Poison Candy: The Murderous Madam (30 page)

And here I slowly took a step back from the podium and pointed at Dalia, who looked tiny seated between her two lawyers.

She did it.

Then I swung around and pointed at the jury.

And you know it.

F
ollowing minimal instructions from Judge Colbath, the six-person jury was dispatched to begin deliberation. They broke for lunch and then asked to watch both the Dalia-Mohamed video and the Dalia–Hit Man video—I suspect they were looking for specific references to a firearm, since they were asked to determine whether one was involved in the commission of the crime. In less than three hours they were back—far sooner than anyone expected—and the principals were summoned to hear the verdict. Mike was in the courthouse, but I had asked him not to attend the closing arguments, because I knew Salnick would make it a point to search him out in the crowd and point at him as much as he could. Dalia appeared, dressed conservatively, visibly nervous for the first time during the trial (as was Mike), with two beefy deputy sheriffs stationed behind her at all times, and several more stationed throughout the gallery. (This is common in high-profile trials.) Judge Colbath cheerfully invited the attendees to take their seats and asked them to please hold their reactions in check.

After silently reading the verdict, he asked that it be published, and the clerk read it in its entirety:

“In the circuit court of the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, Criminal Division, in and for Palm Beach County, Florida, the State of Florida vs.
Dalia Dippolito, the verdict, we the jury find as follows: As to Count One, we find the defendant guilty of solicitation to commit murder.”

In addition, they found that there was a firearm used. Dalia sat stone-faced throughout.

The Judge thanked the jury for their service and released them from their order not to talk about the case. The State asked that the defendant be remanded into custody, which the court granted over Salnick’s objections. The Sentencing Hearing, including any post-trial motions, was set for June 16. As the deputies escorted Dalia out, Salnick addressed me directly.

SALNICK: Ms. Parker, would you be kind enough to agree to let her give her mother a hug before she leaves?

I told him that was fine—I didn’t want to be seen as totally heartless—but the truth was that no one was getting through that sea of green. Deputies appeared out of thin air and escorted Dalia out of the courtroom without further incident. One of the alternate jurors, Sandra Clutter, was quoted in the
Palm Beach Post
later that day saying of Salnick’s defense: “He can take a steel girder and bend it into a pretzel. Dalia is certainly getting her money’s worth.”

On May 20, Salnick filed his first Motion for a New Trial, which he couldn’t do until after the verdict had been reached on May 13. Many legal issues can’t be raised on appeal unless you object at the time they occur, which explains his motions for mistrial during my closing statement. Salnick’s motion was based on six alleged legal errors that occurred during the trial that he claimed collectively denied Dalia her right to a fair trial:

•  My use of the rhetorical “Where’s the testimony?” as I supposedly walked from the podium to the defense table and leveled an accusing finger at Dalia—in his estimation, an unfair challenge to his client’s right to remain silent and refusal to take the stand. This is different from Salnick’s own description in “the cold record”—i.e.,
the unembellished court transcript—where I merely glanced in her direction. He is particularly adept at “laying the record,” or describing the nonverbal actions that transpire during trial—e.g.: “Let the record reflect that the witness has pointed to the defendant.” And lest we forget, in his opening statement, Salnick did promise to provide evidence that this was “a stunt, a hoax, a ruse—a plan that Mike Dippolito, whether he’ll admit it or not, hoped [would] capture the attention of someone in reality TV”—a claim that, barring a last-minute revelation from the victim, could only come from Dalia.

(I did point at the defendant several times during my closing, just not right then.)

•  Judge Colbath should have allowed for the individual questioning of potential jurors, due to the national publicity surrounding the trial.

•  As a consequence, when one juror said they heard that the defendant had tried to poison her husband with antifreeze, thus tainting the entire panel in open court, the judge should have declared a mistrial.

•  Judge Colbath also made an improper comment when, welcoming witness Dawn Hurley, who testified on behalf of Bank of America, he noted the similarity of her name to the mythical Detective Hurley who allegedly contacted Dalia and Mike from the Boynton Beach Police Department. Wrote Salnick: “The Trial Court’s comments, in the form of ‘levity,’ clearly were a comment on the weight of the evidence and the Defendant’s guilt.”

