Title: In re Gay
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: S130263
State: California
Issuer: California Supreme Court
Date: February 13, 2020

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF  
CALIFORNIA 
 
In re KENNETH EARL GAY 
on Habeas Corpus. 
 
S130263 
 
Los Angeles County Superior Court 
A392702 
__________________________________________________________ 
February 13, 2020 
Justice Kruger authored the opinion of the Court, in which 
Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye and Justices Chin, Corrigan, Liu, 
Cuéllar, and Groban concurred. 
__________________________________________________________ 
 
In re GAY 
S130263 
 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
Petitioner Kenneth Earl Gay was convicted of the first 
degree murder of a police officer and sentenced to death.  In an 
earlier habeas corpus proceeding, we found that Gay’s trial 
counsel had defrauded Gay in order to induce Gay to retain him 
instead of the public defender, and then had gone on to commit 
serious errors during the trial’s penalty phase that undermined 
the reliability of the resulting death verdict.  We accordingly 
granted habeas corpus relief and vacated the judgment of death.  
(In re Gay (1998) 19 Cal.4th 771, 780 (Gay I).)  Now, presented 
with additional allegations concerning trial counsel’s deficient 
performance during the guilt phase, we consider whether his 
performance undermined the reliability of the jury’s guilty 
verdict as well. 
To address this question, we ordered an evidentiary 
hearing before a referee.  Examining Gay’s allegations in light 
of the extensive hearing record, the referee’s findings, and the 
trial record, we conclude Gay was denied his constitutional right 
to the assistance of competent counsel at the guilt phase of the 
trial, just as at the penalty phase.  We grant habeas corpus relief 
and afford the People the opportunity to retry Gay if they so 
choose. 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
2 
I. 
After a joint trial before separate juries in the Los Angeles 
County Superior Court, Gay and codefendant Raynard Paul 
Cummings were convicted of the first degree murder of Los 
Angeles Police Officer Paul Verna.  (Pen. Code, § 189.)  The 
juries found, as special circumstances, that defendants 
knowingly and intentionally killed a peace officer engaged in the 
performance of his duties (id., § 190.2, subd. (a)(7)) and 
committed the murder to prevent a lawful arrest (id., § 190.2, 
subd. (a)(5)).  The juries also found that a principal was armed 
with a firearm (id., § 12022, subd. (a)) and that each defendant 
personally used a firearm (id., §§ 12022.5, subd. (a), 1203.06, 
subd. (a)(1)).  Each jury returned a death verdict.  (People v. 
Cummings (1993) 4 Cal.4th 1233, 1255 (Cummings).)1  As 
explained further below, Gay’s death sentence was later vacated 
(Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at p. 780), and a second death 
judgment following penalty retrial was overturned on appeal 
(People v. Gay (2008) 42 Cal.4th 1195, 1198 (Gay II)).  Here, we 
are concerned solely with the validity of Gay’s underlying 
convictions. 
We previously have described the guilt phase evidence at 
length.  (See Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at pp. 1257–1270.)  We 
briefly summarize the relevant points here.  Early in the 
 
1  
Gay also was charged with, and convicted of, 10 counts of 
robbery (Pen. Code, § 211); two counts of attempted robbery (id., 
§§ 664, 211); conspiracy to commit robbery (id., §§ 182, 211); and 
being an ex-felon in possession of a concealable weapon (id., 
§ 12021).  On appeal, the weapons possession conviction was 
upheld, but the remaining robbery-related convictions were all 
reversed.  (Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at pp. 1256, 1306–1315.) 
 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
3 
evening of June 2, 1983, Officer Verna, on motorcycle patrol, 
made a traffic stop in a residential neighborhood.  The driver 
was Pamela Cummings.2  Gay was sitting in the front 
passenger’s seat, while Raynard Cummings was sitting in the 
backseat.  Unbeknownst to Officer Verna, the car was stolen and 
Gay and Raynard Cummings recently had committed a series of 
robberies.  Pamela stepped out of the car and told Officer Verna 
she had no driver’s license or registration for the car.  When 
Officer Verna returned to the car to ask the occupants for 
identification, he was shot and fell.  One of the occupants then 
got out of the car and shot the officer several more times.  (Id. at 
pp. 1257–1258.)  The initial shot would have been fatal on its 
own, as would most of the subsequent ones.  (Id. at p. 1267.) 
