WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – An attorney for a Boynton Beach woman accused of hiring an undercover police officer to kill her husband spent much of the third day of his client's murder-for-hire retrial questioning a police spokeswoman who released surveillance video of a phony crime scene to the media.
Dalia Dippolito is accused of paying an undercover police officer, who was posing as a hit man, to kill her husband in 2009. The Boynton Beach Police Department staged a crime scene and recorded her reaction on the day her husband was supposed to be killed.
Boynton Beach Police Department spokeswoman Stephanie Slater was the first to testify Friday. Defense attorney Brian Claypool questioned Slater about her involvement in soliciting the television show "Cops" to come to Boynton Beach.
Slater admitted that she was the one who posted the behind-the-scenes footage on the department's YouTube channel.
"You posted the footage, the video footage of Dalia Dippolito, the same day that that video footage was taken, correct?" Claypool asked Slater.
"The same day, yes," Slater said.
In his questioning of Slater, Claypool tried to show that the Boynton Beach Police Department wanted to gain notoriety by having the "Cops" TV crew there.
Defense attorneys also questioned former Boynton Beach police Sgt. Frank Ranzie, who testified that he would have done things differently if he had been in charge of the investigation.
"Former Sgt. Paul Sheridan made some pretty big mistakes in this case," defense attorney Greg Rosenfeld said to Ranzie.
"He made decisions that I wouldn't have agreed with," Ranzie said.
"That compromised the integrity of this investigation," Rosenfeld said.
"Yes," Ranzie said.
Dippolito, 34, was convicted of solicitation to commit first-degree murder in 2011 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. However, the Fourth District Court of Appeal reversed the conviction in 2014.
Prosecutors allege that Dippolito offered an undercover officer $7,000 to kill her then-husband.
Defense attorneys claim the Boynton Beach Police Department violated Dippolito's constitutional rights by setting her up with the help of former lover Mohamed Shihadeh, who became a confidential informant for police. He testified Thurday that he was coerced by police into helping them and that he never actually thought she would go through with it. However, during cross examination, he admitted that he thought Dippolito was sincere about wanting her then-husband dead.
A video recorded by the Boynton Beach Police Department shows Dippolito crying at the staged crime scene on the day of her August 2009 arrest. Another video shows Dippolito giving money to the undercover officer, telling him that she was "5,000 percent sure" she wanted her husband killed.
Dippolito never testified during her first trial, but she said in a hearing earlier this year that she was acting for a television show and wasn't really plotting a murder for hire.
After the trial ended for the day, Claypool told Local 10 News that police used his client as a pawn to promote their agency.
"We've already primed this jury that this police department never conducted a credible investigation," Claypool said.
Claypool said he intends to establish next week that the murder-for-hire plot is actually a case of police brutality and corruption.
"They were predatory," Claypool said. "They got a phone call on a domestic abuse claim and they manufactured it completely into a good television series."