Dalia Dippolito‘s lawyers aren’t letting this case go by. The attorneys for the Florida woman seek a retrial because one of the jurors was allegedly sleeping. This hearing will happen Friday, 1 p.m. EST, at a courtroom in West Palm Beach. You can watch it above.
Dippolito was found guilty June 16 for plotting to kill husband Mike Dippolito. Jurors heard a recording in which she tried to hire an apparent hitman (actually, an undercover cop). Her lover Mohamed Shihadeh also testified that in addition to talking with him about poisoning her spouse with antifreeze, she urged him to get a gun and hire a killer.
The defense tried and failed to puncture this narrative: Shihadeh originally claimed Dalia Dippolito didn’t talk about killing her husband. Attorney Brian Claypool called the police case against his client a “garbage investigation,” and publicity-hungry cops had “trash evidence.”
Retrial may be hard to come by, however.
“I don’t think this motion has any merit. It happens all the time [during trials],” said criminal defense attorney Caroline Polisi on the LawNewz Network in late June. “I’ve had cases where the snoring is so loud, there is drool.”
Dippolito could spend up to 30 years in prison. Her sentencing hearing is next Friday.
She was arrested in 2009, and convicted two years later. Her legal team achieved a second trial, which ended in a hung jury in December 2016. If the defense team wins out on their new request, then Dippolito could potentially face a fourth trial.
Update – July 14, 2017, 1:59 p.m. EST: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that she could spend up to 30, not 20, years in prison. Dippolito cannot be sentenced next Friday to more than two decades behind bars because her original conviction was for 20 years. She faced the full 30 in her original trial.
Update – July 21, 2:11 p.m. EST: The maximum possible sentence is actually 30.
Rachel Stockman, Cathy Russon, and Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.
[Screengrab via LawNewz Network]
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