State argues against 4th trial in murder-for-hire

Dalia Dippolito says she deserves a fourth trial in her notorious murder-for-hire case. Lawyers for the state say she must finish her 16-year prison sentence.

It’ s been nine years since Dip pol ito was arrested in Boynton Beach and accused of hiring a cop posing as a hit man in a scheme to kill her newlywed husband. The case became an international sensation.

Now, Florida Attorney Dippolito General Pam Bondi’s office argues the 35-year-old felon’s conviction in her third trial last year should stand. Thestate Friday responded to an appeal filed in March by Dippolito’s legal team in the Fourth District Court of Appeal.

One of Dippolito’s main claims is that the judge mistakenly let the jury learn about her alleged “prior bad acts” before connecting with the undercover officer in the summer of 2009. This included testimony that she tried to poison her spouse by spiking his tea with antifreeze.

Another defense claim is that jurors shouldn’t have been told about text messages where Dippolito and a boyfriend discussed her plan to have her husband jailed on a probation violation.

But the state’s lawyers argue the poisoning allegation was

“highly relevant” for the trial, and the texts also were fair game as “collateral crime evidence” of her plot to get rid of her spouse, Michael Dippolito.

Dalia Dippolito’s “prior acts against her husband were relevant to not only show that she had every intent to have her husband killed but to also rebut her contention throughout trial that the police department took advantage of her and pushed her into the offense,” Assistant Attorney General Elba Caridad Martin wrote.

The state also argued that even if the judge messed up, it doesn’t warrant a new trial because the verdict would have been guilty even without the antifreeze and the texts.

“Here, ample evidence including [Dippolito’s] own words on tape demonstrate that she intended to have her husband killed,” Martin argued.

Dippolito’s jury watched police videos, including footage of her meeting the pretend hit man and telling him shewas “like 5,000 percent sure” she wanted her husband to die.

Dippolito lawyers, Andrew Greenlee and Greg Rosenfeld, will have a few weeks to file a reply, before the appeals court schedules arguments before a panel of three judges in West Palm Beach.

For the past year, Dippolito has been living in the annex of the Lowell Correctional Institution near Ocala, according to the Flor think ida Department of Corrections.

Last month, the appeals court dashed Dippolito’s hopes of returning home to reunite with her 2-year-old son while the appeal is pending. The court ruled it would not review Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley’s decision last August to deny bond and house arrest for Dippolito.

Dippolito’s first trial in 2011 ended in a conviction and 20-year prison sentence. But the appeals court later awarded her a new trial because of an issue concerning the antifreeze claim.

The problem then was that a pool of prospective jurors heard the allegation, even though the judge had ruled it would not be permitted in the trial.

Dippolito had her baby in 2016, while on house arrest before her second trial that same year. Round Two, which did not include any reference to the alleged poisoning try, ended in a hung jury on the solicitation to commit first-degree murder charge.

In the last trial, Judge Kelley permitted prosecutors to bring up the poisoning claim while questioning Dippolito’s former lover, Mohamed Shihadeh.

He had worked as a confidential informant for Boynton Beach Police during an investigation of Dippolito that led to her arrest. Shihadeh was a defense witness.

The attorneys for the state contend prosecutors needed to cite the antifreeze incident to discredit Shihadeh’s earlier testimony that he told police he didn’t she was serious about killing her husband.

Over the defense’s objection, Shihadeh testified that Dippolito told him she had used the internet to research a type of antifreeze that has no color or smell, and she had put it in her husband’s tea and he spit out the drink.

“By that point in the trial, Ms. Dippolito had noway to counteract the devastating effect of this unsubstantiated allegation,” her attorneys wrote.

Dippolito’s other arguments for having her conviction tossed concern a claim police “manufactured” the murder-for-hire drama.

Calling it “objective entrapment,” the lawyers claim police used Dippolito to impress producers of the “Cops” reality TV program. They pointed to a viral video of Dippolito at a staged crime scene, reacting after officers pretended her husband had just been killed in the couple’s residence.

The appeal argues for these reasons the judge should have dismissed the charge against Dippolito before the trial, or at least allowed the defense to argueit before the jury.

But the Attorney General’s office urged the appellate court to reject these claims, too.

“The facts of this case do not support a finding of egregious police conduct in violation of [Dippolito’s] due process rights,” the state wrote. “Officers did not manufacture the crime.”