The murder of Mark Fisher occurred in the early morning hours of October 12, 2003, when the 19-year-old college student was brutally beaten, shot five times, and left on Argyle Road in Prospect Park South, Brooklyn.
On October 19, 2005, co-defendants Antonio Russo and John Giuca were convicted of second-degree felony murder for Fisher's death and sentenced to 25 years to life for his murder. [1] [2]
Mark S. Fisher was from Andover, New Jersey. He was the son of Michael and Nancy Fisher and brother to Alexis Fisher. [3] He was a Lenape Valley Regional High School football star and Fairfield University sophomore. [4] He was studying to be an accountant, and was on the Dean's List. [5] Fisher was a National Honor Society student and a star athlete. [4]
On October 11, 2003, Fisher was out drinking with three friends in Manhattan. [6] [7] [5] By chance, Fisher ran into fellow Fairfield University student, Angel DiPietro. [8] [7] [5] Fisher and one of DiPietro’s friends began hitting it off. [9] [10]
That evening, DiPietro met up with another friend of hers, Albert Cleary. [4] Cleary joined the group with 20-year-old John Giuca. [7] [5] Giuca, unable to gain admission to the bar, invited the group to his house in Brooklyn for an impromptu after hours party. [7] Fisher left his friends behind and taxied with the girls to Giuca's home. [4] [9] [11] [12] [7] A number of Giuca’s friends also joined, including 17-year-old Antonio Russo. [7] [5] According to witness testimony, Fisher sat on a table in the house, which upset Giuca. [13] Giuca claimed he last saw Fisher around 5 a.m., falling asleep sitting on his sofa under a yellow blanket. [14]
At 5:23 a.m., Fisher withdrew $20 from a nearby ATM. [4] [15]
At 6:40 a.m., police responded to gunfire reports and within minutes found Fisher's body face down at the foot of a driveway on nearby Argyle Road. [16] [5] [4] [7] Fisher had been badly beaten and shot five times in the chest, side and back, was wearing a torn shirt with buttons missing, had $12 in cash in his pocket (his wallet was discovered in a nearby sewer), and was wrapped in a bloody yellow blanket from Giuca's home. [14] [17] [18] [7] [19] [20] The police recovered two .22 caliber shell casings at the scene. [7]
Prior to the murder, Russo and Giuca did not have much telephone contact. [21] In the 24 hours afterward, there were 26 phone calls between the two. [2] According to police records, Russo cut his long worn dreadlocks and a few days later he flew to California. [7] [22]
Russo was arrested at his home on November 23, 2004, 13 months after Fisher's murder. Russo was indicted on two counts of second degree murder, three counts of robbery, and weapons charges. [3]
Giuca was arrested on December 21, 2004, at his home in Brooklyn. [23] [14] He was charged with providing Fisher's murder weapon, a semiautomatic handgun, to Russo. At the time of his arrest, Giuca had been at the center of the investigation. A party Giuca held at his home was the last place Fisher was known to have been before he was shot five times. [24] [20]
Giuca had previously been arrested in July 2004 for assault, accused of having shot at a group of men in Florida while he was on vacation; the charges were later dropped. [25] [26] On September 30, 2004, three months before his felony indictment, Giuca was arrested on a Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, street corner for selling narcotics while wearing a bulletproof vest. [27] [24] [20]
Giuca was subsequently charged with second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter, robbery in the first and third degrees, and multiple counts of criminal possession of a weapon. [24] [1] [20]
Giuca and Russo were tried together as co-defendants in September 2005, [8] [28] but with two separate juries.
