A self-described soccer mom serving 10 years for hiring a hit man to kill her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend said in a court filing this week that her sentence is excessive.
Nicole Faccenda was sentenced in 2013 after pleading guilty to using interstate commerce with the intent of carrying out a murder-for-hire plan.
Federal prosecutors alleged she asked a friend in Florida to find someone to kill the woman and met with the friend and a federal agent posing as a hit man. They say she agreed to pay $10,000.
Faccenda, formerly of Lyndhurst, said during a recorded conversation that she would go to the women's funeral and "spit on her casket," authorities said.
In a court filing this week that seeks to vacate her sentence because of ineffective assistance of counsel, Faccenda claimed the attorney who represented her during the sentencing phase didn't make sure a psychiatrist reviewed videos and recordings made at the time her crimes were alleged to have been committed.
That led to a mistaken diagnosis that Faccenda was in a dissociative state at the time, she claims. A judge rejected that theory when she sentenced Faccenda to the maximum term, according to the filing.
The correct diagnosis, Faccenda now says, is that she was suffering from a major depressive disorder.
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Prosecutors alleged Faccenda stalked her former boyfriend — who is the father of one of her sons — and his new family, barraged his friends with threatening Facebook posts and made more than 70 phone calls and text messages to a man she thought was arranging the hit.
