Lucky Timing

Shortly after J. Russell Hornsby, 49, backed a decision to fire the new business manager of his electrical-contracting firm, police in Orlando, Fla., heard from an informer that the dismissed executive, John Robert Sapp, 38, was scouting the area for someone to bump off Hornsby. Detective Ben Hernandez, posing as a Cuban hit man named Frank, volunteered for the job. According to police, Hernandez was hired and given a down payment. Later he reported to Sapp that Hornsby had been duly killed and demanded the rest of his $5,000 payoff. To authenticate the deal, police swarmed around Hornsby's suburban home and asked a local TV station to announce that a murder had occurred. The station complied with a bogus bulletin about a killing in a "fashionable Maitland residence." Satisfied that they had enough evidence from the various recorded Sapp-Hernandez conversations, police closed in and arrested the would-be murderer.

To their chagrin, authorities then discovered that they had little with which to charge Sapp. The evidence was admissible and damaging. But Sapp could not be charged with conspiracy because the other "conspirator" was a law officer who had no intention of carrying out his part of the deal. Therefore no true conspiracy existed. Further, Florida, like many other states, has no statute defining solicitation of a murder as a felony. Hence prosecutors had to settle for a common-law rule under which it is only a misdemeanor. Maximum penalty: one year and $1,000. The trial is scheduled for Oct. 21. Ironically, a new Florida judicial code effective next July will make solicitation to commit a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

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