A federal judge in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday sharply questioned a 1984 Death Row conviction in a sensational 1966 murder.

Hadn't the prosecutor deliberately misled the jury about an immunity deal that led to a death sentence for Billy Kelley in the homicide of citrus baron Charles Van Maxcy, U.S. District Court Judge Norman Roettger wanted to know.

Had Kelley ever been linked to the crime by witness identification? Why did the state destroy all physical evidence before his trial?

The questions to Carol Ditmar, an assistant state attorney general, and James Lohman, Kelley's appellate lawyer, marked the end of a three-part evidentiary hearing that started in Boston in April, moved to Fort Pierce in July, and ended in Fort Lauderdale Wednesday.

The meandering path of the hearing seemed as bumpy and winding as the 35-year-old case itself. The victim's wife, Irene Maxcy, and her lover, John Sweet, hired two hitmen to assassinate Von Maxcy in his Sebring home in 1966. They stabbed and shot him in his bedroom.

Sweet went to trial in 1967, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict. At a second trial in 1968, he got life. But he walked a year later, when Irene Maxcy, the star witness, admitted to an affair with the homicide detective and to lying on the stand.

Twelve years later, when Sweet faced a 20-year prison sentence in Boston for drug dealing and theft, he named a hitman, Billy Kelley, a small-time Boston crook. The other hitman had been murdered. For his testimony, Sweet got immunity in Massachusetts for stealing computer equipment and immunity in Florida for the Maxcy case.

Like Sweet, Kelley had two trials. The first in 1983 ended in a mistrial. Jurors decided that Sweet, the only witness, couldn't be trusted because of the immunity deal.

But Kelley's second trial ended in a conviction after prosecutor Hardy Pickard told jurors that ``John Sweet did not have to give the police Kelley to get immunity.''

It is this statement by Pickard that Lohman, Kelley's attorney, focused on in the evidentiary hearing.

``The prosecutor misled the jury,'' said Lohman.

But Ditmar said the defense made a deliberate choice not to make the immunity deal an issue in cross-examination.

Judge Roettger pointed out that the cross-examination had nothing to do with it. What was important, he said, was ``Pickard's misleading response'' to the jury.

Unmentioned Wednesday was a highly similar situation at another hearing in Tampa in May. Appellate lawyers accused Pickard of withholding crucial evidence in a 1983 murder in Auburndale and misleading a jury.

Juan Melendez is on Death Row in that case.

Wednesday, Roettger questioned the state about the witness identification of a motel clerk who described the alleged hitman with hair, height and age drastically different from Kelley's. Ditmar said the testimony was insignificant because hair color and style is ``subjective.''

Roettger asked: ``But what about height and age? They're less subjective.''

Such mistakes were understandable since the motel clerk ``had limited contact with Kelley,'' Ditmar replied.

``Limited contact?'' asked Roettger. ``She went to dinner with him.''

Then Roettger questioned Ditmar on a third issue: ``How could the state destroy evidence?''

Ditmar replied: ``At the time, the state had no reasonable belief that it would go ahead with another trial.''

That's when the judge leaned back, rubbed his forehead and concluded: ``So the decision to destroy evidence was based on the belief that the case was over.''

Roettger must decide if Billy Kelley, 58, should get a new trial. If so, Kelley would almost certainly walk. There are no witnesses or physical evidence.