But when it came to the question of how to punish Jenkins, the decision was not so easy. Did he deserve to die?

Six jurors said yes, because Jenkins killed a police officer, he should be executed. Six said no, he didn't mean to kill Tackett when he shot him in the leg, so he should get life in prison.

Without a majority for death, the jury's March 4 recommendation to Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Douglas Baird was that he sentence Jenkins to life in prison with no chance of parole.

This afternoon, Baird faces the toughest task for a judge: deciding whether what one man has done to another is so horrible that he should not be allowed to live.

The jury's recommendation makes it harder still. It is rare for a Florida trial judge to override a jury and send a killer to the electric chair.

But 18 letters from Tackett's family, other law enforcement officers and even a minister say that's just what Baird should do. Baird has not discussed the case publicly or said whether he will read the letters.

If Baird sentences Jenkins to life, he will be going against the wishes of the slain officer's family and colleagues. But if he overrides the jury's recommendation and sentences the killer to die, say legal experts, Baird is likely to be wasting his breath on a decision that probably will be overturned.

Since 1974, the Florida Supreme Court has considered 140 cases in which a judge overrode a jury and sentenced a murderer to death. It has upheld the judge's decision in just 40 of them.

In the past five years, the Florida Supreme Court has considered 59 such cases and overturned all but 10, said Steven Goldstein, a Florida State University law professor who is an expert on death penalty cases.

As a result, Goldstein said, fewer and fewer Florida judges even attempt to override a jury. "Judges,'' he said, "get the message.''

Although Baird has not indicated what he will do, Goldstein called Jenkins "a classic example'' of a killer whom the high court will say should not be executed.

"I would be surprised if the judge overrides,'' he said. "It's impossible'

The last time a judge disregarded a Pinellas County jury's recommendation and sent a murderer to death row was two years ago.

Anthony Neal Washington, 33, left the work release center where he was serving time for burglary and broke into the Pinellas Park home of 92-year-old Alice Berdat. He beat her mercilessly, broke her glasses, knocked out her hearing aid, ripped out her false teeth, raped her and strangled her. He broke 14 of her ribs and crushed the bones and cartilage in her neck.

He stole a watch that he later sold for $5.

But the jury that convicted him recommended he get life. For two months, Circuit Judge Susan Schaeffer wrestled with whether the jury was right.

The victim's family sent her letters, but she did not look at them. The decision had to be based on the facts of the case alone, she said.

Schaeffer did not decide what to do until she was writing the 23-page order that decreed Washington should die. In it, she described the brutality of the murder, and methodically listed and rejected every argument for sparing his life.

The Florida Supreme Court has not yet ruled on whether Schaeffer made the right choice. In 12 years on the bench, she has not overridden another jury.

The Washington case has some similarities to the Jenkins case. In both, the killers were burglars. In both, defense attorneys argued that the defendant did not intend to kill the victim.

However, unlike Mrs. Berdat, Tackett died from a single gunshot wound to the leg. The fatal bullet sliced an artery and he bled to death before being found in the dark that night.

Schaeffer said she could not comment on the decision now facing Baird. But when she teaches new judges from around the state about the sentencing phase in death penalty cases, her advice is: Go with the jury.

"I tell my judges, "Don't override. It's impossible,'‚'' she said. "If you're going to do it, do it only in the most extreme and rare circumstances.''

Reasonable people

The reason the jury gets so much say is based on the idea that the death penalty is not a deterrent, but retribution.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that execution is appropriate "as an expression of the community's belief that certain crimes are themselves so grievous an affront to humanity that the only adequate response may be the penalty of death.''

The 12 jurors speak for the rest of the community. In Florida, if a majority is outraged enough by a murder to recommend death, then that sentence may stand. If jurors recommend life, though, a Florida judge is not supposed to override them except under special conditions.

The state Supreme Court set the standard in 1975 when it reversed a death sentence imposed on Mack Reed Tedder, a 20-year-old Hernando County man who had shot his mother-in-law and left her to die. The high court said that what Tedder had done did not merit death, because the jury didn't recommend it.

For the judge to override the jury, the court said, "the facts suggesting a sentence of death should be so clear and convincing that virtually no reasonable person could differ.''

"Many times a judge may disagree with a jury's recommendation,'' Schaeffer explained, "but if there is any rational basis for it, then you're not supposed to override.''

Last month, Baird heard arguments from State Attorney Bernie McCabe and defense attorney Michael Schwartzberg about how he should punish Jenkins. McCabe contended death was what a cop-killer deserved, especially one with Jenkins' record of violence.

But Schwartzberg reminded Baird of Tedder, and the jury's recommendation. At least six reasonable people, Schwartzberg pointed out, thought Jenkins deserved life.

He didn't get a hot supper Monday night, just a sack lunch. He didn't get a shower until 1 a.m. And he was awakened at 4 a.m. to get ready for his court appearance five hours later.

By 1:15 p.m., his problems with Orange County were solved: Chandler's defense attorneys and prosecutors had agreed on a panel of Orange County residents to be brought back to Pinellas County to serve as jurors for his triple-murder trial.

For the first time in the state, a jury is being imported from one county to try a criminal case in another. Jury selection, which in less than two days took a pool of 324 registered voters and boiled it down to 12 jurors and two alternates, went far more smoothly than anyone expected.

