Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Dippolito legal team under attack
Prosecutors moved Thursday to silence and break apart the legal team of Dalia Dippolito as a judge ordered her to remain on 24-hour house arrest while awaiting her third trial on a 2009 murder-for-hire charge.
The prosecution is asking the judge to remove lead attorney Brian Claypool and order the defense to stop making statements to the media that “intentionally” aim to influence potential jurors with “improper, untrue and prejudicial information.”
Claypool immediately fired back, saying he’s “vigorously opposing” the effort to boot him. He also blasted the “attempt at obtaining a gag order, which is a violation of my First Amendment rights to free speech.”
The move by prosecutors comes one week after Dippolito’s lawyers in a news
release criticized the State Attorney’s Office for continuing “a politically motived prosecution.” The same release quoted Claypool declaring, “The taxpayers of Palm Beach County should not have to bear the price tag associated with state prosecutors trying to save face and make a personal example out of Ms. Dippolito.”
Earlier Thursday, Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley agreed to loosen some of the terms of Dippolito’s house arrest, allowing her to venture anywhere on her mother’s quarter-acre Boynton Beach residence, including the backyard.
Dippolito’s lawyers had asked to either remove house arrest entirely or reduce her 24-hour curfew to the hours of 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Kelley denied both requests but agreed to allow Dippolito, 34, to walk beyond the home’s back patio. The judge also is letting Dippolito attend her brother’s wedding in Boca Raton, as well as the rehearsal dinner the day before and a post-wedding brunch the following day.
Prosecutors have long opposed any change in Dippolito’s house-arrest conditions, which allow only trips to church, medical appointments, her lawyer’s office and court. She continues to wear a GPS ankle monitor that allows law enforcement to track her movements.
Assistant State Attorney Craig Williams now wants the court to bar Dippolito’s counsel from making comments the prosecutors say violate Florida Rules of Professional Conduct for lawyers.
Williams also charges that remarks in a Jan. 26 news release were so offlimits, they justify the court ordering attorney Claypool, of Pasadena, Calif., off the defense team.
Although Claypool is not a member of the Florida Bar, he has been given special permission to represent Dippolito with a local attorney, Greg Rosenfeld, of West Palm Beach.
Williams noted this is the second time Claypool has made “improper” comments about the case, and it “adversely affects the administration of justice.”
Last March, Judge Kelley considered imposing sanctions on Claypool after hearing the attorney’s remarks to the media on Feb. 23, moments after Dippolito testified in court on behalf of her request then for the court to dismiss the charge of solicitation to commit first-degree murder.
Claypool’s comments at the time violated the conduct rules for attorneys, as well as Florida Bar rules, the judge declared. But he later accepted Claypool’s apology and allowed him to remain on the case.
Along with representing Dippolito and clients in California, Claypool frequently appears as a legal commentator on national TV news shows.
In an interview with the Sun Sentinel on Thursday, Claypool defended the recent news release and his criticisms of prosecutors.
“Nothing that I’ve said has remotely been close to compromising the integrity of the judicial process or the criminal proceeding involving Dalia,” he said.
Claypool also said the prosecutor has no evidence that Claypool’s remarks were contaminating the jury pool for Dippolito’s third trial, scheduled to start June 2.
Dippolito is accused of trying to have her newlywed spouse killed by a hit man, who turned out to be an undercover Boynton Beach police officer.
Allowing Dippolito to get off her curfew to go anywhere in the county would have made it harder to pinpoint her location if she were to vanish, Assistant State Attorney Laura Laurie argued during a hearing Thursday.
Under what was requested, “you may as well take the GPS monitor off,” Laurie said. “Let’s not forget that [Dippolito’s $25,000] bond is in lieu of sitting in custody.”
Allowing her off house arrest also would make it difficult to ensure Dippolito stays away from exhusband Michael Dippolito, who lives in the same community, she said.
“House arrest is not like, ‘let’s have a party,’ and do whatever we want to do,” Laurie said. “There are restrictions for a reason.”
In the last trial, Dippolito’s lawyers revealed she had become a mom under house arrest. Last month, Dippolito and her lawyers said Dippolito wanted to take her son out.
Rosenfeld said there is no evidence that Dippolito poses the risk of disappearing before her trial. He said if she wanted to harm her former husband, she could travel the short distance to his house and do so before any deputies would be able to respond.
“To think that this monitor she carries around is a magical device to make sure he doesn’t get harmed is unrealistic,” he said.
Rosenfeld told reporters after the hearing that they will revisit the issue next week, either appealing Thursday’s ruling or returning with more specific requests.
“The main things Ms. Dippolito wanted to do during that 10-hour window was to go to the park with her child, go to the grocery store,” he said. “Do things that most people who are presumed innocent want to do.”
Dippolito was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison after her first trial in 2011, only to have an appellate court grant her a new trial. The second trial, held over six days in December, ended in a mistrial. The panel was split 3-3.
Prosecutors had urged a conviction based on audio recordings of Dippolito speaking about her alleged plans for the killing. The evidence also included an Aug. 5, 2009, video of police officers approaching Dippolito at a police-staged fake-murder scene. Dippolito is seen shrieking when told her husband had just been killed in their townhome.
The defense accused the Boynton Beach Police Department of corruption and misconduct concerning its investigation of Dippolito and the use of her former lover as a confidential informant.
Both the defense attorneys and prosecutors have told informed Kelley they don’t want to move the next trial outside Palm Beach County, despite concerns about intense publicity surrounding the case and the selection of unbiased jurors.