John Giuca is looking for one other try at freedom for a criminal offense he says he didn't commit. Nevertheless, this can be his final time trying to hunt an enchantment.
R Umar Abbasi
It’s now or by no means for convicted “Grid Child” killer John Giuca.
Ever since he was first implicated in school scholar Mark Fisher’s dying in 2003, Giuca has maintained his innocence — however his most up-to-date try at clearing his identify might be his final.
“It’s an all-or-nothing enchantment,” Giuca’s lawyer Mark Bederow not too long ago informed The Put up.
His consumer’s years-long battle for freedom took a step backward final month when Brooklyn Supreme Courtroom Justice Danny Chun issued a ruling upholding the 2005 homicide conviction.
It was the second time in six years that Chun struck down Giuca’s bid to overturn the responsible verdict.
However the convicted killer isn’t giving up. His lawyer filed a movement on March 23 looking for permission to enchantment Chun’s choice.
“Every little thing on this case is at stake on this utility,” Bederow mentioned final week.
“If we're denied depart to enchantment, then a person who's most definitely harmless … could have the courthouse doorways shut with out alternative to enchantment his conviction.”
‘Inconsistent’ theories of guilt
It’s the most recent twist in a posh authorized saga that has weaved its method by means of state and federal court docket for the higher a part of the final 20 years.
Giuca, now 38, filed his first unsuccessful movement to vacate the decision again in 2008, arguing he didn’t get a good shot due to juror misconduct at his trial.
He and one other man, Antonio Russo, have been tried for the homicide in neighboring courtrooms with separate juries, through the late former Brooklyn District Lawyer Charles Hynes’ tenure. Every was sentenced to 25 years to life.
Fisher, a 19-year-old Fairfield College soccer star, was gunned down on the morning of Oct. 12, 2003 after attending a celebration at Giuca’s home with a school classmate, Angel DiPietro, in Prospect Park South.
His physique was discovered on the finish of a driveway on close by Argyle Highway, shot 5 instances and mendacity facedown on a bloody blanket.
Neighbors reported listening to the sound of gunshots and a automotive drive away. Some mentioned they heard automotive doorways open and shut and the voices of younger folks, together with a girl.
The homicide gripped New York’s consideration and made nationwide headlines because it took cops greater than a 12 months to arrest Russo and Giuca.
Russo, who witnesses mentioned was the final individual to see Fisher alive, and who lower off his signature dreadlocks and flew to the West coast shortly after the homicide, confessed to detectives in a 2018 jailhouse interview. And whereas he didn’t implicate Giuca, he additionally didn’t clear him.
However Giuca’s protection workforce says in its newest court docket submitting that the case towards him relied upon “pressured witnesses” and a jailhouse snitch “to assist quite a few (and inconsistent) theories of his guilt.”
One such concept, based mostly on testimony from Giuca’s mates, was that Russo, a 17-year-old high-school dropout who lived close by, had attacked Fisher alone after which gone again to Giuca’s dwelling to present him the gun to stash.
The informant, John Avitto, had a conflicting concept: that Giuca and Russo attacked Fischer collectively, with the previous pistol-whipping the sufferer and the later taking the gun away and doing the capturing.
Two successive district attorneys have stood by Giuca’s conviction by means of the appeals and a 2014 evaluate of the case by the workplace’s inner Conviction Assessment Unit.
New proof emerges
Giuca’s second movement to vacate the decision in 2015 made critical allegations of misconduct towards star Brooklyn Assistant District Lawyer Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi, now the host of the Discovery+ crime sequence “True Conviction.”
The protection workforce alleged Nicolazzi suppressed proof that may have case doubt on the claims made by Avitto, who recanted his testimony in 2015, saying he fabricated his story to curry favor with the DA on his prison expenses.
Chun, the Brooklyn choose, denied the movement, discovering that Giuca had nonetheless obtained a good trial.
However an appellate court docket reversed Chun’s ruling in 2018, tossing Giuca’s conviction and ordering a brand new trial.
The decision, nonetheless, was reinstated by the state’s highest court docket, the Courtroom of Appeals, in 2019.
The court docket agreed that Nicolazzi had didn't disclose impeachment proof about Avitto, however held the data wouldn’t have been “materials” at trial due to the “robust proof” of Giuca’s guilt, together with “his efforts to eliminate the gun shortly after the homicide.”
In what it calls a “merciless twist of irony,” Giuca’s protection claims one other piece of beforehand suppressed proof — which the Courtroom of Appeals couldn't contemplate in its ruling — would have cleared him.
That proof is a recording of a 2005 interview between Nicolazzi and one other Rikers Island inmate, Joseph Ingram, who alleged Russo confessed to committing the crime — and that Giuca refused to do away with the gun for him.
Giuca argued that his trial lawyer by no means obtained the tape. Each his trial lawyer and Russo’s trial lawyer confirmed they'd not obtained the Ingram recording.
The most recent enchantment earlier than Chun argued that the data of each the Ingram recording and the proof casting doubt on Avitto’s testimony might have swayed the jury in Giuca’s favor.
However Chun nonetheless dominated there was no “definitive proof” that the recording was improperly withheld, and that it was really “extra probably” that it had been disclosed earlier than trial.
He additionally discovered there was no “affordable likelihood” that the decision would have been completely different both method.
One final shot?
Within the newest submitting, Bederow argues the court docket ought to permit Giuca to enchantment the ruling “so that it's going to have the chance to listen to the related information and proper the injustice of Justice Chun’s choice and afford Giuca a good trial.”
“We expect the choice, respectfully, couldn’t be extra mistaken,” Bederow informed The Put up.
There’s no formal timeline, nonetheless, for when a choose will rule on his movement and both permit the enchantment to proceed or deny it, basically shutting the door on the case.
“We'll reply to the movement in court docket,” the Brooklyn DA’s Workplace responded.
Giuca, in the meantime, stays behind bars at New York State’s Coxsackie Correctional Facility. He’s 17 years into his sentence and will probably be almost one other decade earlier than he’s in a position to search parole.
His frame of mind is “up and down,” mentioned Bederow, including that his consumer has “been dwelling in jail wrongfully for 17 years in reference to a case the place through the years he will get piecemeal exculpatory proof.”
Giuca has skilled “each excessive and low possible,” his lawyer mentioned.
“However he's additionally a fighter and he’s in place by way of persevering with the battle.”
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