"I couldn't have picked a jury faster in St. Petersburg,'' a smiling Circuit Judge Susan Schaeffer said when they were done.

The group they settled on is composed of nine women and five men. The panel includes a minister's wife, a missile mechanic, a pair of school bus drivers, the manager of two Holiday Inns, employees of United Parcel Service and the U.S. Postal Service, an apartment-house maintenance man, a Pepsi salesman and a banquet server.

Most of the 324 fell by the wayside Monday when Schaeffer asked how many would be willing to spend four weeks on a trial, sequestered in a hotel far from their homes. Only 33 people volunteered for such an onerous job.

Then came a battery of questions from Schaeffer, Chief Assistant State Attorney Bruce Bartlett, Assistant State Attorney Robert Lewis and defense attorney Fredric Zinober. The judge and lawyers probed the would-be jurors' backgrounds and attitudes on everything from capital punishment to television detective shows such as Murder, She Wrote.

"This is not something that's been contrived to entertain you,'' Lewis warned the group Tuesday. "The victims in this case are really dead. They won't appear later on some other show. This is not at all like television.''

Chandler, 47, has pleaded innocent to charges he murdered Joan Rogers, 36, and her daughters Christe, 14, and Michelle, 17. The women, who were on vacation from their dairy farm in rural Ohio, disappeared from a motel in Tampa on June 1, 1989.

Three days later their bodies were found floating in Tampa Bay near St. Petersburg. They were nude from the waist down, bound and gagged, with concrete blocks tied to their necks.

Prosecutors contend Chandler lured the three women aboard his 21-foot boat for a sunset cruise, then raped them and threw them overboard. Chandler's defense team says police arrested the wrong man.

If convicted on any of the three first-degree murder charges facing him, Chandler could be sentenced to death, particularly if the jury recommends it.

The tremendous publicity the case has received over the past five years … including coverage by such national TV shows as Unsolved Mysteries, which ran an updated story on the case Sunday … convinced Schaeffer and the lawyers that finding an impartial jury to try Chandler in Hillsborough or Pinellas counties would be difficult, if not impossible.

Even in Orange County, though, they found people who had heard about the case. One man was visiting Ohio when the bodies were found and remembered seeing the extensive news coverage the case received in the Midwest. However, none of those who had heard of the case could recall its details, and all said they had formed no opinion on the question of Chandler's guilt or innocence.

It will still be a few days yet before the newly selected jurors will begin hearing evidence on that question. Schaeffer has scheduled opening arguments to begin at 8:30 a.m. Monday.

That gives the 14 a little time to pack their bags and prepare themselves before they begin work on what one would-be juror called "the most important decision in my life, because a man's life hangs in the balance."

List of potential jurors for Chandler trial is down to 25

The lawyers asked them about the death penalty and dairy farming. They asked who owned a boat, who had visited the Tampa Bay area, who had any qualms about seeing gruesome photos of the three bodies pulled from the bay five years ago. They even probed one man's feelings about the rape of someone he knew.

After more than eight hours of questioning, they had trimmed the 324 down to 25 people who may today yield the 12 jurors and two alternates they need for Chandler's monthlong trial.

Chandler, 47, has pleaded innocent to the charges he murdered Joan Rogers, 36, and her daughters Christe, 14, and Michelle, 17. The three women, who lived on a dairy farm in rural Ohio, vanished from a Tampa motel on June 1, 1989, and were found in the bay three days later.

Prosecutors say Chandler lured the women aboard his boat for a sunset cruise, took them out in the bay and raped them, then threw them overboard to drown.

The circumstances of the women's demise … stripped from the waist down, bound and gagged, tied to concrete blocks … brought the case a deluge of publicity that has abated little today.

The television show Unsolved Mysteries featured the case, and after police arrested Chandler in 1992, Hard Copy came calling as well, offering money to members of Chandler's family who had been named as witnesses against him.

Because of the media barrage, all sides in the case agreed in July that finding an impartial jury for Chandler in Pinellas or Hillsborough counties would be difficult, if not impossible.

But instead of moving the trial elsewhere, both sides agreed to use a new state law that allows a court to select jurors from another county and bring them back to the original jurisdiction for a trial. This case marks the first time the law has been used.

For the duration of Chandler's trial, the Orange County jurors will be isolated so they will not see or hear anything about the case other than what is presented in court.

So the most important question posed in court Monday was the one Schaeffer asked over and over: How many would volunteer to be held hostage for justice for four weeks?

It helped that she could offer them money: $210 a week. All three meals will be paid for by the state, as will laundry service, the judge said. In the hotel … which the judge did not identify, except to say it is close to the criminal courts complex on 49th Street … the jurors will be provided with videos, board games and even live entertainment.

"In your off hours we promise to keep you as entertained as possible,'' she said.

And on Sundays, the only day of the week when the trial will take a break, she said family and friends can come for visits supervised by a team of bailiffs.

Despite those enticements, Schaeffer's request for volunteers never drew more than a handful of takers out of each group of 50 she questioned.

By lunchtime, though, those handfuls totaled 44, a multiracial mix that included homemakers, school bus drivers, a former FBI employee and an out-of-work scientist. One man wore a motorcycle jacket festooned with buttons, one of which read, "I Have Perfected the Art of Deviant Behavior.''

