Sun Sep 28 14:07:21 EDT 2003

By RACHEL LA CORTE
Associated Press

MIAMI -- A woman in prison for killing her rich husband is trying to get out with help from a TV reporter who broke a five-year silence to claim that a detective told her off the record that the star witness at the trial lied.

WPLG-TV reporter Gail Bright said that now-retired Miami police detective Jon Spear told her and a cameraman in 1993 that police didn't have enough evidence to prove Joyce Cohen's guilt, even though they firmly believed it.

Spear told Ms. Bright that three men hired by Mrs. Cohen to go into her Miami home were never there, even though one testified that he was, Ms. Bright said in a deposition in July.

''(Spear) said, 'It's simple. You walk into a jail cell ... the file's on the table, you go to the bathroom for 30 minutes, (suspects) familiarize -- they know the routine, and you go from there,'' Ms. Bright said in the deposition.

She waited so long to come forward, she said, because she didn't want to break her trust with her police sources. She eventually called the state attorney's office and then Mrs. Cohen's lawyer Alan Ross.

Ms. Bright did not immediately return messages left on her answering machine at work.

Spear, whose phone number was not listed, said in an Oct. 15 affidavit that Ms. Bright's recollection is faulty.

''I never suggested to Ms. Bright or to anyone else that (Frank) Zuccarello's testimony was false or that anyone in law enforcement assisted him in providing false evidence,'' said Spear, who investigated the murder.

Mrs. Cohen was convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy and a weapons charge for offering three men $100,000 to kill Stanley Cohen in his sleep on March 7, 1986. Prosecutors said she supplied a map of their home, disconnected the alarms, unlocked the door and gave the men a gun belonging to her husband.

She wasn't charged until 1989 when Zuccarello, already in jail for burglary, told police that Mrs. Cohen hired him to kill her husband of 11 years.

He named as accomplices Anthony Caracciolo, the alleged triggerman, and Tommy Lamberti, the son of reputed Gambino crime family mobster Louis ''Donald Duck'' Lamberti. Both were charged and were offered plea bargains in exchange for their testimony against Mrs. Cohen.

Ross is asking for a hearing to determine if the disclosure by Ms. Bright could lead to a new trial.

''I was not in the least bit surprised by the substance of what she was telling me,'' Ross said Tuesday. ''I always believed Zuccarello was lying and that Caracciolo and Lamberti had nothing to do with this murder.''

Zuccarello denies lying at the trial.

''I never said or even suggested to any person that my trial testimony was false or that anyone in law enforcement had assisted me in providing false evidence,'' he said in an Oct. 30 affidavit.

Prosecutors said that Ms. Bright's statements are heresay and they don't believe it will get that far in the courts.

''We had motive, we had opportunity,'' said State Attorney John Kastrenakes, who prosecuted the case. ''She shut off all the alarms the night of the murder, she pens the dog up ... she creates a false burglary scene. The evidence was overwhelming.''

Prosecutors said Mrs. Cohen had risen from poverty to the life of a jet-setting socialite but feared losing it all in a divorce when the marriage went sour.

Mrs. Cohen, 48, has been in prison since her 1989 conviction. She has always maintained that her developer husband was killed by two strangers who broke into their home.

She could have received the death penalty, but a 12-member jury instead recommended life in prison without possibility of parole for at least 25 years.

''It's very difficult to have this thing reopened and have even the slightest possibility that we'd have to revisit it,'' said Cohen's son, Gary, from a previous marriage. ''It's another last-ditch effort to turn over a trial which had the correct result.''

Ross said he expects the first evidentiary hearing before the end of January.