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After Nearly 15 Years, a Brooklyn Murder Case Could Return to Court

NEW YORK — The long, strange murder case of John Giuca — one that has already seen a two-week trial, several state appeals, a federal appeal and countless legal hearings — seems destined to return to court, as Brooklyn prosecutors said Tuesday that they planned to retry Giuca if the recent ruling overturning his conviction is upheld.

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ALAN FEUER
, New York Times

NEW YORK — The long, strange murder case of John Giuca — one that has already seen a two-week trial, several state appeals, a federal appeal and countless legal hearings — seems destined to return to court, as Brooklyn prosecutors said Tuesday that they planned to retry Giuca if the recent ruling overturning his conviction is upheld.

The announcement of a possible new trial — tentatively set to begin on May 1 — was the latest pivot in a prosecution that has taken many of them in nearly 15 years.

Two weeks ago, the state’s 2nd Judicial Department Appeals Court tossed out Giuca’s guilty verdict, ruling that the Brooklyn district attorney’s office withheld evidence from his lawyers and relied on testimony from a witness who lied at his murder trial in 2005. At a hearing Tuesday, prosecutors from the district attorney’s office said they planned to appeal that ruling, and were prepared for another trial if the effort failed.

The hearing, in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn, brought together yet again the chief players in the long-running drama who, for more than a decade, have done their part to turn the case into an unlikely cause célèbre in the Brooklyn criminal-justice system.

Arriving from a holding cell on Rikers Island, Giuca, who has so far served 13 years in prison, appeared in court wearing khakis, a light-gray blazer and a thousand-yard stare. His mother, Doreen Giuliano, who has gone to great lengths to proclaim his innocence, was back. So were Michael and Nancy Fisher, the parents of the victim in the case, Mark Fisher, a 19-year-old college student who was shot to death after a raucous house party in Brooklyn in October 2003.

Fisher, a student at Fairfield University in Connecticut, had been barhopping on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with his college buddies on the evening before he was killed. After the woozy night — and a string of fateful coincidences — he ended up, largely among strangers, at the party at Giuca’s house in Prospect Park South, an enclave of sweeping front porches and large Victorian homes. Shortly after 6 a.m. the next day, Fisher was found dead, wrapped in a blanket from Giuca’s house, at the foot of a driveway across the street from the home of another person from the party.

Prosecutors claimed at trial that Giuca and a co-defendant, Antonio Russo, were members of a loosely organized gang called the Ghetto Mafia and went after Fisher for street credibility, seeing him as a rich teenager and “an easy target.” They also said that Giuca might have been jealous about a woman Fisher had been flirting with that night, and was angry at his drunken behavior. Giuca and Russo were tried together by separate juries and were both found guilty of the murder. Each was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

In court Tuesday, Giuca’s lawyer, Mark A. Bederow, requested bail, saying that given the recent ruling, the case against his client had been “reduced to rubble” and there was “no path to victory for the DA.” at a second trial.

But Justice Danny K. Chun denied the request, noting that a jury had found Giuca guilty and an early appellate ruling had upheld the conviction — an odd bit of legal reasoning, given that the latest ruling cast doubt on the former and appeared to overturn the latter.

As the hearing came to an end, Doreen Giuliano called out to a gaggle of reporters in the jury box, “He’s innocent! He’s innocent!” That, in fact, was one of her tamer efforts to defend her son. In 2007, after John Giuca was imprisoned, Doreen Giuliano undertook an elaborate one-woman sting operation in which she tried to seduce a juror from the trial who she thought was compromised.

“It’s surreal — it’s a nightmare,” she added once the hearing was over. “Where do you go for justice?”

The Fishers, meanwhile, left the courthouse without saying a word.

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