A former escort on Friday was convicted of trying to hire a police officer to kill her newlywed husband to get control of his money and their town house.
Dalia Dippolito teared up as she turned to look at her sobbing family when the jury announced its verdict after deliberating for only an hour-and-a-half.
She faces up to 20 years in prison when sentenced on Wednesday.
This was the third trial for Dippolito. A 2011 conviction and 20-year sentence were thrown out on appeal, while a trial last year ended with a hung jury.
Dippolito, 34, was arrested in 2009 after she was videotaped soliciting an undercover police officer posing as an assassin.
Prosecutor Laura Laurie told jurors during closing arguments that Dippolito was a liar and manipulator who used two lovers to get her husband, convicted swindler Michael Dippolito, either sent back to prison or killed, because she wanted his money and their house.
Defense attorney Brian Claypool countered that it was Boynton Beach police who manipulated Dippolito and their informant so that detectives could become famous through the television show Cops, which filmed much of the investigation and turned it into a special episode.
“You will find no question that that woman lied and manipulated for her own gain,” Laurie told the three-woman, three-man jury during her closing arguments. “She couldn’t stand her husband, so just kill him.”
Claypool told the jury that Boynton Beach detectives pursued fame, not justice, during their investigation in the summer of 2009.
They manipulated the case by violating their own department rules, lying and playing to the Cops cameras, Claypool said.
“They had no desire to solve the crime,” Claypool said. “Get her on tape for the whole world to see... Does that sound like a police department looking to get justice in this case, one that’s determined to stop her from blowing her husband’s brains out?”
Last year, prosecutors focused heavily on a 23-minute video in which Dippolito tells undercover officer Widy Jean, who was portraying a killer for hire, she was “5,000 percent sure” she wanted her husband dead and appeared to agree to pay him US$7,000.
She also discussed various plots before Jean said he would kill her husband at the couple’s home, making it look like a botched burglary while she was at the gym.
This time, while the tape remained a key piece of their evidence, prosecutors also called Michael Dippolito, who testified that his now ex-wife stole US$100,000 from him shortly after they got married in February 2009.
He also said someone had twice planted drugs in his car and called police, which could have landed him back in prison for violating his probation.
He thinks it was his wife.
According to the Palm Beach Post, prosecutors also read for the jury explicit text messages Dalia Dippolito exchanged with a now-deceased lover, Mike Stanley, in 2009 after she got married.
She had Stanley impersonate a doctor to help her hide the theft, and later a lawyer, to make her husband wrongly think he had completed probation, prosecutors said, adding that she hoped that if he stopped visiting his probation officer, he would be found in violation.
On the Chinese microblogging platform Sina Weibo, enthusiastic slackers share their tips: Fill up a thermos with whiskey, do planks or stretches in the work pantry at regular intervals, drink liters of water to prompt lots of trips to the toilet on work time, and, once there, spend time on social media or playing games on your phone. “Not working hard is everyone’s basic right,” one commenter wrote. “With or without legal protection, everyone has the right to not work hard.” Young Chinese people are pushing back against an engrained culture of overwork, and embracing a philosophy of laziness known as “touching
The Palauan president-elect has vowed to stand up to Chinese “bullying” in the Pacific, saying that the archipelago nation is set to stand by its alliances with “true friends,” Taiwan and the US. Surangel Whipps Jr, 52, a supermarket owner and two-time senator from a prominent Palauan family, is to be sworn in as the new president tomorrow, succeeding his brother-in-law, Tommy Remengesau Jr. In a forthright interview, Whipps said that the US had demonstrated over the years that it was a reliable friend of Palau, most recently shown by its delivery of 6,000 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. “It’s important for
‘STUNNED’: With help from an official at the US Department of Justice, Donald Trump reportedly planned to oust the acting attorney general in a bid to overturn the election Former US president Donald Trump was at his Florida resort on Saturday, beginning post-presidency life while US President Joe Biden settled into the White House, but in Washington and beyond, the chaos of the 45th president’s final days in office continued to throw out damaging aftershocks. In yet another earth-shaking report, the New York Times said that Trump plotted with an official at the US Department of Justice to fire the acting attorney general, then force Georgia Republicans to overturn his defeat in that state. Meanwhile, former acting US secretary of defense Christopher Miller made an extraordinary admission, telling Vanity Fair that
DELIVERING HOPE: The Japanese PM pledged to push ahead with plans to stage the Games, despite polls showing about 80% think they will not or should not happen Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga yesterday vowed to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control and hold the already postponed Olympic Games this summer with ample protection. In a speech opening a new session of parliament, Suga said that his government would revise laws to make disease prevention measures enforceable with penalties and compensation. Early in the pandemic, Japan was able to keep its caseload manageable with nonbinding requests for businesses to close or operate with social distancing, and for people to stay at home, but recent weeks have seen several highs in new cases per day, in part blamed on eased attitudes
RSS