After lunch, however, 11 of those 44 bailed out because they had had second thoughts. One, a college student, said he had thought the judge said four days, not four weeks. Many cited problems with being away from their jobs for so long.

"I've been instructed by my employer that if I volunteer for this jury duty, I'll be fired,'' one man told the judge. When the judge asked who his employer was, the man said, "My father,'' then added that his father is a lawyer.

A few more fell by the wayside because, if Chandler's jury convicts him, the jurors will have to recommend whether Schaeffer should order him executed. Several said they did not feel comfortable recommending the death of another human being.

Chandler, looking pale but in good health, watched the day's proceedings with interest. He carefully studied the face of each person who might decide his destiny.

Initially Chandler was brought to court in handcuffs, a waist chain and leg shackles. Orange County deputies … who searched the courtroom for bombs before jury selection began … had planned to leave him shackled all day. But defense attorney Fredric Zinober complained that the sight might prejudice jurors against his client, so Schaeffer ordered Chandler unchained.

After freeing him, a deputy explained to Chandler that although he was now unshackled, he would not be allowed to move around.

"I'm not going nowhere,'' Chandler replied.

In the deaths of three women, Oba Chandler is found GUILTY

Three times, the clerk read the words "guilty of murder in the first degree'' … once for each of the women Chandler had just been convicted of killing.

But Chandler didn't flinch. He didn't blink. If his face betrayed any emotion, it was mild curiosity.

As the eight women and four men on the jury were polled, Chandler fiddled absent-mindedly with his reading glasses, then tucked them away so a bailiff could fingerprint him.

That chore done, the bailiff handed him a paper towel to wipe the ink off his meaty fingers. Chandler smiled and murmured, "Thank you.''

As he was led out of the courtroom and off to jail, he lightly bounced along on the balls of his feet, moving with surprising grace for such a bulky man.

Although jurors have now convicted Chandler … reaching their decision in a mere 80 minutes … their work is not done. They will reconvene today at 10:30 a.m. to begin work on their recommendation as to whether Circuit Judge Susan Schaeffer should sentence him to life in prison or order him to be executed.

Hal Rogers, whose family was wiped out by Chandler, was not in the courtroom. He could not be reached for comment.

After the verdict Thursday defense attorney Fredric Zinober, who saw his carefully prepared case fall apart this week as the state easily exposed the holes in Chandler's own story, walked across the courtroom to shake hands with prosecutors. He declined comment.

Executive Assistant State Attorney Doug Crow, who has worked on the case since the victims' bodies were brought ashore five years ago, looked pale and drained. He refused any credit for the conviction.

"I think sometimes people focus too much on the lawyers,'' Crow said. "You win a case or lose a case on the facts and the investigative work that goes into it.''

This was a case, though, where the facts were few and the investigation a massive effort that, in the end, turned on a single piece of paper.

Five years ago Joan Rogers, a 36-year-old factory employee and farmer's wife from Willshire, Ohio, brought her two daughters Christe, 14, and Michelle, 17, to Florida on vacation.

As they pulled into Tampa on June 1, 1989, they stopped to ask for directions to their motel. The man they asked was Chandler, an aluminum contractor, grandfather and sometime drug dealer who had served time in prison for counterfeiting and several other crimes.

In closing arguments, Crow called the 47-year-old Chandler "a chameleon-like creature'' with women "who one minute can portray himself as an ingratiating stranger and then, when he has them under his control, becomes a brutal rapist or a conscienceless murderer.''

Chandler wrote directions for the women on a Clearwater Beach tourist brochure, printing a few words to remind them they were headed to the Days Inn on the Courtney Campbell Parkway. The brochure was later found in their Oldsmobile. Chandler's handwriting, and the print of his palm on the brochure, eventually led police to his door.

Zinober, in his closing argument, contended the brochure was the only evidence the state had against his client.

"Based on this horrible coincidence, they're trying to convict this man of first-degree murder,'' Zinober said.

He summed up the state's case this way: "The only person we could confirm they had contact with was the person who gave them directions, so therefore he's the killer.''

The women checked into the motel between noon and 12:30 p.m. They were last seen alive in the motel's restaurant about 7:30 p.m. Chief Assistant State Attorney Bruce Bartlett said they probably were dead by 3 a.m.

On the morning of June 4, boaters found their bodies floating in Tampa Bay near St. Petersburg. The women were nude from the waist down. They had been bound and gagged, and their bodies weighted.

Prosecutors contend Chandler lured the women aboard his boat with the promise of the ultimate Florida souvenir: snapshots of one of Tampa Bay's glorious sunsets.

They said he showed the same modus operandi 18 days before the murders, persuading a 25-year-old Canadian tourist to board his boat for a sunset cruise so he could rape her in the ensuing darkness.

"The rape gives you an insight, a narrow window into the malevolent inner workings of Oba Chandler's brain,'' Crow said.

In that case Chandler struck up a conversation with the woman and her friend, maneuvered the talk to the subject of boats and sunsets, and invited both tourists to go out for a ride, Crow said. Only one woman went with him on May 15, though, and that probably saved her life, he said.

Chandler stripped the woman from the waist down, Crow noted, and when she resisted he threatened to put duct tape over her mouth. She testified he asked her, "Is sex worth losing your life over?''

