Victim, Richard Rojas, 19, and Christin Bilotti
John Pacchiana and Michael Bilotti
Christin Bilotti
Murder suspect wants separate trial from co-defendant (her father)
By Rafael Olmeda
The Sun Sentinel
A Davie woman accused of helping arrange her ex-boyfriend's murder doesn't want to be tried before the same jury as her two co-defendants, one of whom is her father.
Christin Bilotti, 25, is facing life in prison if convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
Two others, Michael Bilotti, 67, and John Pacchiana, 42, face the same charges for the same killing, but could be executed if convicted.
Christin Bilotti's lawyer, David Bogenschutz, filed legal papers last week asking Broward Circuit Judge Jeffrey Levenson to put his client on trial separately, arguing it's unfair to try a defendant who is not facing the death penalty in front of the same jury as two defendants who are.
Prosecutor Gregg Rossman said there's no legal reason not to try all three together — when more than one person is accused in the same criminal act, the law presumes they'll be tried together unless they testify against each other.
But defense lawyers and legal experts say there's at least one issue that makes a separate trial necessary — jury selection in a death penalty case is more complicated, and Christin Bilotti should not be affected by those complications.
In this case, the Bilottis and Pacchiana are presenting a united front.
They told investigators in 2010 that Richard Rojas, 19, showed up uninvited at the Bilotti home in the Chelsea at Ivanhoe community in western Davie in the early morning hours of July 13, 2005. Rojas was Christin Bilotti's ex-boyfriend, and according to the Bilottis, he had previously raped her and threatened to harm her and her brother. Michael Bilotti asked three employees of his strip club to help protect his family.
One of them was Pacchiana, who shot Rojas to death after Rojas made a thinly veiled threat, detectives were told.
But three years after the fatal shooting, another ex-boyfriend of Christin Bilotti told police that the murder of Rojas was planned.
That led to charges against five people — the Bilottis and the three strip club employees.
Christin Bilotti could not have faced the death penalty because she was a minor, 17 years old, when the crime was committed. Prosecutors also decided not to seek capital punishment for the two other defendants, Wayne Palazzola and Richard Corbin.
With five defendants, five defense teams and changing circumstances, the case has taken years to come to trial with no firm date set. Palazzola, 46, pleaded guilty in 2011 to accessory after the fact and is still awaiting sentencing.
Levenson and lawyers planned to bring the cases to trial this summer, with Corbin, 38, and Christin Bilotti, the non-death penalty cases, going in front of one jury while Michael Bilotti and Pacchiana would go in front of a jury prepared to consider the death penalty.
But Corbin decided to plead guilty in July to the same charge as Palazzola, leaving three defendants — and the question of whether it still made sense to have separate trials.
Rossman, the prosecutor, is pushing for one trial. "There is no legal reason not to," he said. "There is no prejudice to the defendant for whom the death penalty does not apply."
A jury that considers the death penalty has to be a fair one, Rossman said, and there's no reason to think such a jury would not be fair to a co-defendant who is not facing death. "They take an oath to try the guilt phase free and clear and only if they have convicted as charged do they even move onto a penalty phase," he said.
But Bogenschutz noted that potential jurors who are qualified to hear the case against Christin Bilotti might be bounced during jury selection because of their views on the death penalty, views that have nothing to do with her case.
"Jurors who would be asked about penalty … and who indicated their displeasure with the death penalty … would be automatically excluded, inappropriately, depriving Christin Bilotti of jurors otherwise qualified to sit in her case," Bogenschutz wrote.
Nova Southeastern University Law professor Bob Jarvis agreed. "The only way I see around it is if they have two separate juries or two separate trials," he said. "Otherwise, a case can be made that her rights as a defendant are not being preserved."
Herbert Cohen, Corbin's lawyer, also sided with Bogenschutz. "All of us can speculate about the effect of having one jury hearing all three cases," Cohen said, "but the simple fact is the jury should not be in that position, and neither should the defendants."
It's not clear when Levenson will decide whether to hold one trial or two. The remaining defendants are due in court for a status conference on Nov. 17.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/br...014-story.html
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