Supreme Court rules on case of Susan Negersmith, woman found slain in Wildwood in 1990
TRENTON – A South Jersey man can't be tried for allegedly raping a woman whose body was found behind a Wildwood restaurant in May 1990, the state Supreme Court has ruled.
The 6-0 decision upheld an appellate court ruling in favor of the suspect, Jerry Rosado of Millville.
He was charged in April 2022 on the basis of DNA evidence found more than 30 years earlier on the body of Susan Negersmith, a 20-year-old New York State woman.
Negersmith was killed during a weekend visit with friends to Wildwood, but no one has been charged with causing her death.
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Police collected DNA samples after Negersmith’s body was found with her clothing partially removed.
An autopsy initially said Negersmith’s death was accidental, but that finding was changed to homicide in 1996.
The Supreme Court said Rosado's trial was barred by a five-year statute of limitations for sexual assault in effect at the time of the 1990 incident.
Rosado, arrested at age 62, became a person of interest in the case in 2018 through the use of genetic genealogy analysis. He was found to have a "high probability" of matching the DNA in June 2021, the high court's decision said.
The appellate decision ordered a trial judge to dismiss a criminal complaint that alleged Rosado had sex with Negersmith when he knew or should have known she was "physically incapacitated due to alcohol."
The charge was to be dismissed with prejudice, meaning it could not brought against Rosado in the future.
The case was appealed to the Supreme Court by the Cape May County Prosecutor's Office.
A representative of the prosecutor's office could not be reached for immediate comment.
A trial judge initially ruled in the prosecutor's favor, finding the statute of limitations did not begin to run until investigators obtained Rosado's DNA in 2021.
But an appellate panel said, under the law in effect in 1990, the clock began to run "on the day after the offense (was) committed."
A 1996 change eliminated a time limit for prosecuting sexual assault. Another revision in 2002 "carve(d) out an exception for circumstances in which the prosecution includes DNA or fingerprint evidence," Wednesday's decision noted.
But like the appellate court, the Supreme Court said those changes could not be applied retroactively to Rosado's case.
Jim Walsh is a senior reporter for the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daly Journal. Email: Jwalsh@cpsj.com.
This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Jerry Rosado of Millville was accused in 2022 of sex assault in 1990