The central issue at trial concerned the identity of the 
shooter or shooters.  The prosecutor maintained that Raynard 
Cummings had fired the first shot while sitting in the backseat 
and then passed the gun to Gay, who stepped out of the car and 
fired the remaining shots at the fallen officer.  Gay and 
Cummings each maintained that the other had fired all the 
shots.  (Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at p. 1259.)  There were 
numerous eyewitnesses to the incident, but the witnesses’ 
descriptions of this tragic event differed in significant respects. 
Pamela was the prosecution’s primary witness.  She had 
been charged with special circumstances murder and robbery 
but pleaded guilty to two counts of robbery and to being an 
accessory to murder on the condition that she testify truthfully 
as a prosecution witness.  (Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at 
 
2 
To differentiate Pamela Cummings from her husband, 
Raynard Cummings, we will sometimes refer to Pamela by her 
first name. 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
4 
p. 1264, fn. 8.)  Pamela testified she was driving a two-door 1979 
Oldsmobile Cutlass coupe when Officer Verna stopped her at 
about 5:40 p.m.  (Id. at p. 1257.)  She stepped out of the car and 
told Officer Verna she had no driver’s license or car registration.  
She gave him a check-cashing card for identification, which the 
officer used to complete a field interrogation card.  Officer Verna 
returned to the car and bent down, putting his hands on his 
knees, leaned into the vehicle, and asked the occupants for 
identification.  Pamela, who was standing near the curb, with 
the car between herself and the officer, heard a gunshot, saw 
Officer Verna grab his shoulder, and saw the barrel of a gun 
pointing straight across the front seat of the car between the 
head rests.  She could not see who held the gun because her 
husband, sitting in the back, obstructed her view.  According to 
Pamela, Gay then got out of the car, approached Officer Verna, 
and fired three shots into his back as he attempted to return to 
his motorcycle.  The officer walked back a few feet and then fell 
to the ground.  Gay stood over Officer Verna, shot him two more 
times, threw the gun on his body, and picked up the officer’s gun.  
Pamela and Gay reentered the car through the driver’s side 
door.  Gay drove up the street, but then made a U-turn and 
returned, stopping by the fallen officer.  Gay stepped out and 
retrieved Pamela’s identification card and the murder weapon.  
(Id. at pp. 1258, 1263.)  The field interrogation card naming 
Pamela Cummings was left at the scene. 
Pamela also testified that on the night of the murder, Gay 
and Cummings reenacted the shooting in Gay’s home for the 
benefit of Gay’s wife, Robin.  Gay extended his arm as if holding 
a gun and said, “ ‘Pow, pow, motherfucker.  Take this,’ ” and said 
that he “ ‘got him good.’ ”  Cummings used the same words in 
his reenactment.  (Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at p. 1264.) 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
5 
Eight 
additional 
eyewitnesses 
testified 
for 
the 
prosecution.  Their versions of the events and identification of 
the shooter or shooters varied.  The discrepancies turned in part 
on the differences in appearance between Gay and Cummings.  
Gay, who is a biracial man of African-American and Caucasian 
heritage, is much lighter in complexion than Cummings, who is 
a darker skinned African-American man.  At six feet tall, Gay is 
six inches shorter than Cummings.  On the evening of the 
murder, Gay was wearing a light gray long-sleeved shirt, while 
Cummings was wearing a maroon short-sleeved shirt. 
Twelve-year-old Oscar Martin was in the front yard of his 
home when he saw Officer Verna giving Pamela a ticket on the 
street in front of his house.  Oscar went into his house and told 
his mother, who was in the kitchen, what he had seen.  She told 
him to stay inside.  He looked out the living room window and 
saw the back door of the car open and a person he later identified 
as Raynard Cummings get out and shoot the officer four times.  
After the shooting, the man got into the car and drove off.  Oscar 
did not see anyone else in the car.  (Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th 
at p. 1259.) 
Oscar’s mother, Rosa Maria Martin, did not see the 
murder.  She had gone out and looked down her driveway after 
Oscar told her that a police officer was giving someone a ticket 
but saw nothing and went back inside.  She then heard at least 
four gunshots, with a pause between the first one and the others.  
