Man convicted in ‘Grid Kid’ slaying finally confesses

Man convicted in ‘Grid Kid’ slaying finally confesses By Gabrielle Fonrouge and Lia EustachewichNew York Post The Brooklyn man convicted of helping to kill Connecticut college football star Mark Fisher has finally confessed to the 2003 slaying, according to a report. The admission by “Grid Kid” killer co-defendant Antonio Russo was made to detectives during … Read more

Star Athlete’s Murderer Confesses. Why Is Someone Else Still Locked Up?

by Hella Winston The Daily Beast In February, after serving almost 13 years in prison, a Brooklyn man named John Giuca had his murder conviction thrown out by an appellate court citing violations by the prosecutor—a former darling of the Brooklyn DA’s Homicide Bureau who now has her own true-crime TV show. The court ordered a retrial but … Read more

Star Prosecutor Turned TV Commentator Just Got Caught Doing Some Dirty Tricks

Star Prosecutor Turned TV Commentator Just Got Caught Doing Some Dirty Tricks by Bennett GershmanLaw & Crime Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi, a tough, seasoned Brooklyn prosecutor claimed she tried over 50 cases and never lost.  She was chief of the Homicide Bureau when she left the office to become a celebrity TV commentator on the Discovery channel. … Read more

The False Conviction of the District Attorney Turned Reality Star

The False Conviction of the District Attorney Turned Reality Star TRUE CONVICTION? Just after Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi parlayed her success as a Brooklyn ADA into a new career as a true-crime TV host, an appeals court reversed one of her signature murder convictions.  by Christopher Ketcham The Daily Beast   Just after Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi parlayed her … Read more

Brooklyn man convicted in 2003 ‘Grid Kid’ slaying of college football player granted retrial

by Christina Carrega and Leonard Greene NY Daily News The man convicted in the “Grid Kid” killing of a Fairfield University football player in Brooklyn 15 years ago is getting a new trial. A state appellate court sided with John Giuca Wednesday in his longtime bid to have another jury hear the evidence related to … Read more

Lawyer’s Battle Over Conduct in 2003 Murder Case in Brooklyn

Lawyer’s Battle Over Conduct in 2003 Murder Case in Brooklyn by Stephanie CliffordThe NY Times It was lawyer versus lawyer Monday, as a top Brooklyn homicide prosecutor took the stand in a hearing revisiting a murder conviction in a 2003 killing. Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi, the chief of trials in the homicide bureau at the Brooklyn district attorney’s … Read more

The Dumbest Newspapers at the Center of the World

“A 20-year-old named John Giuca, who hosted the football player at a house party just hours before his murder, was soon picked up by the DA’s detectives, and the leaks went out from the DA’s office to the chopping block at the tabloids. Giuca was no longer simply a young guy who threw a party and who the DA had little real evidence against. He was now head of a street gang, the “Ghetto Mafia,” arch-fiend, octopus-armed director of events that led to the murder (dispatching his henchman to kill the victim). The always execrable Andrea Peyser, the Post pundit who (my sources tell me) sprays ammonia in her eyes to start the day, all but declared Giuca guilty, and though she was kind enough to refer to him as a “skinny punk,” she couldn’t even report out his name correctly: Peyser wrote him up as “Guica,” and so did just about every one of the scores of articles about the case in the Post – so much for fact-checking.

John Giuca, who was studying to be a detective, was now beyond redemption; he was even declared the “Tony Soprano” of Brooklyn. The News and the Post pounced on whatever they could find: Giuca was once arrested for drug dealing, they reported, and he had once fired a gun in the air. They were fed blindly at the trough by the DA’s office, because none of it was true. “I hated those fucking reporters,” John Giuca’s mother, Doreen Giuliano, told me. “The drugs were one bag of pot and one pill that was found on his friend – not even on John! So there’s five guys – what, were they all gonna break the pill apart and sell it?” And the gun charge? Giuca was lighting firecrackers and got written up for it when he was 17 years old. After his arrest for the murder of the football player, “unnamed witnesses,” produced by the DA’s office, came forward to attest that the fireworks were pistols. “These assholes at the Post,” said Doreen. “They never even checked the facts. They took the DA’s spin on it whole-hog and now John is a drug dealer and a gun-wielding thug.”

Henceforth, Doreen would not believe another word she read in the Daily News or the New York Post. Her son was convicted – in part because several of the jurors were influenced by the wonderful reportage in the tabloids – and is today serving 25 years to life. But heck: this is all a moot point. The readers elsewhere don’t seem to believe the words either. The Post dropped its circulation by 200,000 over the last twelve months, the Daily News declined by 250,000 – statistics in the ongoing tragic death throes of the American newspaper. In the case of the last of New York’s tabloids, since we know enough about how the dimwits have driven into the gutter once great papers, it’s a senescence long overdue.”

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