#577 Jason Flom with John Giuca

**Connor Hall** (0:05)
Hello again, it's Connor Hall, Senior Producer for Wrongful Conviction with another case update and behind the scenes insights. And I have to revisit John Giuca.
I remember the first time I heard about him. Not the murderer itself. I mean, if you were in New York at that time, you couldn't escape the coverage, probably because this tragic murder fulfilled every suburbanite's nightmares about big bad New York City. And this was only about a decade after the highest number of murders ever recorded here. So when something happens that actually fits that terrifying belief about dangerous people lurking around every corner, it becomes pretty easy to sell copies of the New York Post. And just like so many others at that time, I was clueless about the prevalence of wrongful convictions. It wasn't until working with Jason that I found out that the sparse few that I knew about at that time were in much greater company.
But John's case came to me not from Jason, who already knew John's mother Doreen, but from a famous pizza spot in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. I used to live right around the corner and one of the servers who I knew, we were catching up on the subway. She just had a newborn and I told her about the podcast that I just started producing. And she just like stopped me and was like, you need to look up John Giuca. And eventually I ended up reaching out to his mom, Doreen, on social media. And after covering the case, I remember how grateful she was that I had nailed down all the moving parts and people and motivations at play in John's story. You know, it's one of those cases where you have to understand the misconduct more than the incident itself. And so that was 2023 And since then, Doreen and I, we make time to see each other every once in a while. We have meals together. She introduces me to other folks in this community, journalists and exonerees, legal advocates. I think she also introduced me to James Henning, who brought us Carl Miller's case, who was just recently exonerated. And James eventually became John's new lawyer. Now, where we left off in 2023, it seemed like the best bet for John was petitioning the New York governor to take jurisdiction away from Brooklyn and give it to a special prosecutor. I mean, that's how little faith they had at attaining justice here in Brooklyn.
But James Henning has pulled off a miracle in John's case and gotten him back into court with newly discovered evidence.
Another recantation. And I'll tell you about that during this new edit of John Giuca's episode. It used to be in two parts, now it's one. Okay, anyway, I'll be popping back in when the time comes to better explain where things stand for John.

**Jason Flom** (2:57)
On October 11th, 2003, three groups of college kids, one from Long Island, another from Brooklyn, as well as New Jersey, ran into one another at a bar on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. A mutual friend among them, Angel DiPietro, knew Brooklynite Albert Cleary, as well as her Fairfield University classmate, Mark Fisher, a football player from New Jersey. When the night started to wind down, and all of the trains to Long Island and New Jersey had stopped running, Albert Cleary's friend, 20-year-old John Giuca, offered up his house in Flatbush, Brooklyn, for an after party and a place to crash.
A few of John and Albert's friends joined, including a neighborhood tough guy named Antonio Russo.
Sometime before 6 a.m., Angel and Albert walked to his nearby house. Since Angel was the only person Mark Fisher knew, he left to find his way over to Albert's with Antonio Russo, and soon ended up fatally shot without his wallet on the driveway across from Albert Cleary's house. A blanket from John's house at his feet. In the immediate aftermath, Antonio Russo cut his dreadlocks and absconded to California. A police investigation revealed that other voices and a car door were heard before the gunshots. Albert and Angel denied any knowledge, and soon statements were made that allege that John Giuca was involved. The motivations and level of involvement varied, but with this many witnesses placing blame on John, there had to be something to it. But this is Wrongful Conviction.
Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. Today we have a story that was front page news all over New York City when it happened with flaring headlines, salacious headlines about wannabe Brooklyn gangsters who allegedly conspired at an after party to kill a suburban college football star who just happened to be in their midst. When in fact, there were no gangsters, only a group of friends, and the murder was not a group effort at all. The only group effort here took the form of multiple conflicting statements against a member of that group, John Giuca. John is calling in from prison in upstate New York right now. John, I'm sorry you're here under these circumstances, but we're very honored to have you.