The murder of Mark S. Fisher occurred in the early morning hours of October 12, 2003. The college student was brutally beaten, shot five times, and left on Argyle Road in

Prospect Park South Prospect Park South is a small neighborhood in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York City, located south of Prospect Park. It is included within the Prospect Park South Historic District, which was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation ...

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. He was 19 years old. On October 19th, 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.

Mark S. Fisher

Mark Fisher was from

Andover, New Jersey Andover is a borough in Sussex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, the borough's population was 595, down slightly from 606 in the 2010 census, He was a

Lenape Valley Regional High School Lenape Valley Regional High School is a four-year comprehensive public high school and school district in serving students in ninth through twelfth grades from two municipalities in Sussex County and one in Morris County, New Jersey, Unite ...

football star and Fairfield University sophomore. He was studying to be an accountant, and was on the

Dean's List A dean's list is an academic award, or distinction, used to recognize the highest level scholarship demonstrated by students in a college or university. This system is most often used in North America, though institutions in Europe, Asia, and Aust ...

. Fisher, stood at 6-ft-4-in and weighed 230 pounds. He was a National Honor Society student and a star athlete.

Prior events

On October 11, 2003, Fisher, a 19-year-old was out drinking with three friends in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. By chance, Fisher ran into fellow Fairfield University student, Angel DiPietro. Fisher and one of DiPietro’s friends began hitting it off. That evening, DiPietro met up with another friend of hers, Albert Cleary. Cleary joined the group with 20-year-old John Giuca. Giuca, unable to gain admission to the bar, invited the group to his house in Brooklyn for an impromptu after hours party. Fisher left his friends behind and taxied with the girls to Giuca's home. A number of Giuca’s friends also joined, including 17-year-old Antonio Russo. According to witness testimony, Fisher sat on a table in the house, which upset Giuca. Giuca claimed he last saw Fisher around 5 a.m., falling asleep sitting on his sofa under a yellow blanket. At 5:23 a.m., Fisher withdrew $20 from a nearby ATM.

Shooting

At 6:40 a.m. (EST), police responded to gunfire reports and within minutes found Fisher's body face down at the foot of a driveway, on nearby Argyle Road. 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. The police recovered two .22 caliber shell casings at the scene. Prior to the murder, Russo and Giuca did not have much telephone contact. In the 24 hours afterward, there were 26 phone calls between the two. According to police records, Russo cut his long worn dreadlocks and a few days later he flew to California.

Arrest and indictment

Antonio Russo

Russo was arrested at his home on November 23, 2004, 13 months after Fisher's murder. Russo was charged with Fisher's murder and was indicted on two counts of second degree murder, three counts of robbery, and weapons charges.

John Giuca

Giuca was arrested on December 21, 2004, at his home in Brooklyn. He was charged with providing Mark Fisher's murder weapon, a

semiautomatic handgun A semi-automatic pistol is a type of repeating single-chamber handgun (pistol) that automatically cycles its action to insert the subsequent cartridge into the chamber (self-loading), but requires manual actuation of the trigger to actuall ...

, 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. 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. On September 30, 2004, three months before his felony indictment, Giuca was arrested on a

Bensonhurst Bensonhurst is a residential neighborhood in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bordered on the northwest by 14th Avenue, on the northeast by 60th Street, on the southeast by Avenue P and 22n ...

, street corner for selling narcotics while wearing a bulletproof vest. 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.

2004 homicide trial

Giuca and Russo were tried together as co-defendants in September 2005, 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 Mark Fisher was a rich kid who made an easy target. 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 Sturm, Ruger & Company, Inc., better known by the shortened name Ruger, is an American firearm manufacturing company based in Southport, Connecticut, with production facilities also in Newport, New Hampshire; Mayodan, North Carolina; and Pr ...

pistol a week before the murder. 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.” Witnesses, including Giuca’s girlfriend at the time, testified to Giuca’s involvement in the murder, including providing the gun to Russo. 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. Russo claimed in his trial that Giuca was the person who fired the shots and killed Fisher. 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.

