Opinion ID: 2382857
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 22

Heading: Anthony DiFrisco

Text: The Court is familiar with the facts of that cold-blooded, execution-style killing. Anthony DiFrisco agreed, for $2,500 in cash and cancellation of a $500 drug debt, to kill a pizzeria owner because he was going to inform the police about DiFrisco's employer's drug dealings. DiFrisco, a drug addict, carried out the hit by shooting the owner four times in the head and once in the body as he reached to fill a soda order. DiFrisco's moral blameworthiness is at least equivalent to Robert Marshall's. By his own account, he committed the contract murder to earn himself a professional reputation with a crime syndicate. The trial court sentenced DiFrisco to death after finding that the two aggravating factors, c(4)(d) (pecuniary motive) and c(4)(f) (killing to escape detection), outweighed the only mitigating factor, c(5)(g) (substantial assistance to the State in the prosecution of another for murder). On appeal, we affirmed DiFrisco's conviction of murder, but reversed his death sentence because of the absence of any extrinsic corroboration of his connection with the contract principal. DiFrisco, supra, 118 N.J. 253, 571 A. 2d 914. We take it that the police are investigating the responsibility of the contract principal for that senseless killing.