Dalia Dippolito

No matter how you look at this case it looks pretty cut and dry and yet it has already seen three trials. I would like to sit here and say that it has finally been settled, and yes, Dalia Dippolito's appeal of her last conviction was denied, but courts can sometimes be unpredictable, and that could never be more true than in this case.

This case made headlines, not just in Boynton Beach Florida where it took place, but all over the world when nearly the entire case was captured on video. First there was the video of Dalia talking to who she thought was a hit man about murdering her husband of only six months. Then there was the video captured by the television show Cops that showed officers telling Dalia that her husband, Michael had been found dead in their home. It has been said that Dalia put on what people have called “An Academy Award” winning performance when she cried. Her home was surrounded by crime scene tape and she was “wailing” in the middle of the street. It was not until they had her at the police station that she discovered her husband was not dead and she was being arrested for solicitation of murder.

Most people, including Michael Dippolito, will tell you that he has not made the the best choices in life and marrying Dalia is definitely one of the bad ones. The couple met in October of 2008 when Michael had called an escort service and it was Dalia who came to his home. Four months later the couple were married. Dalia would later say that Michael had lied to her and was also abusive to her but neither of those claims seem to be proven. Michael did have a shady past. In 2002 he had been convicted of fraud after he had been running what was called a “foreign currency investment scam.” Prosecutors would say that many people had been bilked out of over $155,000. He would be given a sentence of two years in jail, twenty-eight years probation (although that seemed negotiable) and was required to pay back the money he had scammed from people. According to Michael, by the time he met Dalia he was well on his way to paying off his restitution and had had no issues with the law since his release. Suddenly however he was having trouble left and right. Several times Michael had been pulled over by officers while driving and on one occasion drugs were found hidden in his car. Michael would insist that the drugs were not his and police would later admit that they were tipped off anonymously. It is not clear whether he was charged but in light of things that would happen later they were dropped. It seems there would be no way to prove that Michael knew about or had used the drugs. Prosecutors would later come to believe that Dalia had planted them and either she, or someone she knew, had called the police. But, still, at that point law enforcement did not know what they were in for.

Then a man named Mohamed Shihadeh went and talked to the Boynton Beach Florida police officers. He was having an affair with Dalia and she had approached him about finding a hit man to kill Michael. They asked him to wear a wire as well as set Dalia up with a man who she would believe was willing to kill her husband. There has been speculation that Shihadeh was reluctant to actually become involved in the case beyond simply telling police officers but he did eventually do as they asked. Defense attorney's would make much of this later but in my opinion whether pressure was put on Shihadeh to help or not really is not relevant. Regardless if Shihadeh was pressured by law enforcement into cooperating or not, it had no influence on what Dalia Dippolito would do or say. In the end Shihadeh would set Dalia up with a man, who not only was not a hit man as she would think, but was an undercover officer. The exchanges between the two would also be taped. It is in these tapes that Dalia insists that she is “500 per cent sure” she wants her husband killed. The reasoning behind it? Well, I am unsure that has ever been as clear as her objective. Michael had already turned the condominium they shared into her name but mainly as an attempt to prevent it from being seized considering his legal issues. Some information states that Dalia had a real estate license but had never sold a property until she convinced Michael to buy the condominium just days before they married. It was said later that she was angry when she learned that while she had ownership she could not sell it without Michael's signature. To be fair I do not know if this attempt was made before or after she attempted to pay someone to kill him.

The undercover officer, who Dalia thought was a hit man, had arranged to “kill” Michael. In the early morning of August 5, 2009 Dalia was to leave the home and go to the local gym. It was during this time that the murder would allegedly occur. Instead, county officers went to the home and informed Michael of the plot. The television show Cops just so happened to be in the area that day and filmed the exchange. Michael was whisked away to the police station while crime scene tape was placed around the home. Dalia was contacted and told she needed to come home. It was there that officers informed her that her husband had died inside the home. Most who have seen the video, that is still played on television often, have called it Dalia's “Academy Award” performance. The following day the clip was apparently released to news media and social media.

