A Florida woman has been convicted for the second time in a 2009 plot to kill her husband.
Dalia Dippolito, 34, will spend the next 16 years of her life in prison.
With his sentence, Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley denied prosecutors' request to exceed the 20-year sentence that Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath previously gave Dippolito in 2011 and rejected defense attorneys' request for a sentence below the four-year minimum recommended sentence.
Kelley said he considered two mitigating factors seriously: Dippolito's lack of prior criminal record and the time she spent on house arrest. He noted her 20-year sentence in 2011 was actually an 18-year sentence because Colbath gave her credit then for house arrest.
So Kelley sentenced her to 16 years in prison, giving her credit for half the eight years she has spent on house arrest.
The sentence came at the end of a four-hour, sometimes emotional, sometimes grueling hearing in the case, which garnered international headlines eight years ago when a video of Dippolito crying at a staged crime scene went viral.
The only witness testimony came from Michael Dippolito, who had heard evidence in his now ex-wife's plot but listened for the first time in a courtroom Friday as prosecutors read text messages and played videos of her plotting his demise.
“It’s not even real,” Michael Dippolito told Kelley. “It’s like I can’t even believe we’re
still sitting here like this girl didn’t even try to do this.”
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