The prosecution argued that Giuca and Russo, members of a street gang dubbed "Ghetto Mafia", beat and shot Fisher on October 12, 2003, out of machismo, a need for street credibility, and because Fisher was a rich kid who made an easy target. [29]
The government presented evidence of Giuca's involvement as a captain in the neighborhood street gang. Testimony showed that the Ghetto Mafia had recently put in place a policy that members would have to kill someone to join and that Giuca had been showing off a .22-caliber Ruger pistol a week before the murder. [30] [31] Giuca’s best friend, Albert Cleary, testified that before the shooting, Giuca worried that his crew was "getting soft” and needed to "get a body.” [32]
Witnesses, including Giuca’s girlfriend at the time, testified to Giuca’s involvement in the murder, including providing the gun to Russo. [31] [30] Cleary testified that within hours of the shooting, Giuca told him he had led Fisher out to the street toward Russo, who was waiting with a gun, around dawn. Cleary also testified that Giuca told him Russo had attacked Fisher, but that the 19-year-old who stood 6' 5", fought back and Russo had shot Fisher with a .22-caliber Ruger pistol. Russo then returned the gun to Giuca, saying, "It's done." Giuca then asked Cleary to get rid of the weapon. [19] [13]
Russo claimed in his trial that Giuca was the person who fired the shots and killed Fisher. [30] [32] [31]
The government also called as a witness Giuca's former cellmate John Avitto, who testified that while imprisoned at Rikers Island he had overheard Giuca confess to the murder. He testified he overheard Giuca confess in a conversation with his father; however Giuca's father was unable to speak after suffering a stroke years earlier. [33]
In October 2005, two years after Fisher's murder, Giuca and Russo were sentenced to 25 years to life. [34] The judge said: "This was a callous crime, and the defendants’ reactions were callous—brutal, callous, and shockingly senseless. So my sentence will be callous." [14]
Russo's jury deliberated for two days before finding him guilty. [17]
After two hours of deliberation, [17] the Brooklyn jury found Giuca guilty on charges of second-degree murder, robbery, and multiple counts of criminal possession of a firearm. [7] [16] Giuca was imprisoned on Rikers Island. [4]
In 2008, Giuca filed his first motion to vacate the verdict in New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn arguing that he did not receive a fair trial due to juror misconduct. [12] [35] [36] The court denied Giuca's motion. He appealed the decision. The New York Appellate Division 2nd Department denied the request for a hearing to review evidence of juror misconduct against former juror Jason Allo. [37]
In November 2010, a panel of four state Supreme Court judges ruled that even if the alleged statements the juror Jason Allo had made were true, there were no grounds for overturning his conviction. [38]
On May 14, 2013, Judge Frederic Block of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York denied Giuca's federal habeas petition. [39] [40]
In February 2014, Giuca's attorney submitted a petition to the newly elected Brooklyn District Attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, requesting that the conviction be reviewed and voided due to prosecutorial misconduct, a failure by the defense lawyer at trial to point out multiple inconsistencies, and recantation of testimony by key witnesses. [41] [42] [43] In January 2015, Thompson, who established the Conviction Review Unit in NYC, announced that after a thorough review, the department determined there was no wrongdoing in the case: "I have determined that John Giuca's conviction for the murder of Mark Fisher is just and should not be vacated." [32] He added: "This defendant got a fair trial. He may not like the result, but the result was based on the evidence presented. There’s no evidence of actual innocence." [21]
On June 9, 2016, Giuca filed his second motion to vacate the verdict. After a hearing Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun denied the motion on June 13. [44] The judge ruled that Giuca had received a fair trial. Giuca's attorney stated that he would appeal the verdict. [45]
On February 7, 2018, a four-judge panel of the New York State Second Judicial Department Appeals Court in Brooklyn unanimously overturned Giuca's conviction and ordered a new trial. [29] It ruled that the district attorney's office had withheld evidence from the defense. [16] On February 20, June 28, and September 6, 2018, Giuca was denied bail. [46] [47] [48]
On March 22, 2018, Russo confessed to killing Fisher. [49] In a statement passed to Giuca's lawyer, Russo told detectives that he had murdered Fisher and that the gun was his. [50] [51]
On June 28, 2018, New York's highest court announced it would hear Giuca's case, with oral arguments scheduled for April 30, 2019. [52]
On June 11, 2019, the New York Court of Appeals overturned the appeals court decision, and reinstated Giuca's murder conviction. [53] Chief Judge of the State of New York Janet DiFiore, who wrote for the majority, disagreed with the lower court in Brooklyn that information never turned over to the defense about favors the prosecution had done for a key witness would have changed the course of the trial, "there is no reasonable possibility that the verdict would have been different if the information at issue had been disclosed." [54]
On August 6, 2019, Giuca's legal team filed a third motion to vacate his conviction based on new evidence. A hearing for these claims was scheduled for January 2021. [55]
Looking for evidence to overturn her son's conviction, Doreen Giuliano began an unsanctioned inquiry of the jurors targeting juror Jason Allo. Using the alias Dee Quinn, Giuliano rented an apartment close to Allo's residence, transformed her appearance, and established a close relationship with him. Giuliano recorded her conversations and submitted audio of Allo making antisemitic comments about Giuca to the State Supreme Court in an appeal of Giuca's conviction. Giuliano's conduct was condemned by Judge Alan Marrus. [30] Giuliano's crusade to free her son attracted widespread attention from media outlets and the nickname "Mother Justice". [56] [31]
Murder, Inc. was an organized crime group active from 1929 to 1941 that acted as the enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicate – a closely connected criminal organization that included and was started by the Irish Mob, and included Italian-American Mafia, the Jewish Mob, and other criminal organizations in New York City and elsewhere. Murder, Inc. was composed of Irish, Jewish, and Italian-American gangsters, and members were mainly recruited from poor and working-class Irish, Jewish, and Italian neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn. It was initially headed by Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and later by Albert "Mad Hatter" Anastasia.