Oscar came to her and said:  “ ‘They killed him.’ ”  Rosa looked 
out the living room window and saw a two-door car driving 
slowly down the street.  The driver, whom she identified as Gay, 
got out, picked up a revolver, and then got back into the car.  A 
woman was in the passenger seat, but Rosa could not tell if 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
6 
anyone was in the rear seat.  (Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at 
p. 1260.) 
Robert Thompson was on a ladder in front of a house 
across the street and saw Officer Verna giving a ticket to a 
woman.  Gay was in the front seat of the car and Raynard 
Cummings was in the rear seat on the passenger side.  
Thompson looked again when he heard a noise and saw the 
officer backing away from the driver’s side door holding his 
chest.  Cummings was holding a gun in his right hand, which 
extended out of the car.  After the first shot, Thompson jumped 
off the ladder and tried to hide behind a bush.  When he looked 
again, he saw Gay get out of the front seat with a gun in his 
hand and walk toward the officer with his arm at full extension 
pointing the smoking gun at the officer on the ground.  Gay 
stood straddling the officer, who was on his back.  Cummings 
remained in the backseat of the car.  (Cummings, supra, 4 
Cal.4th at pp. 1261–1262.) 
Gail Beasley’s preliminary hearing testimony was 
admitted at trial.  She and another witness, Marsha Holt, had 
been in Beasley’s home across the street from the shooting.  
Beasley saw Officer Verna stop a car and speak to the driver, 
Pamela.  Beasley looked again when she heard two gunshots 
and saw a Black man, six feet tall with very light skin and a 
Jheri curl, hold a gun with his arm extended at a 45-degree 
angle and shoot the officer four times.  Another man was in the 
backseat.  Pamela was still outside the car.  (Cummings, supra, 
4 Cal.4th at p. 1263.) 
Marsha Holt testified she saw a police officer giving a 
ticket to Pamela.  Holt looked away but turned back when she 
heard a gunshot and then, after a pause, more shots.  She saw 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
7 
the officer fall and saw the shooter pick up the officer’s gun, run 
back to the car, and drive away.  At the preliminary hearing and 
at trial, Holt identified Gay as the shooter.  (Cummings, supra, 
4 Cal.4th at p. 1261.) 
Eleven-year-old Shannon Roberts was at a residence two 
or three houses away and saw Officer Verna giving a ticket to a 
woman who was standing outside a car.  Shannon turned and 
went down the driveway but turned back when he heard a 
gunshot.  He saw Gay shoot the officer four times.  Gay then got 
into the passenger side of the car, the woman got into the 
driver’s side, and they left.  A Black man was in the rear seat.  
Later, a different car stopped by the officer and the driver got 
out and picked up the gun.  (Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at 
p. 1262.) 
Rose Marie Perez was a passenger in a car that drove 
through the intersection at the end of the block where the 
shooting occurred.  She looked up the street and saw Officer 
Verna falling backwards and a light-skinned Black man, whom 
she later identified as Gay, coming around the back of a car and 
walking toward the officer.  She did not see anything in his 
hands.  Perez also saw a person seated in the backseat of the car 
but did not see him leave the vehicle.  That person had hair 
similar to that depicted in a photograph of Cummings.  
(Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at p. 1263.) 
Shequita Chamberlain was a passenger in a different car 
that drove through the same intersection.  She looked down the 
street and saw a tall, dark-skinned Black man and a police 
officer near a parked car and a police motorcycle.  She heard a 
shot and saw the officer fall on his back.  The Black man got into 
the car and drove off.  Cummings was not the man she saw, 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
8 
although their complexions were similar.  Gay’s complexion was 
lighter than that of the man she saw.  (Cummings, supra, 4 
Cal.4th at p. 1261.) 
The prosecution also offered evidence of statements made 
by Gay and Cummings while they were in custody awaiting 
trial.  Less than a month after Officer Verna was murdered, 
Gilbert Gutierrez, in jail on an unrelated murder charge, spoke 
to both defendants on different occasions about the events.  Gay 
told him that Cummings first shot the officer from the backseat 
of the car, then got out of the car and shot Officer Verna twice 
more, after which Cummings emptied the gun.  Cummings later 
told Gutierrez that he, Gay, and Pamela were on their way to 
get cocaine at the time they were stopped by Officer Verna.  