•  Rearguing one of his motions, Salnick argued that Judge Colbath had erred in allowing into evidence such “prior bad acts, inextricably intertwined” as the texts, phone calls, planting of drugs, extortion note, and Dalia’s alleged theft of Mike’s restitution money, all of which he suggested were irrelevant to the charges filed.

•  Finally, Salnick took exception to the form of the verdict, in which jurors determined that Dalia had “possessed, used, or carried a firearm.”

After the verdict, I took a much-needed vacation. While I was away, on May 25, Judge Colbath denied the motion before I even had a chance to
respond. The next day, Salnick sent a letter to Judge Colbath claiming he had understood time would be set aside at the Sentencing Hearing on June 16 for an evidentiary hearing on his motion. On June 2, he filed a second Motion for New Trial based on additional grounds, reiterating the circumstances of Mohamed’s perpetuated testimony, and claiming his client had been deprived of her legal right to confront her accuser in court due to the revelation (from unconfirmed sources) that the witness had returned to the United States on April 22, three days before the start of the trial, meaning Mohamed was available to testify on April 29, the day his videotaped testimony was played in court. The motion also impugned my integrity, I felt, by suggesting that I must have known Mohamed was back in the country. “If Mohamed Shihadeh was present and the State had knowledge of this or that he was willing to return to testify and the State turned a blind eye to the fact, the Defendant was denied her right to confront the witness live and before the jury and the State used perpetuated testimony contrary to the rule.”

In my written response, I revisited the circumstances surrounding Mohamed’s perpetuated testimony, taken over an eight-hour day on March 7, 2011, after Mohamed informed the court he would be out of the country for an indefinite period including the trial dates. He contacted me on April 15 asking if we would fly him back for the trial, but I declined, citing the cost, and dutifully notified the defense. Although Salnick was willing to pay to change his ticket, Mohamed declined, citing family obligations. A contact in ICE confirmed on April 19 that Mohamed had indeed boarded a plane to Jordan and was outside the United States, with no information regarding a return flight in their system. Mohamed’s attorney, Ian Goldstein, also confirmed this on April 26 after the trial had begun. When I was informed of Mohamed’s DUI arrest on May 4, I called Mr. Salnick, and together we informed the court of his unanticipated return as soon as the trial resumed on Monday, May 9. As is clearly reflected in the court record, Salnick very clearly rejected my offer to have Mohamed testify live in court if his client so desired, and Dalia concurred. In fact, in Salnick’s own closing statement, he had twice argued for the authenticity of Mohamed’s perpetuated testimony—once referring to Mohamed’s “video testimony, which is exactly the same as if he was sitting here,” and later reminding the jury it
was “like the State calling a witness and me cross-examining a witness, as you’ve seen during the course of this trial . . .”

At the Sentencing Hearing on June 16, Dalia was led in wearing prison blues and handcuffs with her ankles shackled. As his first order of business, Salnick continued his one-sided debate on the Motions for New Trial, claiming that he had never waived his right to have Mohamed testify in court.

SALNICK: When the issue came up about Mohamed Shihadeh’s DUI arrest and being back in the United States, we obviously did not know at that time that Mr. Shihadeh might have been back in the United States before the date of his perpetuated testimony.

Meaning that although Mohamed clearly was back on May 5 when he was arrested, and the defense turned down the offer to have him testify again on May 9 when court was back in session, it now made a difference if Mohamed had been back on April 29—six days earlier—when his testimony was played in court. Salnick claims he never would have stipulated to the introduction of Mohamed’s testimony coming in if he knew Mohamed was here.

JUDGE COLBATH: My recollection was that up front, you would have preferred to have him live. It was an accommodation to present his video testimony. That was before the trial started. Then, midway through the trial, at some point we all became aware that he was present, and I think I offered to have him forcibly brought here at your request, and I think at that time you were, “Nah, I better not,” and you were not content in having him here live.