Laci Denise Peterson was an American woman murdered by her husband, Scott Lee Peterson, while eight months pregnant with their first child. On December 24, 2002, Scott reported Laci missing from their home in Modesto, California.
Ronald L. Kuby is an American criminal defense and civil rights lawyer, radio talk show host, and television commentator. He has hosted radio programs on WABC Radio in New York City and Air America radio.
Martha Elizabeth Moxley was a 15-year-old American high school student from Greenwich, Connecticut, who was murdered in 1975. Moxley was last seen alive spending time at the home of the Skakel family, across the street from her home in Belle Haven. Michael Skakel, also aged 15 at the time, was convicted in 2002 of murdering Moxley and was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. In 2013, Skakel was granted a new trial by a Connecticut judge who ruled that his counsel had been inadequate, and he was released on $1.2 million bail. On December 30, 2016, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled 4–3 to reinstate Skakel's conviction. The Connecticut Supreme Court reversed itself on May 4, 2018, and ordered a new trial. On October 30, 2020, the 45th anniversary of Moxley's murder, the state of Connecticut announced it would not retry Skakel for Moxley's murder. The case attracted worldwide publicity, as Skakel is a nephew of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, the widow of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
Steven Allan Avery is an American convicted murderer from Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, who had previously been wrongfully convicted in 1985 of sexual assault and attempted murder. After serving 18 years of a 32-year sentence, Avery was exonerated by DNA testing and released in 2003, only to be charged in another murder case two years later.
The Angola Three are three African American former prison inmates who were held for decades in solitary confinement while imprisoned at Louisiana State Penitentiary. The latter two were indicted in April 1972 for the killing of a prison corrections officer; they were convicted in January 1974. Wallace and Woodfox served more than 40 years each in solitary, the "longest period of solitary confinement in American prison history".
Michael "Mickey" Sherman is a Connecticut-based American criminal defense attorney. He is known for his representation of Michael Skakel. Sherman's client was found guilty. In October 2013, a judge ordered a retrial for Skakel, citing Sherman's "glaring ineffectiveness"; the State appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court, which reinstated the conviction on December 30, 2016, as reported by the New York Times on December 31, 2016. On May, 4, 2018, the conviction was overturned by the Connecticut Supreme Court.
Channon Gail Christian, aged 21, and Hugh Christopher Newsom Jr., aged 23, were from Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. They were kidnapped on the evening of January 6, 2007, when Christian's vehicle was carjacked. The couple were taken to a rental house. Both of them were raped, tortured, and murdered. Four males and one female were arrested, charged, and convicted in the case. In 2007, a grand jury indicted Letalvis Darnell Cobbins, Lemaricus Devall Davidson, George Geovonni Thomas, and Vanessa Lynn Coleman on counts of kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder. Also in 2007, Eric DeWayne Boyd was indicted by a federal grand jury of being an accessory to a carjacking, resulting in serious bodily injury to another person and misprision of a felony. In 2018, Boyd was indicted on state-level charges of kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder.
Jaime Rios is a judge on the New York Supreme Court for Queens County. Prior to sitting on the Supreme Court, Judge Rios served on the New York City Civil Court and the Housing Court. Judge Rios holds a B.S. degree from City College of New York, a M.A. degree from New York University, and a law degree from Fordham University School of Law. Following law school, Judge Rios was a prosecutor in Kings County and later an attorney for the New York City Police Department. He also teaches landlord/tenant law at Fordham as an adjunct professor. He is also a co-chair of Fordham's Minority Mentorship Program for law students. Judge Rios retired from the bench in December 2013. Many attorneys mourned his retirement, noting that he was a consistent and fair jurist whose understanding of the law was generally above reproach.