When Officer Verna asked him if he had any identification, 
Cummings said he did, pulled out a .38-caliber revolver, and 
shot the officer in the shoulder.  Cummings told Gutierrez that 
he then got out of the car from the driver’s side, shot the officer 
twice in the back, and then emptied the gun, saying:  “ ‘Here’s 
your identification, motherfucker.’ ”  (Cummings, supra, 4 
Cal.4th at p. 1264.)  Gutierrez testified that Cummings was 
proud of shooting Officer Verna and bragged about it.  
Cummings told Gutierrez that he had thrown his gun down and 
picked up the officer’s gun, and that Gay had recovered the gun 
used by Cummings when they went back.  (Id. at pp. 1264–
1265.) 
Deputy Sheriff Rick McCurtin testified that in April 1984, 
he was on guard duty while Cummings and other inmates were 
in the jail shower.  As another deputy walked by, “inmate Brooks 
said, ‘There is Paul Verna,’ after which Brooks and Cummings 
extended their right arms as if shooting a pistol and said ‘Pow, 
Pow.’  Cummings then said to [Deputy] McCurtin:  ‘Let me show 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
9 
you how it was done.  This is how it was done.  First two in the 
back.  Pow, pow.  Walked up and four more.  Pow, pow, pow, 
pow.’  Cummings’s arm was then pointing down at the ground.  
On 
cross-examination[,] 
the 
witness 
quoted 
defendant 
Cummings as having said:  ‘Then we put four more.’  (Italics 
added.)”  (Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at pp. 1265–1266.) 
Deputy Sheriff David LaCasella testified that in April 
1985, he escorted defendants from the courtroom to the main 
lockup.  The coroner had just testified about the postmortem 
examination of Officer Verna, explaining that he had numbered 
the bullet wounds in the order he examined them from one 
through six.  The coroner stated that the first shot fired was 
“ ‘Number 6.’ ”  (Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at p. 1258.)  Deputy 
LaCasella placed Cummings and Gay in adjacent cells.  “He 
later heard Cummings yell:  ‘You know how he got number six[,] 
don’t you?’  Gay then replied:  ‘Number six?’  Cummings said 
‘yeh,’ and then yelled:  ‘That’s the one I put in the 
motherfucker.’ ”  (Id. at p. 1266.) 
Deputy Sheriff Michael McMullan testified that about a 
year after the murder, he and Sergeant George Arthur were 
escorting Cummings in the central jail when other inmates 
began chanting “ ‘dead man walking’ ” as Cummings passed by.  
(Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at p. 1265.)  Cummings responded 
by saying:  “ ‘I am no ghost.  The only ghost I know is Verna.  I 
put six in him.’ ”  (Ibid.)  As he was put in his cell, Cummings 
said to Sergeant Arthur:  “ ‘He took six of mine . . . .  If I see you 
all on the streets I hope you are quicker than Verna.’ ”  (Ibid.) 
In defense, Gay argued that Cummings alone had shot 
Officer Verna.  In support of this defense, Gay recalled some of 
the prosecution’s eyewitnesses as defense witnesses.  Rosa 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
10 
Maria Martin again testified that, after the shooting, she saw a 
car being driven toward the fallen officer.  Gay left the car, 
picked up a gun, reentered the car, and drove it away.  She did 
not see Gay shoot anybody.  Rose Marie Perez testified that as 
she passed through a nearby intersection, she saw Gay walk 
around the rear of the stopped automobile.  At that time, the 
officer was already falling down.  Perez did not see anything in 
Gay’s hand.  (Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at p. 1269.) 
Gay also recalled Pamela Cummings as a witness.  She 
testified that she was sure a shot had been fired from within the 
car.  Gay’s counsel attempted to impeach her by eliciting an 
admission that she had lied in prior statements about the 
murder, by asking her about testimony by other eyewitnesses 
that was inconsistent with hers, and by posing questions 
designed to undermine the credibility of her description of the 
events and to suggest that she was not truthful in stating that 
she did not know who fired the first shot.  Counsel for Cummings 
then elicited further testimony on cross-examination that 
Pamela saw Gay slide across the front seat of the car, come out 
firing a gun, and repeatedly shoot the victim.  (Cummings, 
supra, 4 Cal.4th at pp. 1269–1270.) 
II. 
