Rosemarie DiGuglielmo: 'We Won't Stop Fighting'

Rosemarie and Richard Diguglielmo, Dobbs Ferry residents and business owners, will have one month to find out whether their son Richard will have to serve the remainder of his 20-year-to-life sentence.

Yesterday, New York State's top court heard DiGuglielmo's request for a re-trial, on the basis that witnesses had been coerced to change their testimonies during the original trial in 1996. DiGuglielmo was found guilty of fatally shooting Charles Campbell, a White Plains sanitation worker, who had parked in the DiGuglielmo family deli's parking lot, when he was going across the street for pizza. 

"I don't know how to feel about how things went yesterday," Ms. DiGuglielmo said Wednesday morning. "You have 11 minutes to speak, during which you are constantly interrupted with questions."

In 2007, the DiGuglielmos—with the assistance of lawyer Andrew Schapiro—were able to get the conviction overturned because, Ms. DiGuglielmo said, "One of the key witnesses came forward and said he had been coerced into changing his story. His wife had just given birth to a baby boy, and he told the investigator he had felt bad about lying for 10 years. But once he'd changed it, he felt stuck."

In 2008, Judge Rory J. Bellantoni of Westchester County Court ruled to release DiGuglielmo on the basis that witnesses to the crime had been mishandled by police and the trial had been unfair.

"One of the witneses said on two TV stations directly after the incident that the shooting was in self-defense," Ms. Diguglielmo said. "He said the black man was swinging a bat when the shots were fired. But by the time of the trial, he had totally changed his story."

After 18 months free, he was sent back to prison. 

"That doesn't fly with me," Ms. DiGuglielmo said. "How can that be?"

Ms. Diguglielmo said the oral hearing Tuesday in Albany was brief. "I'm hoping the court of appeals reads the paperwork and makes careful determinations."

The DiGuglielmo family and Schapiro have vowed to keep fighting—as have . 

"When you know in your heart—in your mind—that something is so wrong, you keep fighting. I believe there will be a light at the end of the tunnel."