"The Rogers women know the answer to that,'' Crow said. "They lost their lives.''

Some people … among them Zinober … have questioned how Chandler could have handled all three of the murder victims by himself. Crow said it was easy.

On the witness stand, Chandler admitted carrying a knife aboard his boat, and a year later threatened his son-in-law with a gun, Crow told jurors.

"So he puts a knife to Christe's throat, or a gun to Michelle's head, and he orders their mother to lie down on the deck and says, "You don't move and you don't say anything or your daughter's dead,' '' Crow said. "A mother will suffer anything, endure any pain, to save the most precious thing to them on the planet, the life of their daughter.''

Chandler tied the women's hands with white cotton rope, running out after he'd tied Michelle's ankles, Crow said. He used yellow rope to bind Christe and Joan's ankles, the prosecutor said, and then began to tape their mouths, putting one piece on each and then going back to reinforce it.

And the slipknots around their necks, also tied with yellow rope, were the kind he could tie with one hand while holding the weapon in the other, Crow said. At the other end of the rope were concrete blocks similar to the ones that a number of witnesses saw around Chandler's home in Tampa, he said.

Chandler clearly was well-prepared to commit such a monstrous crime, Crow contended. "Some of the rope ends were burned so they would not fray,'' he pointed out.

Prosecutors proved Chandler was out on his boat at the time of the murders, based on a series of five phone calls he made to his wife … three between 1 and 2 a.m., then another shortly after 8 a.m., and the last just before 10 a.m.

On the witness stand, Chandler admitted he had been out in Tampa Bay on his 21-foot Bayliner all night. He said that he'd had a fuel leak that drained all the gas from his tank and that he couldn't get anyone … including a passing Coast Guard vessel … to tow him in until late the next morning.

"Almost everything that came out of his mouth on the witness stand was a lie,'' Crow said.

There was no Coast Guard vessel in Tampa Bay that day. A Florida Marine Patrol mechanic testified that Chandler's story about the fuel leak could not have happened.

Add to that the fact that he was seen on land by two witnesses about 7:30 a.m. Bartlett, in his part of the state's closing argument, contended Chandler threw the women overboard in the darkness and then took his boat back out in the daylight to see if the bodies had come back up.

Although Chandler acknowledged giving the wom-en directions, Crow contended even that part of his story was a lie. Chandler said he never met Joan Rogers and was handed the brochure by Michelle Rogers.

But Joan Rogers' handwriting was also on the brochure. And Michelle Rogers was the only one of the three victims whose fingerprints were not found on it anywhere, Crow noted.

Crow pointed out that another set of directions was found in the women's car, directions Joan Rogers wrote on Days Inn stationery describing the route to the Courtney Campbell boat ramp where the car was parked. Someone must have called her at the motel to give her those directions, he said.

"How many people do we know in Hillsborough County, Tampa, Pinellas County, the Tampa Bay area who knew the Rogers women were at the Days Inn and could've called them?'' Crow asked. "After 10 days of trial, you only know one person, and he's sitting right over there.''

Crow pointed at Chandler. But Chandler didn't flinch.

A saga of rape, robbery and murder

May 15, 1989: … A Canadian tourist is raped aboard the boat of a man who invited her out for a sunset cruise in the Gulf of Mexico. A day later, she reports the attack to the Madeira Beach police.

May 26, 1989: … Joan Rogers, 36, and her daughters Christe, 14, and Michelle, 17, leave their home in rural Ohio for their first Florida vacation. Joan's husband, Hal, stays behind to tend to their 300-acre dairy farm.

June 1, 1989: About noon, the Rogers women check into the Days Inn on the Courtney Campbell Parkway in Tampa. They are seen around the motel during the day but disappear after dinner.

June 2, 1989: Between 1 a.m. and 10 a.m., someone makes a series of five phone calls from Oba Chandler's boat to his home in Tampa. On the last call, the caller identifies himself as "Oba.''

June 4, 1989: Three female bodies are found floating in Tampa Bay near St. Petersburg.

June 6, 1989: Hal Rogers files a missing-persons report in Ohio.

June 8, 1989: Days Inn employees notify Tampa police that three women from Ohio checked in and disappeared. Police find the Rogerses' car at a nearby boat ramp. Using dental records, they identify the bodies as the three missing tourists.

Aug. 28, 1989 Oba Chandler sells his boat.

November 1989: St. Petersburg police, questioning a possible link between the Madeira Beach rape and the murder of the Rogers women, publicize a sketch of the rapist and suggest he is linked to the murders.

November 1989: Oba Chandler abruptly leaves home and travels to Ohio to visit Kristal and Rick Mays, his daughter and son-in-law. They say while he's there he tells them police are searching for him for raping and killing women.

July 1990: Chandler and his wife, Debra, move away from Tampa. They later settle in Port Orange, near Daytona Beach, with their daughter Whitney.

1989-1992: … Police pursue thousands of leads but fail to make any arrests. Finally, they begin to focus on the handwritten directions found on a brochure in the women's car. They even publicize the handwriting on billboards.

May 14, 1992: A Tampa woman named Joanne Steffy calls the St. Petersburg police to report that one of her former neighbors, Oba Chandler, might be the killer, based on his handwriting on a contract. A friend named Dale Christie faxes a copy of the contract to police.