This court affirmed the murder convictions and judgments 
of death on automatic appeal.  (Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at 
p. 1343.)  While that appeal was still pending, Gay filed his first 
petition for a writ of habeas corpus.  Among other claims, Gay 
argued that the judgment should be vacated because he had 
received constitutionally ineffective representation from his 
trial counsel, Daye Shinn.  We issued an order to show cause 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
11 
why relief should not be granted, limited to a claim of ineffective 
assistance at the penalty phase. 
Following a reference hearing, we granted the petition for 
a writ of habeas corpus and ordered a new penalty phase trial.  
(Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at p. 780.)  In granting relief, we held 
that Shinn had rendered deficient performance by inducing Gay 
to admit to having committed several robberies—admissions 
that were used against him at the penalty phase—while 
presenting “little mitigating evidence” even though “much more 
potentially mitigating evidence was easily accessible.”  (Id. at 
p. 794.) 
These deficiencies, we explained, could be traced in part to 
serious misconduct in the very foundation of the attorney-client 
relationship.  The referee concluded that Shinn—who would 
later be disbarred for misappropriation of client funds in an 
unrelated matter (Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at p. 780, fn. 5)—had 
used fraudulent means to induce Gay to retain him as his 
attorney.  Visiting Gay in county jail, Shinn and an associate, 
Marcus McBroom, urged Gay to hire Shinn, promising that a 
group of unidentified (and, in truth, nonexistent) Black 
businessmen would pay his legal fees.  Shinn later directed Gay 
to tell the court—falsely—that his parents had paid a retainer 
to Shinn and would pay his legal fees.  (Id. at pp. 781, 794.)  
Shinn engaged in these machinations in order to engineer his 
eventual appointment by the court.  (Id. at p. 794.) 
McBroom was an assistant to Dr. Fred Weaver, a 
psychiatrist whom Shinn hired to examine Gay’s mental health.  
(Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at pp. 783, 795–797.)  We concluded 
that “Shinn did not select Dr. Weaver because of his 
demonstrated competence,” but because “Shinn, McBroom, and 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
12 
Weaver had a capping relationship pursuant to which Weaver 
was retained in cases in which McBroom had arranged 
representation by Shinn.”  (Id. at p. 796.)  Dr. Weaver accepted 
the assignment “only with the understanding that the case 
would not be complicated and would not place demands on his 
time.”  (Id. at p. 828.)  Shinn did not undertake, nor did he direct 
Dr. Weaver to undertake, “the type of penalty phase 
investigation 
and 
preparation 
expected 
of 
competent 
professionals in a capital case,” including a thorough 
assessment of Gay’s mental health.  (Id. at p. 796.)  
Finally, we noted that “at the time Shinn represented 
petitioner, Shinn labored under [an] undisclosed potential 
conflict 
of 
interest—he 
was 
being 
investigated 
for 
misappropriation of client funds by the office of the same district 
attorney who was his adversary in the prosecution of petitioner.”  
(Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at p. 828.)  While the record did not 
reveal whether Shinn was influenced by this “distraction,” we 
noted that the potential conflict “contribute[d] to our lack of 
confidence in the verdict when considered with Shinn’s other 
failings.”  (Ibid.) 
We summarized our conclusions as follows:  “We are 
unable to put confidence in a verdict of death rendered by a jury 
that reaches a death penalty verdict for a defendant represented 
by an attorney who has defrauded the court in seeking 
appointment, and whose unethical conduct led directly to the 
retention of a mental health expert who the attorney agreed 
would not be called upon to do a thorough assessment of the 
defendant and who testified that the defendant had a 
sociopathic personality.  Confidence in the verdict is further 
undermined by counsel’s incompetent conduct contributing to 
the penalty phase jury’s consideration of evidence that the 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
13 
defendant is a serial robber with a sociopathic personality, and 
by recognition that the jury did not have the opportunity to 
consider a substantial amount of mitigating evidence that 
competent counsel would have presented.  We conclude there is 
a reasonable probability that absent counsel’s numerous failings 
and the conflicts of interest with which he was burdened, a 
different penalty verdict would have been reached.  We do not, 
therefore, have confidence in the penalty verdict reached in this 
case.”  (Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at pp. 829–830, fn. omitted.) 
