Witnesses at DiGuglielmo hearing differ about coercion

By REBECCA BAKER
THE JOURNAL NEWS

(Original Publication: December 5, 2007)

A senior investigator with the District Attorney's Office said a witness to a 1996 fatal shooting in Dobbs Ferry told him this year that police did not coerce him into changing his original story that the shooting was justified.

"He said 'coerced' was a word he would not use," said the investigator, Edward Murphy.

Murphy's testimony wrapped up a two-week hearing into whether former New York Police Department Officer Richard DiGuglielmo should be given a new murder trial. The 42-year-old has served 10 years of a 20-years-to-life sentence for killing Charles Campbell in the parking lot of the Venice Deli on Oct. 3, 1996.

Michael Dillon could be DiGuglielmo's last chance in one of Westchester's biggest homicide cases of the 1990s. To overturn the conviction, Westchester County Judge Rory Bellantoni must find that police did coerce Dillon's second statement and that the verdict would likely have been different if the jury had had that information.

Dillon, a cable technician who happened by the scene that night, had himself said that village detectives coerced him into changing his story, which was that DiGuglielmo was protecting his father when he shot a bat-swinging Campbell in the parking lot.

Dillon, then 20, said he felt intimidated by police, who took him to headquarters three more times for interviews. He never mentioned any undue pressure until investigators for DiGuglielmo contacted him last year.

Murphy testified yesterday that he approached Dillon on July 27 and asked him why he told investigators that police had coerced him to change his story. Murphy said Dillon calmly told him that he never told anyone he was coerced.

Murphy said he asked Dillon to meet with prosecutors at the District Attorney's Office in White Plains on Aug. 11. At that meeting, Murphy said, Dillon was read a transcript of his trial testimony and he said it was truthful.

Murphy testified that Dillon also told prosecutors that Dobbs Ferry police treated him well, but he thought it was strange that they kept asking the same questions over and over again.

Defense lawyer Andrew Schapiro noted that handwritten notes taken during the Aug. 11 meeting failed to mention Dillon's reaction to his trial testimony.

His response - that what he said at the trial was the truth - appeared for the first time in a typed description of the meeting two days later.

DiGuglielmo's lawyers say Dillon's statements about what he saw and went through with the police should be enough to overturn the conviction. Prosecutors maintain that the jury relied on medical evidence and witnesses who suggested the elder DiGuglielmo was no longer in danger when Campbell was shot.

Bellantoni adjourned the hearing and said he would hear arguments from lawyers on both sides on Jan. 30.