Criminal Justice: How to Beat a Murder Rap

Late one August night in Miami, Mrs. Charles Worthington, 67, heard a call from her stepson Richard. She hurried to his room and was slugged to the floor by Richard’s pal, Joel Gebhardt, 20. As Joel smothered her screams, Richard beat Mrs. Worthington to death with an iron bar. For three hours the youths sat around discussing how to split the Worthingtons’ $40,000 estate. Then they crept into the bedroom of Richard’s father, Charles Worthington, where Joel killed the sleeping contractor by firing a .22 rifle bullet into his brain. Next day the youths wrapped the bodies in stone-weighted canvas, loaded them in the family station wagon, and dumped them in a canal 18 miles away, where a fisherman found them four days later.

Spelled out in all its grim detail in Joel Gebhardt’s confession to the Dade County (Miami) grand jury, the Worthington slaying seemed to promise that the two young men would soon be facing trial on two counts of first-degree murder. Not so: the grand jury has indicted only Richard Worthington—leaving “Witness” Gebhardt to go completely free as soon as his friend’s trial is over.

Bargain Justice. Gebhardt’s amazing escape from prosecution has shocked Miami and roused a hot debate over the uses of “copping a plea,” that familiar bargaining system between accused criminal and District Attorney that governs so much of U.S. criminal justice. Never declared illegal or unconstitutional, it is often the D.A.’s only means of solving crime or showing mercy, yet it has been abused by D.A.’s more interested in convictions than justice.

One goal is to do away with the need for a lengthy trial by producing a fast guilty plea—a “cop-out.” And, after weeks in a county jail, many a criminal defendant is more than willing to plead guilty, to settle for a judge’s quick sentence rather than insist upon his constitutional right to trial by jury. To spur the copout, prosecutors may offer a variety of guilty pleas to lesser charges.

In New York, for example, a stickup artist may be charged with assault, robbery, grand larceny and possession of a weapon. If tried and convicted of robbery, he faces 20 years (40 for a second offender). But if he pleads guilty to grand larceny, he can cop out for only five to ten years. For first-degree murder, the choice is equally persuasive: jury trial and possible execution, or copping out for a mandatory life sentence that may be commuted to 40 years, and, with good behavior, be cut to about 26 years.

Unhappily for defendants, copping out is not binding on judges, who sometimes hit the prisoner with a tougher rap than the D.A. promised. In cases like Gebhardt’s, however, the D.A. may be so strapped for evidence that his only chance of conviction is to get one criminal to testify against his accomplice. The squealer’s price may be complete immunity from prosecution.

Half a Loaf or Nothing. Florida’s most famous precedent for such deals in capital cases arose from the baffling disappearance of respected Palm Beach Judge Curtis E. Chillingworth and his wife in 1955. When Prosecutor Philip O’Connell finally cracked the case six years later, still with not even a body as evidence, he did so by granting immunity to a thug named Bobby Lincoln, who brazenly testified that he had bludgeoned the Chillingworths and drowned them in the Atlantic. He had been hired by Judge Joseph A. Peel, said Lincoln, because Peel feared that Chillingworth was about to expose the protection he was selling to moonshiners and numbers men. Peel went to prison for life.

Soon after the Worthingtons’ bodies surfaced, Gebhardt and young Worthington were arrested as prime suspects, but the evidence was all circumstantial and neither man would confess anything. Then Gebhardt’s lawyer, who under Florida law had no way of learning the strength, or weakness, of the case against his client, offered the deal that did the police’s work for them. “It was half a loaf or nothing,” insisted Prosecutor Richard Gerstein. “In addition, the one who initiated the murder was killing his own parents and would inherit their estate if not convicted of murder.” Unless Worthington now cops out, Gerstein must, of course, still persuade a jury that he is guilty. As for Confessed Murderer Gebhardt, he says with all due solemnity: “I know that my conscience will never be clear, and I will dedicate the rest of my life to God and helping society.”