July 1992: Because police have failed to act on Steffy's tip, Christie calls them again, and again faxes a copy of the contract to police.

Sept. 11, 1992: Chandler robs two jewelry company employees of $750,000 at a Residence Inn on Ulmerton Road.

Sept. 11, 1992: St. Petersburg police submit samples of Chandler's handwriting to experts at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Sept. 15, 1992: FDLE reports Chandler's handwriting matches the writing on the brochure.

Sept. 24, 1992: Detectives arrest Chandler near his home in Port Orange and charge him with the Madeira Beach rape. They publicly identify him as their prime suspect in the 1989 triple slaying.

Oct. 5, 1992: Chandler is charged with robbery in connection with the Residence Inn holdup after a search of his home turns up jewelry taken in the robbery.

Oct. 12 and 16, 1992: In two telephone calls from the Pinellas County Jail, Chandler tells Kristal and Rick Mays he has "never physically hurt no human being'' and denies confessing to any murders. The Mayses secretly tape the calls for detectives.

Oct. 14, 1992: The Canadian woman views a lineup of suspects at the Pinellas County Jail and identifies Chandler as her attacker.

Nov. 10, 1992: A grand jury indicts Chandler on three counts of murder.

July 23, 1993: Chandler pleads no contest to the armed robbery charge and is sentenced to 15 years in prison, with three years' minimum mandatory.

Sept. 21, 1993: Police divers search the dock and canal behind Chandler's former Tampa home for evidence that might connect him with the murders.

Sept. 12, 1994: Jury selection begins in Orlando for Chandler's murder trial.

Sept. 27, 1994: Oba Chandler takes the stand in his own defense.

Sept. 29, 1994: Case goes to jury. After deliberating for fewer than 90 minutes, jurors return guilty verdicts.

Sept. 30, 1994: Penalty phase of trial scheduled to begin.

Following Oba Chandler

1. Born in Cincinnati, Oct. 11, 1946.

2. Arrested in Volusia County on Feb. 10, 1976, and charged with robbery and possession of marijuana.

3. Escapes Doctor's Inlet Road Prison near Palatka on May 10, 1977, while serving 10-year robbery sentence.

4. Arrested in Maitland on Sept. 27, 1982, and charged with counterfeiting.

5. Held in federal custody from 1982-84 at Bastrop, Texas, on the counterfeiting conviction.

6. Returned to Florida on June 5, 1984, to serve time in Florida for robbery and escape.

7. Bought a home in 1988 on Dalton Avenue in Tampa.

8. Married Debra Ann Whiteman of Tarpon Springs on May 14, 1988.

Chandler jury works quick: DEATH

On Friday, when jurors voted on what sentence Chandler should receive, Mrs. Welton was the first to write down, "Death.''

The other 11 quickly agreed. So 30 minutes after they left the courtroom to deliberate, they walked back in to deliver a unanimous recommendation to the judge.

There sat Chandler, watching them with his head cocked to one side, showing no sign of remorse.

"He had that smirk on his face,'' said Mrs. Welton, 51. "I just wanted to walk over there and slap it off his face.''

Circuit Judge Susan Schaeffer, who has served on the bench since 1982, said she could recall only two other Pinellas County murder cases in which a jury voted 12-0 in favor of execution.

By law, Schaeffer must give the jury's recommendation great weight. Next Thursday she will listen to legal arguments from both sides.

She is scheduled to impose sentence on Nov. 4.

Chandler will have an opportunity to talk to the judge at next week's hearing. He may do better to say nothing.

Jurors said Chandler's own testimony about his whereabouts on the night of the murders helped convince them that he killed Joan Rogers and her teenage daughters, Michelle and Christe, on June 1, 1989.

"His testimony damaged him very much,'' said Evelyn Calloway, a school bus driver.

They simply didn't believe his tale about being stranded on his boat alone all night because he ran out of gas, especially after two prosecution witnesses tore big holes in his story, agreed motel manager Don Fontaine.

"He should've stayed off the stand,'' housewife Patricia Pittman said.

Before hearing Chandler testify, Mrs. Welton said, "I felt that he was guilty but I still had some doubts.'' If he had not testified, she said, "We probably would've deliberated a lot longer.''

Instead, they reached a guilty verdict in less than 90 minutes.

Chandler continued to hamper his lawyer's efforts Friday, forbidding defense attorney Fredric Zinober to present testimony from his family in trying to persuade jurors to vote for life in prison.

The judge asked Chandler if his lawyer had explained to him that might be a mistake.

"Yes, he has,'' Chandler replied with a smile, "and I've made a decision, your honor, to call no one.''

Zinober said he had planned to call Chandler's mother, his wife, Debra, his grown son, Jeffrey, and his 5-year-old daughter, Whitney.

"He did not want to get his family involved,'' Zinober said afterward.

Even if those witnesses had told the jury about how Chandler was the son of a suicide victim, how he doted on his young daughter and so forth, Zinober said it probably would not have made much difference.

Still, Zinober pleaded with jurors to find some reason to spare the life of his client. He showed them records of high school and college courses Chandler took 11 years ago while in federal prison. Chandler earned a B in Introduction to Ethics and another in Social Problems, but a C in Social Psychology.

