TAMPA - If a gate is illegal, can the man who destroys it be a criminal?

That's the knotty legal question at the heart of the Mac Greco Jr. "gate rage" case, which began in January when the Culbreath Isles man angrily rammed the security gate barring him entry to his neighborhood.

Seven months later, Greco has yet to be charged with a crime, though Hillsborough State Attorney Mark Ober is expected soon to decide whether he should be.

What makes the case unusual is the ambiguous legal status of the security gate. It was erected under the authority of a 1999 Tampa city ordinance. Greco, however, contends that the gate itself is illegal, since it stands on a public road.

"You wouldn't be expecting Mr. Ober to prosecute a citizen for destroying a marijuana field, would you?" said Greco's defense attorney, Norman Cannella Sr.

Ratcheting up the contentiousness and, perhaps, the ego-level of the feud: The key players are lawyers.

Leading the charge against Greco is Ted Taub, the prominent, well-heeled attorney who lives in Culbreath Isles and represents its homeowners association. It was Taub who, as the former president of the association, lobbied the city to allow the gate in the first place. Now, he's lobbying Ober to slap Greco with charges for destroying it.

Greco, Taub's neighbor in the tony South Tampa subdivision, is himself a prominent, well-heeled attorney. And to fight the gate case, he has enlisted a fleet of legal heavyweights that most men accused of homicide could never muster: Cannella, George Vaka, Joe Ficarrotta and Benny Lazzara.

Greco's legal team has met with Ober several times, citing state statutes that forbid the blocking of public roads. Their argument: the crime was the gate itself, not the ramming of it.

Even Morris Massey, the assistant city attorney who wrote the ordinance authorizing the gate, admits the law is murky. "The position we take is, the ordinance is valid," Massey said. "But it is not the clearest area of the law, to be quite honest with you."

On the evening of Jan. 11, Greco was driving home with pasta takeout from Caffe Italia when he pulled up to the security gate. Greco, who says the guard denied him access in violation of the law, rammed his pickup truck through the gate and tore the gate's mechanical arm from its base.

The homeowners association sued, demanding he pay for the wreckage. Greco countersued, demanding compensation for damage done to his truck.

How did the gate get there? Traditionally, the city has not allowed homeowners associations to build security gates on public, tax-payer funded roads. But in 1998, when the city annexed Heritage Isles from the county, it promised the New Tampa subdivision everything the county offered. That included the right to built a gate on public roads.

"That was the first time the city had conceptually agreed to allow gates on public rights of way," Massey said. "That's why Mr. Taub raised the issue with us at that time."

At Taub's prompting, the city allowed Culbreath Isles to build its own gate, provided the guard did not deny people access, and under the condition that if a court found the gate illegal, the city would not be liable.

In allowing the gate to go up, the city relied on a state law that allows for the "regulating, restricting, or monitoring (of) traffic by security devices or personnel on public streets and highways, whether by public or private parties and providing for the construction and maintenance of such streets and highways."

Vaka, the lawyer representing Greco in his civil case, said the last 12 words of that sentence make its intention clear: Traffic can be restricted when there is "construction and maintenance" under way. 

"There is no construction and maintenance going on in Culbreath Isles, period," said Vaka, who contends the continued presence of the security gate is a crime. "Until you know whether those gates are legal, you really can't charge Mr. Greco because you don't know whether it's the association that has the ongoing criminal activity."

Vaka accused the Culbreath Isles homeowners association of "using the threat of criminal prosecution to bring pressure in the civil case." He will ask a judge to declare the gate illegal.

While Culbreath Isles has cited security to justify the gate - two residents were attacked in 1992 - Vaka believes another factor plays a role: sweetening the real estate.

Minutes of the homeowners' meetings show residents discussing how a gate would increase property values, Vaka said. He said they also discussed how their security guard was not doing a good enough job of stopping people and questioning them on the way into the neighborhood, a violation of the law.

Greco, Taub and the State Attorney's Office declined to comment for this story.