After being told that her husband had died inside their home Dalia was taken down to the police station. While there she proclaimed to know nothing about his death. I have to be fair in saying I am not sure what came next. The undercover officer was brought into the room and Dalia claimed to have no idea who he was, which everyone in the room, including of course Dalia, knew that was not true. Officers also made sure that Michael went to the door of the interrogation room so Dalia would see that he in fact was not dead. A video of all of this was also made and Dalia can be heard begging Michael to come further into the room so she could see and talk to him, he refused. She was promptly arrested and charged with solicitation of first degree murder.

Dalia first went to trial in 2011. As I said it seemed pretty cut and dry when it came to the case against her in the case with Michael. Prosecutors did not seemingly need anything more since most everything was on audio and/or video but they did present more. They had discovered a man by the name of Mike Stanley. He had dated Dalia before she met Michael but the two did not seemingly completely end their relationship despite Michael living in California. Prosecutors found out that not only had Dalia apparently discussed murder with Stanley, but she had also recruited his help in a few areas. At some point Michael had given Dalia $100,000. This money was to pay off, or on (I am unsure which) the restitution he had been ordered to pay in his criminal case. Dalia had contacted Stanley to help her hide the money. She then got him to impersonate an attorney to make Michael believe that he had completed his probation. The theory was that she thought if Michael stopped going to his probation officer then he would go back to prison. Mike Stanley has apparently died but he was alive it seems when Dalia was on trial in 2011. Prosecutors would later say that Stanley had given a recorded deposition for the defense although he was not called to testify and it was not used. By the time the case went to court in 2011 the defense had what many believed to be an outrageous claim. The defense argued that it was Dalia that was set up, not necessarily by the police, although they would argue that too, but by Michael Dippolito and Mohamed Shihadeh. The defense would claim that the trio wanted to make it in show business, or at least in reality TV and they had basically devised this plan to set this fake story up as their foot in the door to their own show. Neither Michael or Mohamed Shihadeh ever admitted that this true, in fact, at least for Michael he had totally denied it. Now, Mike Stanley some two years after her arrest would alleged knowing or hearing about this supposed plan in his deposition but it was the first time he had ever mentioned it. In fact, it was not until the trial began to get closer and closer that anyone mentioned this alleged scheme.

The prosecution, and well, everyone else apparently saw this as just that... a scheme, but not a scheme concocted by Dalia with the help of Michael and Mohamed, but a scheme by Dalia and her defense team. Making this claim, especially at the eleventh hour just seems ridiculous. Oh, and I should be fair in mentioning that the defense argued that Dalia was against this scheme and reluctant to get involved but that the men had talked her into it. And yet, it took nearly two years for this story to emerge.

The jury did not believe the story and they convicted her on the charge of solicitation of first degree murder. She was sentenced to twenty years. However, it is unclear just how long she ended up spending in prison. The conviction was overturned in 2014 but it appears that the judge had released her on house arrest prior to that time awaiting her appeal. The reasons that the court gave for overturning the conviction was because the defense had not been allowed to ask each juror individually about how much they knew about the trial. The defense had argued that pre-trial publicity had tainted the jury but they had been forbidden from investigating just how much it had affected them.

In late 2016 Dalia once again went to trial but for reasons I could not figure out, the jury was not able to come to an agreement and a mistrial was declared. In June of 2017 Dalia faced her third trial. Sometime between the time the court had released her and then overturned her conviction and her third trial Dalia had given birth. It seems as if both she and her defense attempted to use the child as leverage for leniency or sympathy. Once again the defense argued the Reality TV defense. They also now claimed that the detectives manipulated her so they could play for the cameras for the Cops episode that was being filmed. Once again the jury did not buy the defense theory. They rendered their verdict after ninety minutes of deliberations. In July of 2017 she was sentenced to sixteen years but was given four years credit for some of the time she spent on house arrest. The defense attempted to request house arrest once more while she appealed her sentence but that was denied. The judge had even mentioned throughout the trial and at the end that he felt the defense had overly objected throughout in order to create issues on which to base an appeal. The judge believed this was actually a trial strategy of the defense. She has apparently filed for an appeal and it has been denied.

According to the Florida Department of Corrections website Dalia's release date shows as being in 2032. It still shows her admission date as being in 2011 which would reflect the release year based on the twenty year sentence but considering she did not remain in prison and was all but credited those years still makes her release date the same. It does show her sentence as being sixteen years.