Witness who saw off-duty NYPD officer fatally shoot man in 1996 recants his trial testimony

By JONATHAN BANDLER
THE JOURNAL NEWS

(Original Publication: November 20, 2007)

A witness who saw off-duty New York Police Department Officer Richard DiGuglielmo fatally shoot Charles Campbell outside his family's Dobbs Ferry deli in 1996 recanted his trial testimony yesterday, testifying that he felt pressured by police to change his original account that the shooting was justified.

"I was beginning to feel intimidated, tired; tired of talking to them," Michael Dillon said in explaining how repeated interrogations by Dobbs Ferry detectives led him to say that Campbell no longer posed a threat when he was shot.

Dillon might be DiGuglielmo's last chance to reverse his murder conviction. The 42-year-old former officer returned to Westchester County Court yesterday for the first time since December 1997, when he was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. He smiled briefly at his parents, who sat among more than 20 friends in the gallery. Campbell's brother and cousin and their friends sat on the other side of the aisle.

DiGuglielmo's lawyers contend that Dillon's recantation and the police tactics should lead Westchester County Judge Rory Bellantoni to overturn the conviction. The prosecution maintains that the jury relied on several witnesses, not just Dillon, in convicting DiGuglielmo of murder. The verdict should stand despite Dillon's recantation, they argue, because it is not clear DiGuglielmo would have been acquitted if Dillon had testified differently.

Dillon testified for about 50 minutes before lunch. The hearing was supposed to resume afterward, but the parties sat in the courtroom for nearly two hours with no explanation for the delay before it was adjourned. Bellantoni said later he felt he could not continue after his blood pressure soared during a heated phone conversation with Administrative Judge Francis Nicolai about a disparaging letter he had received from Nicolai's office.

The delay broke up what started as an emotional day for those on both sides of one of Westchester's biggest homicide cases of the 1990s.

On the evening of Oct. 3, 1996, Campbell, a White Plains sanitation worker and amateur boxer, got into a fight with the officer, his father and his brother-in-law after the elder DiGuglielmo put a no-parking sticker on his Corvette when he went across the street to buy a piece of pizza. The three appeared to subdue Campbell, but instead of leaving, he pulled a metal baseball bat from his trunk and went on the attack. He hit Richard DiGuglielmo Sr. in the leg, prompting the off-duty officer to go inside and get a gun. He came out and fired three times at Campbell, killing him. The dead man had still been holding the bat, but witness accounts differed as to whether he was swinging it. DiGuglielmo has always claimed that he believed Campbell was about to hit his father in the head when he shot him.

That night, Dillon told police and a television news reporter that he believed the off-duty officer was protecting his father when he fired. Four days later, he changed his account and testified at the trial in October 1997 that he no longer thought Campbell was posing a threat to anyone when he was shot. The defense confronted him with his television interview - which the jury did not see - but he maintained that account was mistaken. He did not say that he was pressured into changing his account. DiGuglielmo was convicted of second-degree murder, not for intending to kill Campbell but for showing depraved indifference to human life. He has served just over 10 years of his sentence.

Years of appeals failed, but the family got new hope this year when investigators tracked down Dillon and he indicated police had coerced him into changing his statement. Defense lawyers contended that police and prosecutors never revealed that detectives repeatedly interviewed Dillon in the three days between the shooting and his revised statement.

Dillon said yesterday that detectives picked him up at work three times and escorted him back to police headquarters, where they interviewed him at length. The third time, on Oct. 7, 1996, he changed his story, saying Campbell was backing up and no longer swinging the bat when he was shot.

He said after that interview, police never sought to question him again. "Apparently the (new) statement was up to their satisfaction," he told DiGuglielmo's appellate lawyer, Andrew Schapiro.

Michael Lynch, Campbell's cousin, said he did not believe Dillon's trial testimony was coerced - the witness simply changed his account because his initial one was inaccurate.

"We let this go a long time ago, but this is opening up a lot of old wounds," he said of the hearing. "My cousin is dead and that's not going to change. Somebody shot him and they should pay for that."