WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – A Boynton Beach woman accused of hiring an undercover police officer to kill her husband won't have her bond revoked while she awaits her retrial.
Palm Beach County Judge Glenn Kelley ruled Tuesday that Dalia Dippolito violated the terms of her pretrial house arrest when she traveled to Miami to conduct an interview for the ABC News show "20/20."
Recommended Videos
Dippolito was allowed to visit attorney Mark Eiglarsh at his Miami office, but only in preparation for her upcoming trial.
"I do not accept meeting with '20/20' to be trial preparation," Kelley said.
However, Kelley said that Dippolito was acting at the request of her counsel and didn't consider it to be a "willful" violation on her part, so he denied a request by the prosecution to revoke her bond.
Kelley said all further meetings with her attorneys will have to be at the office of West Palm Beach co-counsel Greg Rosenfeld or at her home.
The judge also asked attorney Brian Claypool to clarify his comments to the media after a Feb. 23 hearing, which Kelley believed to be a violation of the Florida Rules of Professional Conduct.
"If the judge follows the sensational nature of those videos that you saw again today, if the judge follows the drama in those videos, if the judge feels pressure from the community, if he rules in that regard, then he's probably going to deny this motion," Claypool told the media during a post-hearing news conference.
Claypool apologized to the judge and said he didn't mean it in the way that Kelley interpreted it.
"In retrospect, if I could go back, your honor, I would have said it a different way," Claypool said.
Kelley was mulling whether to remove Claypool as co-counsel, but he ultimately accepted the California attorney's explanation and chose not to revoke Claypool's "pro hac vice" status. Claypool is not licensed to practice in Florida but has been allowed to appear in court on Dippolito's behalf.
Dippolito is accused of paying an undercover police officer, who was posing as a hit man, to kill her husband in August 2009. The Boynton Beach Police Department staged a crime scene and recorded her reaction on the day her husband was supposed to be killed.
Originally convicted of solicitation to commit first-degree murder in 2011 and sentenced to 20 years in prison, Dippolito had her conviction reversed in 2014. She has been out of jail on $25,000 bond while awaiting her retrial, which is scheduled to begin May 23.