Zamites gets life without parole in 2005 child rape-slaying

GAINESVILLE - Mexican farmer worker Cornelio Zamites pleaded guilty and drew life without possibility of parole during a noonday hearing Thursday in Hall Superior Court in the June 2005 rape-slaying of a four-year-old girl.

Zamites was charged in an 18-count indictment that included murder, rape, child molestation, false imprisonment and kidnapping in the strangulation death of four-year-old Esmeralda Lopez Nava.

District Attorney Lee Darragh said Zamites deserved the death penalty, but he recommended the plea and sentence to eliminate even the possibility a jury could return a life with parole option verdict.

Darragh originally sought the death penalty for Zamites; he told Judge Kathleen Gosselin this way Zamites would "never see the light of freedom again."

Judge Gosselin followed Darraghâ