No Appeal for Woman Caught Hiring Fake Hit Man on TV, Florida Justices Rule
"We intend on bringing the case to the Supreme Court of the United States," said West Palm Beach attorney Greg Rosenfeld, who represents Dalia Dippolito, convicted of hiring an undercover detective to kill her husband on reality-TV show "Cops."
September 04, 2019 at 03:59 PM
3 minute read
The Florida Supreme Court has declined to review what's proved to be a seemingly never-ending murder-for-hire case. In a brief opinion Wednesday, the high court said it won't accept jurisdiction to hear an appeal from Dalia Dippolito, convicted in 2017 of trying to hire a hit man to kill her then-husband of six months.
The ruling is a major setback for Dippolito, who had hoped for a fourth trial. Justices said they wouldn't entertain a motion for rehearing.
Dippolito's first conviction and 20-year sentence was overturned on appeal in 2011, and her second trial resulted in a hung jury in 2016. Dippolito gave birth to a son while on house arrest awaiting her third trial, when she was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Her release date is Aug. 24, 2032.
Dippolito's crime was captured on an episode of the reality-TV show "Cops" in 2009, which was shadowing the Boynton Beach Police Department on the day officers told Dippolito her husband had been murdered in a home invasion.
But her spouse wasn't actually dead, because the hit man Dippolito had agreed to pay $7,000 was an undercover agent. Dippolito's plan unraveled after her lover alerted police to her plot, and they filmed a string of incriminating meetings before staging a crime scene.
This isn't the end for Dippolito, according to her attorneys Greg Rosenfeld in West Palm Beach and Andrew B. Greenlee in Sanford.
"While we are disappointed that the Florida Supreme Court declined to accept jurisdiction, Andrew Greenlee and I look forward to continuing our pursuit of justice for Ms. Dippolito," Rosenfeld said. "We intend on bringing the case to the Supreme Court of the United States."
Rosenfeld and Greenlee had argued that police joining forces with a TV crew amounted to entrapment and claimed the trial court shouldn't have allowed jurors to hear unsubstantiated allegations that Dippolito had previously tried to poison her husband with antifreeze.
But that argument didn't stick in the Fourth District Court of Appeal, which denied Dippolito's petition in March, finding the government's conduct didn't so "offend decency or a sense of justice that judicial power may not be exercised to obtain a conviction."
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