Curtis Giovanni Flowers is an American man who was tried for the same murders six times by the same prosecutor in the U.S. state of Mississippi. Four of the trials resulted in convictions, all of which were overturned on appeal. Flowers was alleged to have committed the July 16, 1996, shooting deaths of four people inside Tardy Furniture store in Winona, seat of Montgomery County. Flowers was first convicted in 1997; in five of the six trials, the prosecutor, Montgomery County District Attorney Doug Evans, sought the death penalty against Flowers. As a result, Flowers was held on death row at the Parchman division of Mississippi State Penitentiary for over 20 years.
The murder of Yeardley Love took place on May 3, 2010, in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. Love, a University of Virginia (UVA) women's lacrosse student-athlete, was found unresponsive in her Charlottesville apartment, and later that day, UVA men's lacrosse player George Wesley Huguely V was arrested by Charlottesville police. Huguely was tried and found guilty of Love's murder, receiving a 23-year prison sentence.
Steven William Fisher was an American attorney who served on the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division and had presided over the trial in the Wendy's massacre while serving on New York State Supreme Court in which the defendant was the last to be assessed the death penalty.
Doreen Quinn Giuliano is the mother of John Giuca, who in 2003 was convicted of the murder of Mark Fisher. Giuliano went undercover to investigate possible juror misconduct in the trial. Because of her activities, Giuliano has been called "Mother Justice."
Louis N. Scarcella is a retired detective from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) who earned frequent commendations during the "crack epidemic" of the 1980s and 1990s, before many convictions resulting from his investigations were overturned during his retirement. As a member of the Brooklyn North Homicide Squad, he and his longtime partner Stephen Chmil built a reputation for obtaining convictions in difficult cases. Since 2013, Scarcella has received extensive and sustained publicity for multiple allegations of investigative misconduct that resulted in false testimony against crime suspects, leading to innocent parties serving long prison terms and guilty individuals going free.
The prosecution of Rodricus Crawford in Caddo Parish, Louisiana in 2013, attracted national media attention. Crawford, a black man, was convicted and sentenced to death that year for allegedly suffocating his one-year-old son. His death sentence was seen as part of a pattern in the parish, which has the highest rate of death penalty sentencing in the nation. The prosecutor in this case said this penalty was needed for society's revenge.
Corey Miller, better known by his stage name C-Murder, is an American rapper. He initially gained fame in the mid-1990s as a part of his brother Master P's label No Limit Records, primarily as a member of the label's supergroup, TRU. Miller went on to release several solo albums of his own through the label, including 1998's platinum Life or Death. C-Murder has released nine albums altogether on six different labels, No Limit Records, TRU Records, Koch Records, Asylum Records, RBC Records, and Venti Uno.
Making a Murderer is an American true crime documentary television series written and directed by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos. The show tells the story of Steven Avery, a man from Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, who served 18 years in prison (1985–2003) after his wrongful conviction for the sexual assault and attempted murder of Penny Beerntsen. He was later charged with and convicted of the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach. The connected story is that of Avery's nephew Brendan Dassey, who was accused and convicted as an accessory in the murder of Halbach.
On the morning of February 3, 2003, American actress Lana Clarkson was found dead inside the Pyrenees Castle, the Alhambra, California mansion of record producer Phil Spector. In the early hours of that morning, Clarkson had met Spector while working at the House of Blues in Los Angeles.
United States of America v. Joaquín Guzmán Loera was a federal criminal court case against Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, a Mexican drug lord and former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. Guzmán was extradited from Mexico to the United States in January 2017, where he pleaded not guilty to all counts against him in Brooklyn, New York. His charges included drug trafficking, money laundering, and murder. His defense asserted that he was not the organized crime leader that the prosecution claimed. The trial, often characterized as a trial of the century, began on November 5, 2018, and lasted until February 12, 2019, when the jury returned a verdict of guilty on all counts. He was sentenced on July 17, 2019 to a prison term of life.
Flowers v. Mississippi, No. 17–9572, 588 U.S. 284 (2019), is a United States Supreme Court decision regarding the use of peremptory challenges to remove black jurors during a series of Mississippi criminal trials for Curtis Flowers, a black man convicted on murder charges. The Supreme Court held in Batson v. Kentucky that the use of peremptory challenges solely on the basis of race is unconstitutional. This case examined whether the Mississippi Supreme Court erred in how it applied Batson to this case. The Supreme Court ruled that Flowers' case fell under Batson and that the state inappropriately removed most of the potential black jurors during the trials.