Dippolito retrial back on track
The long-delayed retrial of Dalia Dippolito, the Boynton Beach woman accused of trying to have her newlywed husband killed seven years ago, is back on schedule for jury selection to start Dec. 1.
Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley on Monday held his first hearing in the case since the Fourth District Court of Appeal in August dismissed a challenge by Dippolito’s legal team that delayed a previous trial date inMay.
But there still could be a hitch in the plan, if the Florida Supreme Court agrees to review Dippolito’s argument that Boynton Beach Police violated her constitutional rights and entrapped her with “outrageous conduct.”
“I understand there’s a petition before the Supreme Court,” Kelley said. “It could change things but other than that we’re ready to go.”
A pre-trial hearing is scheduled for Nov. 30, followed by interviews with more than 120 prospective jurors beginning the next day.
It could take two to three days to pick a jury, with the retrial anticipated to take about five days, the judge said after consulting with the attorneys in the case.
Dippolito won a second trial when the appellate court erased her 2011 trial conviction and 20-year prison sentence for solicitation to commit first-degreemurder with a firearm.
The appeals court, in 2014, ruled shewas cheated of a fair trial because the pool of prospective jurors was tainted. The entire panel had heard one person mention an allegation in the news that Dippolito “had tried to poison her husband with antifreeze.”
This time, jurors will be questioned individually if they have heard of any publicity in the high-profile case.
Dippolito, 33, remains on house arrest.
Dippolito’s attorneysa ccuse police of manufacturing the murder-for-hire crime due to a “thirst for publicity,” as well as failing to properly investigate a domestic abuse complaint about her.
They point to the police department inviting filming by the TV show “Cops,” a YouTube video of officers consoling Dippolito at a faked murder scene and the alleged destruction of key evidence.
The state Attorney General’s Office has argued there’s no reason to prevent another jury fromweighing the evidence.
“No egregious outrageous police conduct was used to entrap [Dippolito] into committing the crime of solicitation of her husband’s murder,” Assistant Attorney General Elba Caridad Martin-Schomaker wrote inMay.
Prosecutors contend there was never a police setup. They say Dippolito hired a hit man who was really an undercover cop, remarking on a police recording that she was “5,000 percent sure Iwant it done.”
Dippolito, whowas not in the courtroom forMonday’s hearing, has testified she was just acting and following a “script” for her reality TV showambitions.