyers, meanwhile, recently announced two new witnesses: a consultant touted as an expert on human behavior and a psychologist who wrote a book on battered women and domestic violence.
But the prosecutors say they will be filing objections to both witnesses, and Kelley said he would issue a ruling before the trial starts.