Dippolito attorney: Prosecutors seeking jury outside county
WEST PALM BEACH — Lawyers for Dalia Dippolito won’t be asking for a change of venue in her third trial on charges that she tried to have her husband killed — but prosecutors will.
I n a n e ws r e l e a s e T u e s d ay, defense attorney Brian Claypool said the number of calls, emails and letters they’ve received from people in the community after Dippolito’s trial ended in a hung jury last month has encouraged them to abandon efforts begun in December to move the trial out of town.
“Judge (Glenn) Kelley did an exceptional job of vetting potentially biased jurors in the last trial to ensure that Ms. Dippolito had the case heard before an unbiased cross section of Palm Beach County jurors,” Claypool said, adding that he and fellow defense attorney Greg Rosenfeld believe Kelley will do the same in a third trial, which is expected to begin this spring. “Ms. Dippolito has faith in the people of Palm Beach County.”
After that news release, according to Claypool, Assistant State Attorney Craig Williams sent an email to the judge saying that prosecutors themselves will be seeking to pick a jury from outside Palm Beach County. Claypool called the move “ironic,” considering Williams and Assistant State Attorney Laura Burkhart Laurie fought to keep the second trial local.
Reached by phone Tuesday afternoon, Claypool said prosecutors are “forum shopping” in hopes that jurors from cities like Jacksonville, Tampa and Orlando will be more conservative than the Palm Beach County jury pool.
“We did get a fair jury trial in Palm Beach Count y and guess what? They got hammered,” Claypool said of the prosecution.
Pa l m B e a c h S t a t e At t o r ney spokesman Mike Edmondson did not return a call for comment Tuesday.
Last week, lawyers in the case failed to reach a plea agreement for Dippolito. After those talks fell flat, Rosenfeld publicly criticized Palm Beach State Attorney Dave Aronberg for not personally participating in the plea negotiations and accused him of continuing the prosecution for political reasons.
Dippolito, 34, was arrested in October 2009 at the end of a Boynton Beach police investigation where she was caught on camera hiring an undercover officer posing as a hitman to kill Michael Dippolito, who at the time was her husband of six months.
The Dippolitos divorced in 2011, shortly after Dalia Dippolito’s first trial ended with a conviction on murder solicitation charge. Chief Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath sentenced her to 20 years in prison, but by 2014 an appellate court had thrown out both her conviction and sentence.
Du r i n g h e r s e c o n d t r i a l i n December, Dippolito’s attorneys depicted her as a victim of corrupt Boynton Beach police officers who pressured her lover into making her carry out the plot to make for a good episode of the television show, “Cops.”
After a day of deliberations in the second trial, jurors told Kelley they could not reach a unanimous verdict. A later poll revealed the panelists were split 3-3.