Let-'Em-Go Joe

For two murders, three years

The first time Spencer Snell, then 20, came before Florida Circuit Court Judge Joseph Durant, he was charged with murdering a man during an argument. He was freed on $2,500 bond. While Snell was at liberty, police say, he killed another man outside a pool hall after a dispute over who had the next game. That time he was locked up until his trial. Last week, at Durant's suggestion, Snell pleaded no contest to second-degree murder charges in both cases. Durant's sentence: three years, the minimum allowed.

Durant, a former prosecutor, was rated a hard-liner when appointed in 1975, but rarely has lived up to the billing. His controversial decisions include a 1978 ruling that under a technicality in a state law, pistols were not firearms, and thus carrying a concealed pistol was not an offense. Such actions have won him a nickname: "Let-'Em-Go Joe." In the Snell case, Durant maintains that "the state was having trouble finding witnesses," and that without plea bargaining Snell might have gone scot free. Not so, insists Dade County Assistant State Attorney Leonard Glick: "I told the judge I had my witnesses." During Snell's sentencing, Glick protested so vehemently that Durant threatened to cite him for contempt of court.

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