Holiday for Homicide

Police detectives in New Jersey could hardly believe their ears. A mobster hit man named Joseph Rodriguez was spilling detail after gory detail about the 1972 slaying of Mafia Boss Emmanuel ("Nello") Cammarata. Rodriguez, 32, fearful that a contract was out for his own head, hoped for police protection by implicating himself and a New Jersey father and son in the killing. Rodriguez described with professional precision how the son, deftly disguised as a jogger, took aim at Cammarata as he was walking away from a North Miami bistro and drilled him with eight rounds from a .30-cal. carbine. A family man to the end, the 68-year-old Sicilian told the gathering crowd, "Don't call the police. I will be O.K.," and died.

Soon it was the turn of Miami homicide detectives not to believe their ears. They rushed north last October to hear the confession, then returned south seeking authority to bring Rodriguez back to Miami. Only then did Florida authorities discover an astonishing obstacle: because of a five-month loophole in state law during 1972, the murderers cannot be prosecuted. The case has now become a public controversy, with State Attorney General Robert Shevin urging Miami to attempt to prosecute anyway, the court ruling notwithstanding.

Florida's reprieve for killers resulted from the June 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision against capital punishment. Immediately following the decision, the Florida high bench ruled that if there is no capital punishment, there can be no capital offense. Hence, first-degree murder (which normally has no statute of limitations on prosecution) was reduced to a lesser offense and made subject to a two-year statute. In December 1972 the state re-enacted the death penalty and put capital offenses back on the books. Unconsidered was the fact that arrests for any murders that took place during the five-month gap would still have to be made within two years.

This realization has now struck Florida authorities like a hit man's bullet. An estimated 50 still unsolved murders were committed in the state between June and December 1972. Says Shevin sadly: "I don't think it even dawned on the state supreme court that there could be some major cases that would not get solved for two years--and then be unprosecutable." Raymond Marky, assistant attorney general, calls the situation a "terrible travesty."

Solved Cases. Privately, authorities doubt anything can be done. In the Cammarata case, for example, even if it is taken to a grand jury and indictments are handed down, defense attorneys could probably fight successfully against prosecution on statute-of-limitations grounds.

Asked what he would do if he got more confessions from murderers who committed their crimes in the "holiday" period, Miami Homicide Lieut. Gary Minium, who has the Cammarata case, says he would politely thank the killer, bid him goodbye and move the case records from unsolved to solved. Meanwhile, police are holding Rodriguez in protective custody. Somebody may want him--including the Mafia.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.