Wayne, NJ: Appeals court denies request by Paul Foglia to be informed about children

A state appeals court on Monday denied a bid by a Wayne man seeking to maintain contact with his two sons while awaiting a retrial on charges that he killed his ex-girlfriend’s mother in Wantage.
In denying Paul Foglia’s appeal, the court ruled that Gina Liotta, the mother of Foglia’s children and daughter of the victim, does not have to provide Foglia with pictures, progress reports and report cards of the children. The court wrote that “Foglia’s contentions are without sufficient merit” because he didn’t provide adequate evidence — namely, a complete record of prior motions — to support his case for why he should be entitled to receive information about his sons.
With his appeal, Foglia, 50, who is incarcerated in the Sussex County Jail, sought to reverse a lower court’s decision that Gina Liotta did not have to provide Foglia with the pictures and other materials pertaining to the children every three months. That court noted that Foglia had been convicted of murdering the children’s grandmother, Elizabeth Liotta, 67, of Wantage in 2004, who was “a substantial caretaker for the children” and that “the psychological damage done to this family by virtue of (Foglia’s) acts are unconscionable.”
Foglia was convicted in 2008 of killing Liotta in her home and was sentenced to life imprisonment. However, the conviction was overturned in July 2010 when an appeals court found that parts of the prosecutor’s case, including background character information on Foglia such as his past job as an exotic dancer and insinuations of prostitution and credit card fraud, were irrelevant to the murder allegations and motive.
A date for Foglia’s second trial has not yet been determined.