Verdict and sentencing

In October 2005, two years after Fisher's murder Giuca and Russo were sentenced to sentences of 25 years to life. 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."

Antonio Russo

Russo's jury deliberated for two days before finding him guilty.

John Giuca

After two hours of deliberation, the Brooklyn jury found Giuca guilty on charges of second-degree murder of Mark Fisher, robbery, and multiple counts of criminal possession of a firearm. Giuca was imprisoned on Rikers Island.

Appeals

2008-2015

In 2008, Giuca filed his first

motion to vacate A motion to vacate is a formal proposal, either to 'vacate' (or reverse) the decision in a matter which had previously been formally ruled upon or decided, or to replace the holder of a presiding position. Legal use In the legal context, a motion ...

the verdict in

New York State Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the State of New York is the trial-level court of general jurisdiction in the New York State Unified Court System. (Its Appellate Division is also the highest intermediate appellate court.) It is vested with unlimited civ ...

in Brooklyn arguing that he did not receive a fair trial due to

juror misconduct Juror misconduct is when the law of the court is violated by a member of the jury while a court case is in progression or after it has reached a verdict."USLegal Definitions" Misconduct can take several forms: * Communication by the jury with ...

. 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. 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. On May 14, 2013, federal judge

Frederic Block Frederic Block (born June 6, 1934) is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Education and career Born in Brooklyn, New York, the Honorable Frederic Block received an ...

of the

United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York The United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (in case citations, E.D.N.Y.) is the federal district court whose territorial jurisdiction spans five counties in New York State: the four Long Island counties of Nassau, ...

denied Giuca's federal ''habeas'' petition. In February 2014, Giuca's attorney submitted a petition to the newly elected

Brooklyn District Attorney The Kings County District Attorney's Office, also known as the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, is the district attorney's office for Kings County, coterminous with the Borough of Brooklyn, in New York City. The office is responsible for the ...

, Kenneth P. Thompson, requesting that the conviction be reviewed and voided due to

prosecutorial misconduct In jurisprudence, prosecutorial misconduct or prosecutorial overreach is "an illegal act or failing to act, on the part of a prosecutor, especially an attempt to sway the jury to wrongly convict a defendant or to impose a harsher than appropri ...

, a failure by the defense lawyer at trial to point out multiple inconsistencies, and recantation of testimony by key witnesses. 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 with the Giuca case. Thompson stated, "I have determined that John Giuca's conviction for the murder of Mark Fisher is just and should not be vacated." 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."

2016-2018

On June 9, 2016, Giuca filed his second motion to vacate the verdict (Alan D. Marrus, J.). After a hearing Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun denied the motion on June 13. The judge ruled that Giuca had received a fair trial. Giuca's attorney stated that he would appeal the verdict. 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. It ruled that the district attorney's office had withheld evidence from the defense. On February 20, June 28, and September 6, 2018, Giuca was denied

bail Bail is a set of pre-trial restrictions that are imposed on a suspect to ensure that they will not hamper the judicial process. Bail is the conditional release of a defendant with the promise to appear in court when required. In some countrie ...

. On March 22, 2018, Russo confessed to killing Mark Fisher. In a statement passed to Giuca's lawyer, Russo told detectives that he had murdered Fisher and that the gun was his. On June 28, 2018, New York's highest court announced it would hear Giuca's case, with oral arguments scheduled for April 30, 2019. On June 11, 2019, the New York Court of Appeals overturned the appeals court decision, and reinstated Giuca's murder conviction. 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."

2019-present

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.

Support

Looking for evidence to overturn her son's conviction,

Doreen Giuliano 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 "Mo ...

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. Giuliano's crusade to free her son attracted widespread attention from media outlets and the nickname "Mother Justice".

References

External links

* ''Amicus'' briefs submitted to the New York Court of Appeals in 2019 may be foun
here
an
here

Video recording of oral arguments before the New York Court of Appeals
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fisher, Mark S. 2003 deaths Criminals from Brooklyn Deaths by person in New York City Male murder victims Murdered American children 2003 murders in the United States