Zinober also brought in photos of Whitney and phone records that show Chandler called his mother from jail 85 times in one month … signs of his familial devotion.

"As long as there's love that's still alive, life should go on,'' Zinober said.

He pointed out that if the 47-year-old Chandler were sentenced to life without parole for 25 years he would probably die in prison anyway.

But according to Assistant State Attorney James Hellickson, a natural death, even behind bars, is not what Chandler deserves.

For the jury, Hellickson painted a vivid picture of how Chandler stripped his victims from the waist down, bound their hands and feet, put duct tape over their mouths and then tossed them overboard into Tampa Bay, to either drown or strangle because of weights tied to their necks.

"He couldn't throw them over the side all at the same time,'' Hellickson said. "He had to throw them over the side one at a time. That means he threw one over the side … which one, we don't know, but somebody was first. Was it the mother, the daughter, the sister?''

As Chandler carried out the first murder, Hellickson said, "the other two watched … their eyes weren't taped. And they heard … their ears weren't taped. And they smelled … their nose wasn't taped. And at that point, they knew they'd be next.''

One by one he ruthlessly disposed of his victims, Hellickson said. "Nothing could be more horrendous, more atrocious, more cruel and unmitigated than that,'' he said.

To bolster the state's case for the death penalty, prosecutors called as witnesses the victims of two armed robberies Chandler committed. Both clearly still bear emotional scars from their encounters.

First came Peggy Harrington, a jewelry manufacturer's sales representative from Los Angeles. Two years ago, as she and a colleague were returning to a Clearwater motel from a show in Tampa, Chandler held them up with a .380-caliber semi-automatic pistol. He stole $750,000 in jewelry.

Throughout the robbery Chandler kept yelling obscenities at them, she said, and ordering them not to look at him.

"Unfortunately I looked right at him, because I knew if he didn't kill us we'd have to identify him,'' she said.

As she testified, Harrington kept her eyes lowered, as if still fearful to look Chandler in the face. But then Assistant State Attorney Robert Lewis asked her to point out the man who robbed her, and she sneaked a peek at the defendant.

"He's got on a pink shirt and a blue jacket,'' she said, and started crying.

Then came Robert Plemmons, a Daytona Beach fisherman. Plemmons was robbed by Chandler in 1976, but the years have not dimmed his anger.

Chandler and another man came to Plemmons' house with a phony story about their car running out of gas, Plemmons said. When he started to unlatch the door they kicked it in, knocked him out and tied his hands and feet, he told the jury.

"They kept asking me where the guns and money were,'' he recalled.

Then, as Chandler's accomplice held a gun to Plemmons' head, Chandler took Plemmons' girlfriend into the bedroom, he said. After 15 minutes the men fled, taking more than $1,200 and a couple of guns, he said.

Plemmons said he and his girlfriend managed to wriggle to each other and untie themselves. Her hands, he said, were bound. "And she was stripped from the waist down,'' he said.

Jurors frowned when they heard that. And as Plemmons stepped down from the witness stand, he glared at Chandler all the way out of the courtroom.

Chandler returned the stare.

Jurors say: "We felt like . . . family"

Fourteen strangers from Orange County volunteered to leave their friends and loved ones and sit together in a chilly courtroom day after day, listening to the story of a gruesome triple murder.

The experience bound them as close as blood relations.

"We felt like we were our own family,'' said juror Dorothy Crawford, a school bus driver.

On Friday afternoon, with their job done, they posed for a group picture and presented Circuit Judge Susan Schaeffer a small wooden gavel with their names on it and, "Thank you from the Orlando jury,'' written on the shaft.

Because Oba Chandler's murder case had received so much publicity in the Tampa Bay area, lawyers for both sides agreed to import a jury from another part of the state. The case marked the first time a court in Florida has made use of a new state law allowing the importation of a jury.

"It could've been a big disaster,'' Schaeffer said. Instead it was a big success, she said, thanks in large part to the jurors.

When Schaeffer and lawyers traveled to Orlando last month to pick a jury, the judge asked potential jurors who would be willing to be sequestered for up to a month. Of 324 registered voters in the jury pool, 33 said yes.

"I was tentative about getting on the jury at first,'' said Don Fontaine, a motel manager. "But this is a duty, a civic duty.''

After two days of questioning from the lawyers, the group was boiled down to 12 jurors and two alternates. The nine women and five men included three housewives, a Pepsi salesman, a carpet-mill worker, a missile mechanic, an apartment maintenance man and a Postal Service employee.

Two weeks ago Pinellas County bailiffs drove the jurors over from Orlando and checked them into the Comfort Inn in Clearwater. They were not allowed to play radios or watch certain television stations. Even calls and visits from their families had to be supervised.

"We ate a lot,'' said Evelyn Calloway, also a school bus driver. "And we played that game, what's it called?''

"Trivial Pursuit,'' Ms. Crawford said.

They watched movies like Sleepless in Seattle, read books, worked crossword puzzles … anything to keep from talking about what they had heard in court.

"We sat around and talked about each other's lives,'' juror Patricia Pittman said.

"Everybody got along great and we just enjoyed each other's company,'' said Roseann Welton.

One day when the lawyers were tied up in legal arguments, Schaeffer allowed the jurors to go out on an excursion. Twelve of them visited Fort De Soto Park and two went golfing … still under the bailiffs' watchful eyes.