Salnick went on at some length, “so that it’s in the record for the appellate court,” why the distinction is relevant. Judge Colbath next thanked the defense for submitting its Sentencing Memorandum. In it, Salnick noted that Dalia was a first-time offender and model prisoner (while lounging around her mom’s house) and launched into a detailed history of the plea-bargaining process in this case, and the State’s steadfast position from the
outset that there would be “no plea offers” due to the seriousness of the crime. In response, he quoted Mike Dippolito from his deposition as saying, “[I]f she fixed my mess, they could let her go . . . I don’t care if they send Dalia on a trip to Vegas . . . All that does nothing for me. I wouldn’t gain nothing by it.” While acknowledging “the parties will never agree as to the reason for this occurring,” Salnick insinuated that Dalia purchased the couple’s home in her name with Mike’s money to aid him in shielding his assets, and referenced having sent Mike’s divorce attorney an e-mail within the past week offering to return it, claiming he “made it very clear . . . that the Defendant was not asking for anything in exchange but simply wanted to give the property back.” He appended to his memo correspondence between him and me, as well as a quitclaim deed for the house dated June 10.

In my remarks, I moved that all references to plea negotiations and any supportive material be stricken from the court file and this hearing, since I didn’t want the court taking them into consideration in its decision. They were inadmissible, hence irrelevant, and Salnick was attempting to admit them as evidence through the back door at the Sentencing Hearing. Judge Colbath sustained the objection, adding that such communications between us carried no weight, and he gave them no value.

Salnick’s Sentencing Memo also went into Dalia’s domestic history—particularly the actions of her father, who left the family in Dalia’s early adolescence following an extramarital affair. According to Dalia, her father experienced “anger and emotional problems.” She watched him kick her maternal grandmother and physically throw her grandparents out of the family’s home. He beat Dalia’s mother until she bled and cut her hair with scissors against her wishes, once forcing Dalia to call the police in his presence, which he never let her forget. He had a gambling problem and often left his children in the car outside of casinos. He was also overly strict with his children, particularly on issues of dating: Dalia was not allowed to receive phone calls or visits from boys, wear makeup or fashionable clothing, or go out on dates. According to the memo, “After the divorce was finalized, the Defendant rarely communicated with her father. In the Defendant’s eyes her father always had a habit of ‘walking out’ on the defendant and her family.
The Defendant’s father had an uncontrollable temper at times and was abusive both physically and emotionally to the Defendant and her mother.”

The memo also quoted liberally from testimonial letters written in support of Dalia, including at least one from an old boyfriend, Julian Santana, who served as a Marine in Iraq, dated Dalia for six years, and remained friends with her, claiming she took care of him while he recovered from combat-related injuries. In closing, Salnick once again admonished Chief Immler of the Boynton Beach Police Department for releasing evidence (“shame on him”), and referenced the prosecutor’s “improper comment” regarding Dalia’s failure to testify and lamented the circumstances underpinning Mohamed’s testimony. He also took what I felt was one last gratuitous jab at me: “Following sentencing, it is likely this case will be publicized in the national media. Some of the participants in this case may even appear extolling their virtues of obtaining a conviction. That benefits no one in this case except those seeking attention.”

Salnick called five character witnesses to speak on behalf of Dalia, including her sister Samira, her brother Amir, Randa Mohamed in her now third appearance at the trial, and two longtime friends of her mother’s who had watched Dalia grow up. He also presented sworn affidavits from another roughly twenty family friends and community members familiar with Dalia’s circumstances, as well as a petition purportedly signed by roughly a hundred Palm Beach County residents requesting mercy and leniency from the court. All were generally effective at accomplishing what character witnesses are designed to do: focus attention away from the defendant’s crimes and the victim’s suffering, and instead appeal to the jury’s shared humanity. Randa cried openly during her testimony, as did Dalia along with her. “I have no words to explain why this unfortunate event happened,” Randa said, “and I am sorry that it did.”

The only witness I chose to present prior to sentencing was Mike Dippolito. I asked him a single question and then I let him have the floor.

PARKER: Mr. Dippilito, would you like to tell the Judge how your life has been affected by the defendant’s actions?