Lawyer quits Dippolito team over ‘conflict’

There’s a shakeup on Dalia Dippolito’s defense team just about a month before the scheduled start of her murder-for-hire retrial. Highprofile Miami attorney Mark Eiglarsh, who regularly appears on national TV news shows, is off the case.

The Boynton Beach woman remains accused of hiring an undercover cop, posing as a hit man, to kill her newlywed husband in the summer of 2009.

Dippolito, 34, does not object to Eiglarsh’s departure, according to a court pleading filed Monday. She’s still represented by another expert legal analyst from television, Brian Claypool of Pasadena, Calif., and Greg Rosenfeld of West Palm Beach.

Eiglarsh, privately retained by Dippolito in July 2015, wrote an unspecified conflict has emerged that makes it impossible for him to continue as her lawyer.

“The conflict is irreconcilable and

there are no circumstances that would enable undersigned to competently and zealously represent Ms. Dippolito in her upcoming trial,” Eiglarsh wrote to Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley.

It’s up to the judge now to approve or deny the request, but it’s not expected that he would force Eiglarsh to stay on the team.

Kelley has scheduled jury selection to begin Dec. 1.

Claypool, who is not a member of the Florida Bar, was granted special permission to join Dippolito’s defense. She is on house arrest on $25,000 bail, charged with solicitation to commit first-degree murder with a firearm.

A state appellate court in 2014 tossed her 2011 conviction and 20-year prison sentence.

Claypool — like Eiglarsh a familiar face on FOX and other news programs focusing on cases with national interest — has said he’s not getting paid for his work on behalf of Dippolito.

He could not immediately be reached for comment Monday.

Last week, the Florida Supreme Court dismissed a bid led by Claypool to get the charge thrown out because of alleged police misconduct.

Claiming that Dippolito was entrapped by Boynton Beach cops, Claypool and two appellate attorneys have argued police manufactured the crime due to a “thirst for publicity.”

The defense criticized the police department for allowing filming by the TV show “Cops,” posting a YouTube video of officers consoling Dippolito at a faked murder scene, and allegedly destroying key evidence.

In February, Dippolito testified for the first time at a pre-trial hearing and insisted that police recordings of her speaking about desires to have her spouse Michael Dippolito killed were just part of an acting job for a planned reality-TV show.

Prosecutors argue Dalia Dippolito really wanted her husband to be murdered and officers properly did their job in preventing it.

MIKE STOCKER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Dalia Dippolito is accused of hiring an undercover cop, posing as a hit man, to kill her husband.