"It was good to get out and unwind and breathe some fresh air,'' Mrs. Calloway said. "We slept like babies that night.''

In the end, the case didn't take as long as anyone expected. The jury's work didn't take long either.

As the jurors stood around talking to reporters Friday, Ms. Crawford said, "I don't think anybody will ever forget this.''

There has already been talk of a reunion, jurors said. But if they gather again, it will be in Orlando.

It may have been a crude abortion. But was it murder?

No, a judge said Monday.

Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Brandt Downey ruled that Kawana Ashley cannot be charged with third-degree murder in the death of her infant, Brittany Ashley.

Although Downey tossed out the murder charge against the St. Petersburg woman, he let stand the other charge against her, manslaughter.

"A jury could potentially convict Miss Ashley of manslaughter,'' Downey said.

He also suggested Ashley could be charged with illegally aborting a late-term pregnancy. Prosecutors have not filed such a charge.

In a court case that has drawn national attention as part of the debate over abortion rights, Downey's split decision left both sides of the debate frustrated. Abortion rights groups wanted the judge to dismiss all charges, while those opposed to abortion rights wanted his total endorsement.

Both the prosecution and defense said they may appeal.

During the hearing the 20-year-old Ashley sat quietly in the back row of a packed courtroom to listen to the lawyers debate her future. As soon as it ended, she ducked out the door, brushing by reporters without a word.

As she walked quickly down the hallway, frantically pursued by TV camera people, she reached up with the heel of one hand to wipe her eye.

Then her supporters and detractors took turns holding mini-news conferences outside the courtroom, occasionally shouting at each other. While a Catholic priest told reporters that abortion-rights groups are tearing apart the family, members of the National Organization of Women stood nearby chanting, "Indict the Catholic priests!''

In his ruling, Downey said he did not expect to make people happy. He noted the deep division in national opinion over the issue of abortion, a division that has deepened as some abortion opponents have shot doctors and clinic employees to stop their work.

According to the judge, the question of what Ashley can be charged with turns on what she intended to do when she picked up a gun and shot herself.

In the only cases similar to this one, where mothers were prosecuted for harming their babies by taking drugs while they were pregnant, there was no intent to hurt the child, Downey said.

"But there sure as hell is here,'' he said.

The judge ruled that a third-degree murder charge is justified only for unintentional killing. If Ashley shot herself to abort her fetus, Downey said, then the killing was clearly intentional.

To prove a manslaughter charge, the judge noted, prosecutors need not show her intent. They need only show that Ashley's actions demonstrated a reckless disregard for human life.

Ashley, who lives in St. Petersburg with her grandmother and 3-year-old son, was 19 at the time of the shooting, and 25- to 26-weeks pregnant.

Florida law says that to legally terminate a third-trimester pregnancy such as Ashley's, two physicians must certify that it is medically necessary.

Ashley sought an abortion but could not afford one.

On March 27, police say, Ashley put a pillow over her abdomen, pointed a .22-caliber pistol into the pillow and pulled the trigger. At Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg, doctors delivered her daughter by Caesarean section.

The infant had been struck on the wrist by a bullet but lived 15 days until her organs failed. The Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner's Office ruled the death a homicide.

At first, police say, Ashley claimed to be the victim of a drive-by shooting, then changed her story twice, admitting she wanted to hurt the baby, then denying that.

Assistant State Attorney Doug Ellis argued that Ashley could be charged with third-degree murder because she was engaged in a particular felony … illegal abortion … that eventually led to the death of the child.

If Ashley had succeeded in killing the fetus in her womb, Ellis said, then Ashley could be charged with abortion, not murder. But because the child was born alive, Ellis said, she legally became a human being, and thus a murder victim.

Priscilla Smith of the Center for Reproductive Law‚&‚Policy in New York argued for the defense that the laws on homicide do not cover abortion.

If either side appeals Downey's ruling before trial, it can delay the case. Downey scheduled a Feb. 2 hearing for both sides to tell him if they plan to appeal.

Definitely not, said Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Susan Schaeffer, who proceeded to lecture jurors on their duty to think of the trial as their job.

After the jury left the courtroom, Schaeffer blew up.

"I tell you the truth, this O.J. Simpson thing is doing a lot of things to a lot of jurors,'' she said, clearly angry.

"I have never had jurors ever think that when they were in a trial they were going to say, "Excuse me, I've got to go somewhere. I've got to do payroll.' I believe that all comes from the way the jurors are being treated in that trial out there in California.''

Quipped prosecutor Fred Schaub: "We'll know tomorrow if they come in dressed in black.''

They didn't, but it may be just another example of how "that trial'' … the case of the famous ex-football player charged with murdering his wife and her friend … is proving to be one California earthquake that continues to set off aftershocks in courtrooms across the country.

A Boston jury recently staged a sick-out when a trial ran two days longer than expected. A panel on a murder case in Washington asked, in the middle of deliberations, to visit the crime scene. In Polk County, a potential juror was excused after he said the Simpson trial convinced him that a defense lawyer would say or do anything to get a client off.

Local lawyers feel the effects too. The problem, they say, is that the Simpson trial is about as similar to their average case as Disneyland is to real life.

Take, for example, evidence.

