Nation’s First Carjacking Trial to Begin : Crime: Although murder is involved, Florida officials, fearing light sentences, defer to the federal prosecution.

The slayings were particularly brutal.

After their vehicle was rammed by another car, a woman and three male companions were abducted at gunpoint by four men who forced them to drive to a remote pasture outside Orlando, Fla. There, the male victims were stripped naked, ordered to lie face down on the ground, and, with the woman made to watch, each man was shot in the back of the head. Two were killed and the third survived a minor wound by playing dead.

Within days of the killings last Nov. 29, four young Central Florida men were arrested in connection with the incident, and they are scheduled to stand trial Tuesday in Orlando.

But they are not being tried on murder charges. Instead, in the first such prosecution in the nation, three of the four men are accused of violating the federal carjacking statute signed into law three months ago. If convicted, they could face life in prison.

Although first-degree murder charges are almost certain to be filed later, some wonder about the expense of two prosecutions, and why state charges--which could lead to a death sentence--were not prosecuted first.

“For taxpayers, that might be a very good question,” says Chris L. Smith, attorney for one of the defendants.

But Randy Means, a spokesman for the Orange County state attorney, said the explanation of why the federal case is proceeding first is simple: Federal prosecutors are ready for trial after making a plea bargain deal with one of the four defendants to testify against the others, and “getting people like this off the street is what’s important.”

Furthermore, says Means, “a life sentence in state court is not life anymore, and it’s getting worse. We see some getting out after 12 to 15 years. A federal sentence of life means life.”

Although the killings in rural Osceola County, just a few miles from Disney World, were sensational enough to attract media attention anyway, the case has received even more publicity because it is the first prosecution involving a death to come to trial under a law designed to deal with a crime wave so new that the word carjacking was coined only about two years ago.

As the first wave of carjackings was reported in Detroit in the summer of 1991, criminologists speculated that because of increasingly high-tech security systems, car thieves and other hoodlums were discovering that commandeering an occupied car was easier than mastering the anti-theft devices.

The carjacking bill was authored by Rep. Charles E. Schumer (R-N.Y.) and signed into law by former President George Bush last fall.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Bobby Moreno says that based on an investigation by the FBI, the Osceola County carjacking and murder case fell precisely within the federal statute’s reach.

“The law gives us a specialized response to a particularly egregious type of activity,” Moreno said.

The incident began after 25-year-old Tammy George and the three men left a nightclub on the outskirts of St. Cloud, a town of 14,000 residents in Florida’s citrus belt. In a statement to police, George, who is black, said several black men taunted her for being with three white men.

As George and her companions got into a truck to leave, the vehicle was rammed by a car, and the four were forced to drive several miles out of town. “They told them to take off their clothes and lay down,” George told police. “And one guy went behind them . . . and they’re dead. I kept acting like, I’m scared, scared.

“They said just do what they want us to do. And they said everything’s going to be OK.”

Killed were Anthony Clifton, 20, and Anthony Faiella, 17. Michael Rentas, 20, survived when a small-caliber bullet aimed at the back of his head ricocheted off a bone in his hands, clasped behind his head.

George was not injured or assaulted. Within days, police arrested four local men: Jermaine Foster, 19; Gerard R. Booker, 22; Alf Catholic, 21, and Leondre (Manny Boy) Henderson, 17. In an agreement with federal prosecutors, Henderson pleaded guilty to carjacking and will testify against the others. In exchange, federal prosecutors will ask that he be sentenced to less than life, according to Joel Remland, his public defender.

Despite published reports that the killers decided to spare George’s life “because she was a sister,” Remland says race is not a factor in the incident. The four defendants are also charged with another carjacking earlier in the day in which the victims were black.

“It’s a robbery situation, a crime of opportunity,” said Remland.

Smith, the attorney for Catholic, agrees: “Race had nothing to do with this offense.”

The carjacking trial is expected to be concluded within a week. If the men are convicted, Florida will be in no hurry to press state charges.

But Means of the state attorney’s office insists the murders will be prosecuted. “The heinousness of this crime makes this an interesting case,” he said. “This happened in a sleepy area of our community. It just shows that no place is immune.”