Brooklyn Man Convicted Of College Student's Murder Gets New Trial

PROSPECT PARK SOUTH, BROOKLYN — A Brooklyn appeals court overturned the 2005 conviction of John Giuca, who was sentenced to life in prison for killing college student Mark Fisher in Prospect Park South.

A panel from the Second Judicial Department Appeals Court ordered a new trial for Giuca, 34, who has spent the past decade in prison, because prosecutors did not disclose important information about a key witness, court records show.

The judges ruled that the trial prosecutor should have disclosed that key witness (and prisoner) John Avitto had received preferential treatment in exchange for his testimony.

“Avitto’s credibility was ‘an important issue in the case’,” wrote the panel. “and a “pivotal consideration” for the jury … The nondisclosed evidence was certainly impeaching in nature.”

The case began on Oct. 12, 2003, when Fisher, a 19-year-old student at Fairfield University in Connecticut, was found dead just blocks from Giuca’s family’s Prospect Park South home.

At Giuca’s 2005 trial, prosecutor Anna Sigga Nicolazzi argued that Giuca, the alleged head of a gang called “Ghetto Mafia,” ordered a hit on Fisher after the college student sat on his coffee table, the New York Post reported.

Avitto, Giuca’s fellow inmate at Riker’s Island, testified during the trial that he heard Giuca tell his father that he had a gun the night of the murder, but told and an appellate court in 2015 he’d lied, the Post reported.

“I am pleased to report that John Giuca’s murder conviction has been reversed and a new trial ordered,” Giuca’s attorney Mark Bederow wrote in a Facebook post. “One step closer to home.”

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock