Dalia Dippolito, the 34-year-old former Boynton Beach newlywed convicted for a second time in the 2009 murder plot to kill her husband, will spend the next 16 years of her life in prison.

?» LATEST: More details on Dalia Dippolito’s sentence, PLUS what the State Attorney had to say

With his sentence, Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley denied prosecutors’ request for him to exceed the 20-year sentence that Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath previously gave Dippolito in 2011 and rejected defense attorneys’ request for a sentence below the four-year minimum recommended sentence.

» RELATED: Complete Dippolito case coverage

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Kelley said he considered two mitigating factors seriously: Dippolito’s lack of prior criminal record and the time she spent on house arrest. He noted her 20-year sentence in 2011 was actually an 18-year sentence because Colbath gave her credit then for house arrest.

Dalia Dippolito listens to her attorney read a letter from her mother during her sentencing Friday afternoon, July 21, 2017. (Lannis Waters / The Palm Beach Post)

So Kelley sentenced her to 16 years in prison, giving her credit for half the eight years she has spent on house arrest.

?» VIDEO: Jury takes just 90 minutes to convict Dippolito of murder solicitation

The sentence came at the end of a four-hour, sometimes emotional, sometimes grueling hearing in the case, which garnered international headlines eight years ago when a video of Dippolito crying at a staged crime scene went viral.

The only witness testimony came from Michael Dippolito, who had heard evidence in his now ex-wife’s plot but listened for the first time in a courtroom Friday as prosecutors read text messages and played videos of her plotting his demise.

» PHOTOS: Inside Dalia Dippolito’s third trial

“It’s not even real,” Michael Dippolito told Kelley. “It’s like I can’t even believe we’re still sitting here like this girl didn’t even try to do this.”

Michael Dippolito sits in court during the sentencing hearing for his ex-wife, Dalia Dippolito, Friday afternoon, July 21, 2017. Dalia Dippolito was convicted last month in her third trial on charges she tried to have her husband killed in 2009. (Lannis Waters / The Palm Beach Post)

Lannis Waters/Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Prosecutors had asked Kelley for a 30-year sentence. Defense attorney Greg Rosenfeld said that with Dippolito already having served eight years on house arrest, a two-year sentence followed by another eight years’ probation was appropriate.

» FROM OUR ARCHIVES: Arrested Boynton Beach wife’s weapons: Sex appeal, drive, deceit

Dippolito’s attorneys even before the sentencing had vowed to appeal her conviction on several grounds, including allegations that one of the jurors in her June trial had slept through critical parts of the case.

5:05 p.m. UPDATE: Prosecutor Craig Williams returns for a rebuttal.

A testy exchange ensues between state and defense when Williams brings up her son.

The judge asks, “Where are you going with this?”

Williams says Dippolito used the child as a weapon to get off during second trial.

Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley listens to prosecutor Craig Williams during the sentencing hearing for Dalia Dippolito Friday afternoon, July 21, 2017. (Lannis Waters / The Palm Beach Post)

Judge: “You’ve articulated your point. Move on.”

The judge then said of the baby, “Candidly I don’t know what her motivation is, and it’s not going to matter in my sentence.”

4:55 p.m. UPDATE: Defense attorney Greg Rosenfeld finally wraps up.

He starts by arguing for a downward departure from the minimum mandatory of four years in prison.

» RELATED: Complete Dippolito case coverage

By this point, it appeared his lengthy argument had outlasted State Attorney Dave Aronberg, who left the courtroom. But Aronberg returned five minutes later.

Rosenfeld eventually says that if the judge doesn’t agree with downward departure from the minimum mandatory of four years in prison, then 48 months would be a good sentence.

Then, after more than an hour of defense closing arguments, Rosenfeld says he’s nearing a close.

Ten minutes later, Rosenfeld, who in a written motion had asked for a sentence of two years in prison and eight years of probation, ends by asking the judge to see Dippolito “as a daughter, and as a mother.”

4:15 p.m. UPDATE: The two sides have made their final arguments:

Assistant State Attorney Laura Laurie makes the state’s final argument in Dalia Dippolito’s sentencing hearing, disputing the defense sentencing memo.

Laurie disputes that the plot involving undercover Boynton Beach police officer was an isolated incident.

“She over months plotted every way she could to get him out of her life,” Laurie says.

Prosecutor Craig Williams listens as Dalia Dippolito's defense attorney, Greg Rosenfeld, speaks during her sentencing Friday afternoon, July 21, 2017. (Lannis Waters / The Palm Beach Post)

She then pushes for a 30-year prison sentence, 10 years more than Dippolito received when she was sentenced in her first trial, a verdict and sentence that eventually was overturned.

“Lawmakers apparently felt that this crime was so heinous that someone should serve up to 30 years in prison for it,” Laurie said.

Defense attorney Greg Rosenfeld’s turn:

He begins by saying he sat at computer in tears when prepping for this sentencing.

“I think it’s fair to say that her life as been exemplary,” he said. “What the state is giving you is just a piece of her life.”

She watched her late 20s and early 30s go by on house arrest. “This was not a John Goodman situation,” Rosenfeld said, referring to the Wellington polo mogul in prison for DUI manslaughter.

He implores people who say house arrest isn’t jail to “sit in a small townhouse for 8 years” to see what it’s like.

“From day one she never had a chance at a fair trial. It’s fair to say media self-interests have driven the prosecution,” he said.

He denies claims she met husband while working as an escort: “I’ll deny that until the day I die.”

Rosenfeld also summarizes and seeks sympathy, saying Dippolito’s father rejected her and abused her mom, and that she was an outcast in school. He says she had a tragic view of men as cheaters because of her father.

“Dalia Dippolito hasn’t had it easy. There’s no two ways about it,” he says.

Then there’s more of a sympathy play.

He says her concern since her conviction has never been for herself, but for her infant son.

“Dalia is a tremendous mother. Any punishment to her is a punishment to her son,” Rosenfeld said.

He says punishing Dippolito has been satisfied by eight years’ house arrest, social humiliation and $20,000 in house arrest fees, but he apparently is still not winding up.

3:15 p.m. UPDATE: Dalia Dippolito cried as her attorney read the letter from her mother.

Dippolito’s attorney also read a letter from Dalia’s sister, Samira, and Dalia’s first boyfriend, Julian.

“She is a wonderful person who has been supported me through hard times,” Julian wrote.

He also says the media misreported her case and calls her “a conservative, self-respecting young woman who is liked by by everyone.”

3 p.m. UPDATE: Michael Dippolito is off the witness stand.

Dalia Dippolito has declined to speak at her sentencing hearing, attorney Greg Rosenfeld says, for appellate purposes.

Rosenfeld also reads letter by Dippolito’s mother, Randa Mohammed, to judge. Although Mohammed is in the courtroom, Rosenfeld says she is too fragile to testify.

“This process has already been a life-changing experience for Dalia,” Mohammed writes.

Also: “She was at the wrong place at the wrong time and got involved with the wrong people.”

2:55 p.m. UPDATE: At one point in the recording, Michael Dippolito promises to help Dalia Dippolito if she signs his house back to him.

“You’re not going to help me if I do that,” she says.

Earlier she asked him why he wasn’t helping her.

“Why don’t you want to? You’re not even trying.”

“I couldn’t help you even if I wanted to,” he replies.

2:45 p.m. UPDATE: While Michael Dippolito is one the stand, the state is playing recordings of phone calls between him and Dalia Dippolito that were made while Dalia was first put in jail after her arrest.

“It’s not true. Please help me!” she tells him.

She vows to explain further if Michael agrees to talk to her in person, not on the phone.

“I am here for you. Every single time. There’s no denying that,” she says.

“I heard you say that sh*t,’ he says. “You can hire five f*in’ lawyers. You’re in a lot of trouble.”

“Everything you heard, I heard, and it’s not true,” she says.

She continues, “You couldn’t get off the couch the other day and I came and I helped you.”

Michael Dippolito looks uncomfortable on the stand as the recording is played.

2:35 p.m. UPDATE: Michael Dippolito, the one-time husband whom Dalia wanted killed, takes the stand.

He starts by saying he met her when she was an escort.

“It was very exciting,” he said of their sex life. “It was part of the reason I was into her and I thought she was into me.”

He then goes on to dispute claims from her attorney’s sentencing memo that he isolated her from her family, saying family “was part of what attracted me to her.”

He also denied allegations that he forced her into sex at any time.

2:25 p.m. UPDATE: Palm Beach State Attorney Dave Aronberg is in the courtroom for the Dalia Dippolito sentencing hearing. He is expected to make a statement afterwards.

After allowing undercover recordings of Dippolito to be used by the state, Judge Kelley disallows recordings of her phone calls from jail.

“Why can’t I present statements that you haven’t heard before?” Assistant State Attorney Williams asks.

Kelley: “Trust me, I know this case very well.”

The judge goes on to say he doesn’t want to open the case up for a possible appellate fight by listening to recordings of her jail calls.

2:15 p.m. UPDATE: By replaying the undercover recordings of Dalia Dippolito, prosecutor Craig Williams is sticking to his trial strategy of letting her own words snare her.

When her attorney objected to their use for a second time, the judge responded, “Overruled and admonished. I don’t need new objections for stuff I’ve already ruled on.”

Her attorney, Greg Rosenfeld said the recordings violate wiretap laws, but the judge said this is a sentencing and that he previously ruled them admissible.

» RELATED: Complete Dippolito case coverage

2:05 p.m. UPDATE: Palm Beach County prosecutors ask Judge Glenn Kelley to sentence Dippolito to 30 years in prison, while Dippolito’s attorneys ask for two years in prison and eight years of probation.

Besides reading texts, the prosecutor plays clips of her own words from the failed 2009 plot.

Dippolito’s other attorney, Greg Rosenfeld, objected to the number of text messages that the state was reading. Judge allows state to continue.

Meanwhile, her attorney in California, Claypool, has officially checked out of sentencing hearing. He’s in a hospital and had been participating via a telephone.

2 p.m. UPDATE: Assistant State Attorney Craig Williams wants to read for Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley texts that Dalia Dippolito sent.

“I want us to remember who you’re going to sentence here today,” Williams sayd.

Earlier, defense attorney Brian Claypool asks Kelley to consider the fact that several jurors in her second trial would have voted to acquit her.

Dippolito has total credit of 163 days, or nearly half a year, served in jail since her 2009 arrest.

Her mother, Randa Mohammed, and several other relatives are in the packed courtroom.

1:45 p.m. UPDATE: Dalia Dippolito’s attorney, Brian Claypool, is appearing by phone for the hearing. He’s in California battling some health issues.

He starts his presentation by saying that absent the initiation of phone calls by law enforcement, a crime would have never been committed.

“I never preached to anyone that Dalia Dippolito was a choir girl,” Claypool said, quickly adding, however, that she was vulnerable.

Michael Dippolito, seated in court, shakes his head at Claypool’s arguments.

1:35 p.m. UPDATE: A sentencing hearing is under way for Dalia Dippolito, the 34-year-old woman convicted for a second time last month in the 2009 plot to kill her husband, Michael.

» RELATED: Complete Dippolito case coverage

Deputies just led a shackled Dippolito into the courtroom several minutes before the hearing began Tuesday afternoon. Her attorneys have asked Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley to sentence her to a short prison term and probation.

Also present at Dippolito’s sentencing hearing is her now ex-husband, Michael Dippolito.

ORIGINAL POST, 7:30 a.m.: Pure evil.

That’s what a judge in 2011 called the actions of Dalia Dippolito when he sentenced her to 20 years in prison after a jury convicted her of the 2009 caught-on-camera plot to have a hitman kill her husband Michael.

Though an appellate court in 2014 overturned that conviction and awarded her a new trial, a new conviction last month has left another judge with the task of sentencing Dippolito again. Her sentencing hearing begins at 1:30 p.m. today.

While prosecutors are asking Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley for a maximum 30-year sentence for the woman who is now mother to a 14-month-old son, Dippolito’s lawyers and friends have painted a different picture of her and are asking the judge for a sentence below the minimum recommended punishment of four years in prison.

In dozens of letters from family and friends, Dippolito’s loved ones say the media has castigated and unfairly portrayed Dippolito. The woman they know, they said, has grown in the eight years since her arrest into a God-fearing woman that is nothing like the person depicted in the videos prosecutors have now used to get two convictions against her.

» PHOTOS: Inside Dalia Dippolito’s third trial

“More people in this situation are going to be broken and damaged, if she is sentenced to prison,” Dippolito’s younger sister, Samira Mohammed, wrote to Kelley in a letter, later adding: “If there is one big thing I have learned from all of this it’s this: At the end of the day it’s not about the way that people perceive us to be. It’s all about the way our hearts are and the way God perceives us.”

Defense attorneys Greg Rosenfeld and Brian Claypool in a lengthy sentencing memorandum outlined Dippolito’s turbulent childhood, claiming she grew up watching her father abuse and cheat on her mother and struggled with issues of loneliness and abandonment.

» FROM OUR ARCHIVES: Arrested Boynton Beach wife’s weapons: Sex appeal, drive, deceit

Dippolito was being abused by her now ex-husband Michael, a man they say systematically broke down her self-esteem and used the things that she enjoyed in life as weapons to manipulator her when they married after a brief whirlwind romance that began when he was married to someone else. Her defense teal also sent Kelley a list of other cases where defendants received probation or light incarceration sentences for similar crimes.

Assistant State Attorney Craig Williams in a seven-page sentencing memorandum he sent to Kelley yesterday summarized the details of the murder for hire plot, calling Dippolito a master manipulator who would stop at nothing to get what she wanted, even if it meant committing first degree murder.

“She deserves every second of a 30 year sentence,” Williams wrote.

» RELATED: Jury takes just 90 minutes to convict Dippolito of murder solicitation

So far, Kelley has given no indication of what sentence he will give. Although Williams asked for a 30-year sentence, it is unlikely that Kelley would sentence Dippolito to anything more than the 20-year sentence Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath gave her in 2011.

In cases where defendants have won appeals and been re-convicted in subsequent trials, appellate courts have thrown out sentences when a second judge has delivered sentences longer than what a defendant received the first time around.

Still, even a 20-year sentence would mean Dippolito would miss the entire childhood of her son, who was conceived while she was on house arrest awaiting her second trial.

That trial ended in a hung jury in December, but prosecutors took the case to trial a third time in June and won.

Check back here or at on Twitter @pbpcourts for updates beginning at 1:30 p.m.