Following a penalty phase retrial, Gay was again 
sentenced to death in 2000.  (Gay II, supra, 42 Cal.4th at 
p. 1198.)  On appeal, we again reversed the death judgment, this 
time because the trial court had erred in preventing the defense 
from presenting, and the jury from considering, evidence that 
Gay was not the shooter.  The improperly excluded evidence 
included testimony from four children who were eyewitnesses to 
the shooting—the prosecution had objected on the grounds the 
children had not been called to testify at the guilt phase of the 
trial—as well as various statements Cummings made in which 
he claimed to be the sole shooter.  (Id. at pp. 1214–1216, 1227.)  
The court’s errors, we ruled, prejudiced Gay by hampering his 
ability to argue to the jury that it should consider lingering 
doubt as to guilt as a mitigating circumstance.  (Id. at pp. 1226–
1227.) 
On December 28, 2004, while the automatic appeal from 
the second judgment of death was still pending, Gay filed this 
petition for a writ of habeas corpus challenging his convictions 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
14 
and related findings.3  Gay raised 26 claims for relief, including 
claims that he is actually innocent of capital murder and that he 
received ineffective assistance of counsel at the guilt phase of 
his original trial.  We issued an order to show cause why Gay 
was not entitled to habeas corpus relief from his underlying 
murder conviction because defense counsel Shinn had failed to 
adequately investigate and present evidence at the guilt phase 
of the trial, among other failings, and also had had a conflict of 
interest that prejudicially affected his representation at the 
guilt phase.  At the request of both parties, we issued a stay of a 
further penalty phase retrial pending our resolution of these 
issues. 
Following the filing of a return and traverse, we ordered 
the Los Angeles County Superior Court to select a judge to act 
as a referee and conduct a hearing to take evidence and make 
findings of fact on the following questions: 
“1.  What actions did petitioner’s trial counsel, Daye 
Shinn, take to investigate a defense at the guilt phase of 
petitioner’s capital trial that petitioner did not participate in the 
murder of Officer Verna?  What were the results of that 
investigation? 
 
3  
The procedural bar against successive habeas corpus 
petitions does not apply here because Gay’s first petition was 
filed before our decision in In re Clark (1993) 5 Cal.4th 750, 769–
774, in which we clarified that the successiveness bar is 
nondiscretionary.  Before Clark, Gay would not have been on 
notice that failure to raise issues in his first petition would 
necessarily preclude their later consideration.  (See In re 
Robbins (1998) 18 Cal.4th 770, 788, fn. 9 [“Clark serves to notify 
habeas corpus litigants that we shall apply the successiveness 
rule when we are faced with a petitioner whose prior petition 
was filed after the date of finality of Clark”].) 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
15 
“2.  What additional evidence supporting that defense, if 
any, could petitioner have presented at the guilt phase of his 
capital trial?  What investigative steps, if any, would have led to 
this additional evidence? 
“3.  How credible was this additional evidence?  What 
circumstances, if any, weighed against the investigation or 
presentation of this additional evidence?  What evidence 
rebutting this additional evidence reasonably would have been 
available to the prosecution at trial? 
“4.  Did the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s 
investigation of allegations that petitioner’s trial counsel, Daye 
Shinn, had engaged in acts of embezzlement unrelated to 
petitioner’s case give rise to a conflict of interest in petitioner’s 
case?  If so, describe the conflict of interest. 
“5.  If this conflict of interest existed, did it affect trial 
counsel Daye Shinn’s representation of petitioner?  If so, how?” 
Superior Court Judge Lance Ito was appointed as referee 
and held an evidentiary hearing.  Shinn, who had died in 2006, 
did not testify at the hearing.  After the hearing, Judge Ito filed 
a 75-page report containing findings of fact.  Gay filed extensive 
exceptions to the report.  The Attorney General did not take 
issue with any findings relevant to our disposition of the case. 
III. 
A. 
