Dalia Dippolito from Boynton Beach had asked for a fourth trial, but the Fourth District Court of Appeal said no. Photo: Lannis Waters/Palm Beach Post via AP.
The Fourth District Court of Appeal has doomed a request for a new trial for Dalia Dippolito, convicted in 2017 of trying to hire a hit man to kill her then-husband of six months.
Dippolito's crime was captured on an episode of the reality-TV show "Cops" in 2009, as the crew followed 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 to 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.
If successful, Dippolito's appeal would have led to a fourth trial, but Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal blocked that route in a roller-coaster case. Dippolito's 2011 conviction and 20-year sentence for solicitation to commit first-degree murder was overturned on appeal, while her 2016 trial resulted in a hung jury. While on house arrest awaiting her third trial, Dippolito gave birth to a son, but in 2017, she was again convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
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Dippolito's lawyers, Greg Rosenfeld and Andrew B. Greenlee argued their client fell victim to entrapment, as police officers had worked with a TV crew to land the arrest. But the court disagreed, ruling that 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."
The court pointed to various examples where entrapment occurred, including a drug case where police encouraged an informant to gather four kilograms of cocaine within a certain time to have his sentence reduced, but it ruled Dippolito's case didn't fit.
"It was only at the point that she was being arrested, after the crime was complete, that the television program filmed the arrest," the opinion said. "As the crime of solicitation to commit murder was completed before 'Cops' was involved, the agreement between the police and the show with respect to the filming did not constitute a due process violation."
Rosenfeld said he will appeal the decision.
“While the defense team is extremely disappointed, we will continue to fight for Ms. Dippolito," Rosenfeld said.
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and Assistant Attorney General Elba Caridad Martin represent the state, and did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.