Faithful followers of the Simpson trial have taken a crash course on crime scenes and forensic science. They have absorbed information about blood, DNA, autopsies, hairs and fibers.

"My feeling is, sometimes a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing,'' said Tampa sex offenses prosecutor Karen Stanley. "I think their exposure to the O.J. trial has made (local jurors) expect the kind of evidence they're seeing in O.J.

"And there's probably more evidence in that trial than in 90 percent of the murders that are tried,'' she said.

The fact that a case lacks hard physical evidence to tie the accused to the crime "is being raised more and more,'' said Tampa prosecutor Denise Pomponio. "It's being brought up as a smokescreen to cause juries to hang or acquit.''

Pomponio points to a recent Tampa arson case. Defendant James Maglio, who disagreed with his insurance company about how much money he was owed after a car accident, admitted he held a Molotov cocktail in his hands before it was tossed into the State Farm office. Still, in closing arguments, Maglio's attorney asked why the state hadn't gotten Maglio's fingerprints off the remnants of the bottle.

"Defense lawyers can just raise it as an issue whether it's an issue or not,'' Pomponio said. "And then it becomes a reasonable doubt.'' Ultimately, the jury found Maglio guilty.

But Clearwater lawyer Denis de Vlaming noted that in some ways, the Simpson trial has helped make jurors more realistic. They once came to court with "majestic thoughts'' about the nobility of the law and its practitioners, he said.

"They thought it was about knights in shining armor jousting in the arena, and the guy in the Darth Vader mask always lost,'' de Vlaming said.

Now, jurors arrive knowing the system is far from perfect, and that it's more about proving a case than obtaining moral justice, he said. De Vlaming says they have learned that, at least in part, from TV's fascination with every detail of the Simpson trial.

"We're a 13th juror there watching everything,'' he said.

The Simpson case has touched defendants as well. St. Petersburg lawyer Michael Schwartzberg said that with Simpson's defense attorneys focusing on allegations of police misconduct, Schwartzberg now gets questions from clients when he doesn't tear into every officer who takes the stand.

"If I'm questioning a police officer I've dealt with in the past and I know is a straight shooter, some clients have been upset that I've not been aggressive toward the police officer,'' Schwartzberg said.

Lawyers say the endless sideshow of the Simpson case … with lawyers on both sides accusing, berating and taunting each other before the cameras … hasn't done much for their image.

"The juror's perception of lawyers was poor to begin with,'' said Tampa defense lawyer Chip Purcell. "And it's getting worse.''

Purcell says he senses a new cynicism on jury panels. "There's just a tension in the air,'' he said. "Juries are sitting around and waiting to see what you're going to pull.''

Even scheduling has become an issue. The Simpson case, in which jurors sometimes start in late morning and recess in early afternoon, has skewed jurors' sense of a trial's pace.

"If I keep a witness on the stand for less than eight days, they wonder if I'm doing something wrong,'' Schwartzberg said.

"Especially if you do a one-day trial,'' said prosecutor Stanley. "The jury's probably thinking, "What was that?'‚''

When talk turns to the Simpson trial in the hallways of the Hillsborough County courthouse, lawyers often muse on how much shorter it would be if held in Tampa, before a judge who starts at 8 a.m. or another who rarely allows lengthy sidebar conferences.

Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe contended the Simpson case is no more complicated than some local cases, such as last year's triple-murder trial of Oba Chandler, which Judge Schaeffer finished in three weeks. The Tampa trial of Richard Miller, accused of killing his wife and her boss, included complicated expert testimony on everything from blood spatters to handwriting, but took less than three weeks.

Potential jurors are also well aware that the Simpson jurors have been sequestered, away from their families and normal life routines. Local court officials report they frequently get phone calls from people worried about how long they will be kept in court. Although most trials last no more than a day or two, and sequestration is rare, they fear being sucked into a circus that plays for months on end.

Tampa jury consultant Harvey Moore says that volunteers for mock trials are much more reluctant about real jury duty.

"Jurors are afraid of the trial system right now,'' he said. "I think it's clear they are the folks who are the most abused during a trial.''

In the past, as trials began, lawyers have routinely assured panels of potential jurors that what they are about to experience won't be anything like what they have seen on TV's L.A. Law, Matlock, or the old standard, Perry Mason.

Lately, however, lawyers have been adding a factual name to that mix of fictional drama: Simpson. Lawyers want to know if jurors will expect the legal pyrotechnics or the parade of scientific evidence they see on TV.

In Hillsborough court, some judges have curbed that kind of questioning, saying the California trial isn't relevant to the cases at hand. One Pasco judge took it a step further with an only-slightly tongue-in-cheek declaration that in his court, lawyers should refrain from mentioning that case.

"I think the jury panels have o.d.'d on O.J.,'' Circuit Judge Craig Villanti wrote in a recent issue of the St. Petersburg Bar Association's magazine.

Simpson analogies can cause delay and confusion, Villanti said, and anyway, there are enough Simpson commentators.

"All kidding aside, questions on specific unrelated cases are improper and do not . . . bear on the merits of your Pasco cases,'' the judge wrote. "Therefore, effective immediately, please exercise proper taste by avoiding O.J. in your Division 4 trial diet!''

The judge did offer a consolation: references to Perry Mason, who is not a real person, are still allowed.