Defense counsel asked him on the stand whether he felt the investigation was "compromised" by police missteps, and Ranzie, with a stoic voice, replied, "Yes."
He took issue with the department's alleged failure to produce tapes of several conversations between Shihadeh and Dippolito, and added that a supervising sergeant in the Boynton Beach Police Department chastised him after he tried to secure a piece of recording equipment needed for proper monitoring of the subjects in the investigation.
According to Ranzie, the supervising sergeant proclaimed in a room full of detectives that "it's his fucking investigation."
Ranzie further testified that he was not happy with the decision to let a TV crew linger around him, but he had no choice in the matter, having been directed by a superior officer to participate in the "Cops" filming.
It "changes the way people act ... interact with one another when there's a camera with a bright light standing next to you," Ranzie said.
Absent from counsel's argument was a previous defense that the husband, Michael Dippolito, was well aware of the hit man plot and induced Dalia into cooperating with it, in a bid to gain reality TV fame. Michael, who Dalia has accused of hiding his past fraud conviction from her, did not take the stand in the retrial, but he reportedly testified in the 2011 proceedings that he was not involved the supposed reality-TV show scheme.
For its part, the prosecution had a short list of witnesses including lead detective Alex Moreno and Widy Jean, the officer who posed as a hit man.
Wrapping up its case after two days, the prosecutors, as expected, relied heavily on the undercover recording in which Jean sits with Dippolito in a pharmacy parking lot, discussing the details of the alleged murder plot.
In the recording, Dippolito is heard discussing her husband's morning dog-walking routine, his "tender points" from a recent back surgery, and the specifics of their home's alarm system.
She is then heard telling the undercover officer: "When I say I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it."
According to the probable cause affidavit, Jean asked Dippolito if she was sure she wanted her husband killed, and Dippolito responded, during a taped conversation, that she'd "be very happy" to have him dead.
The affidavit alleges Dippolito told the officer-posing-as-a-hit man that her husband would be withdrawing a large amount of money from a bank and could be attacked after he made the withdrawal.
She had already handed over a $1,200 down payment to her associate (now known to be the informant Shihadeh) as payment for the would-be hit man, according to prosecutors.
A point of contention deep into the retrial remained whether the jury would be allowed to see the video footage of Dippolito that later became fodder for the special episode of "Cops."
The video shows Dippolito arriving home to a bogus murder scene in August 2009, on the day she allegedly wanted her husband killed. At the scene, staged by police, Dippolito is misled to believe her husband was fatally shot.
The judge ultimately allowed the prosecution to show the video, and jurors were able to see the videotaped scene of Dippolito crying, or pretending to cry, when an officer falsely informs her that her husband was killed.
On that day, Aug. 5, 2009, after the "Cops" film crew and the Boynton Beach police secured footage of Dippolito's reaction to the staged murder scene, she was arrested, with officers telling her that she had been caught on camera discussing a plot to murder Michael Dippolito.
Closing Arguments
During closing arguments, Craig Williams recapped the prosecution's case in a speedy fashion, and replayed the recordings of Dippolito talking with Shihadeh and Jean.
Williams said Dippolito's "own words, her own actions and her own intent, all day everyday" showed she was guilty.
Williams -- who had taken to sitting with his head in his hand when the jury was out of the room and the defense was sparring over evidentiary matters -- became animated at the end of his closing statement.
Staring down Dippolito, he raised his voice and proclaimed to the jurors that the defendant "wanted two bullets in her husband's head."
In its closing statement, the defense reiterated the argument that the prosecution's case is built on a shoddy "scripted" police investigation, which was rushed to completion in less than a week, from the time Shihadeh first contacted law enforcement, to the time Dippolito was arrested.
Claypool claimed Boynton Beach had a police department "in love with publicity," and that the contrived nature of the investigation was evident when officers installed a hidden camera in Shihadeh's car before taking his initial statement.
"Ding ding ding. Red light going off in your head," Claypool told the jurors. "What does that tell you? They had scripted this from the get-go. They hadn't even spoken to this guy ... and they were installing video [cameras] in his car."
Jury Deadlock
Jurors began deliberating Tuesday around 11 a.m. They asked to again review the undercover tapes, and in response, the judge allowed several recordings to be replayed in open court through the afternoon hours.
As the evening approached, word of deadlock reached the judge's chambers, as the jury professed it was unable to come to a unanimous decision. The defense team swiftly moved for a mistrial based on a hung jury, but Judge Kelley was initially reluctant. He instructed the jurors to come back in the morning, and reconsider the case while he handled his daily docket.
After the court closed, some red-eyed members of the press, and a bystander holding a baby behind the swarm of media gathered on the courthouse sidewalk, looked deflated by the prospect that there would be no tidy end to the drama.
Then, late morning Wednesday, Judge Kelley declared the mistrial.
Claypool teared up in a press conference, telling the media that he could count on one hand the amount of people who believed he could prevail in the case.
He maintained that the undercover videos of Dippolito were "contaminated" by "improper and illegal police practices."
The police investigation had a "72-hour window to make this a good episode of 'Cops,'" Claypool said, calling the mistrial "a partial victory."
When asked about a possible third trial, Claypool said: "If they want round three, bring it on."
On Wednesday afternoon, State Attorney Dave Aronberg released a statement stating his office intends to do just that.
“My office will retry this case at the earliest opportunity," Aronberg said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Categories / Criminal,
Trials
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