Because a petition for a writ of habeas corpus is a 
collateral attack on a presumptively final criminal judgment, 
Gay bears the burden of proving his entitlement to relief by a 
preponderance of the evidence.  (In re Cowan (2018) 5 Cal.5th 
235, 243; In re Price (2011) 51 Cal.4th 547, 559.)  The referee’s 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
16 
factual findings are “entitled to great weight where supported 
by substantial evidence.”  (In re Hamilton (1999) 20 Cal.4th 273, 
296; accord, In re Welch (2015) 61 Cal.4th 489, 501.)  Those 
findings are not, however, conclusive, and “we can depart from 
them upon independent examination of the record even when 
the evidence is conflicting.”  (Hamilton, at p. 296; accord, 
Cowan, at p. 243.)  The ultimate responsibility for determining 
whether Gay is entitled to relief rests with this court.  (In re 
Thomas (2006) 37 Cal.4th 1249, 1256–1257.) 
Gay argues that Shinn rendered ineffective assistance at 
the guilt phase, in violation of his rights to the assistance of 
counsel under the Sixth Amendment to the United States 
Constitution and article I, section 15, of the California 
Constitution.  “An ineffective assistance claim has two 
components:  A petitioner must show that counsel’s performance 
was deficient, and that the deficiency prejudiced the defense.”  
(Wiggins v. Smith (2003) 539 U.S. 510, 521; accord, Strickland 
v. Washington (1984) 466 U.S. 668, 687 (Strickland).)  Whether 
counsel’s performance was deficient, and whether any deficiency 
prejudiced defendant, are mixed questions of law and fact 
subject to our independent review.  (In re Thomas, supra, 37 
Cal.4th at p. 1256.) 
We evaluate Shinn’s guilt phase performance according to 
well-established standards.  “Representation of a criminal 
defendant entails certain basic duties.  Counsel’s function is to 
assist the defendant, and hence counsel owes the client a duty 
of loyalty . . . .  Counsel also has a duty to bring to bear such skill 
and knowledge as will render the trial a reliable adversarial 
testing process.”  (Strickland, supra, 466 U.S. at p. 688.)  “These 
basic duties neither exhaustively define the obligations of 
counsel nor form a checklist for judicial evaluation of attorney 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
17 
performance.”  (Ibid.)  Rather, “[t]o establish deficient 
performance, a petitioner must demonstrate that counsel’s 
representation 
‘fell 
below 
an 
objective 
standard 
of 
reasonableness,’ ” as measured by “ ‘prevailing professional 
norms.’ ”  (Wiggins v. Smith, supra, 539 U.S. at p. 521, quoting 
Strickland, at p. 688.)  When applying this standard, we ask 
whether any reasonably competent counsel would have done as 
counsel did.  (In re Reno (2012) 55 Cal.4th 428, 465.)  Counsel’s 
performance “is assessed according to the prevailing norms at 
the time.”  (In re Thomas, supra, 37 Cal.4th at p. 1257.)  Judicial 
review of counsel’s performance is deferential; to establish 
deficient performance, the defendant “must overcome the 
presumption that, under the circumstances, the challenged 
action ‘might be considered sound trial strategy.’ ”  (Strickland, 
at p. 689.) 
As Gay notes, we have already found that Shinn failed in 
his most basic duty, loyalty to his client, having defrauded Gay 
in order to induce him to discharge the public defender and 
retain Shinn instead.  (Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at pp. 794–795, 
828–829.)  But according to Gay, that is not all; Shinn’s lack of 
professionalism pervaded the entire course of his pretrial 
investigation 
and 
advocacy. 
 
Among 
other 
purported 
shortcomings in Shinn’s representation, Gay points to Shinn’s 
decision to have Gay confess to involvement in the string of 
robberies, which we have already found to constitute deficient 
performance in Gay I.  (Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at pp. 791–794.)  
Gay also argues that Shinn failed to conduct any meaningful 
investigation to identify, and thus failed to present, numerous 
witnesses who could have greatly strengthened Gay’s argument 
that Cummings was solely responsible for the murder of Officer 
Verna.  We conclude Shinn was deficient in every regard. 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
18 
B. 
Before trial, Shinn formed a plan to have Gay take a 
polygraph test from the prosecution’s expert polygraph 
examiner.  Shinn’s apparent hope was that if Gay passed, he 
would be permitted to testify as a prosecution witness 
implicating Cummings and would be offered a favorable plea 
bargain.  The prosecution offered no deal but instead required 
as a condition of any examination that Gay first meet with the 
prosecutor, a prosecution investigator, Jack Holder, and a 
detective investigating the Verna murder, John Helvin.  
(Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at pp. 1315–1316.) 
In advance of the meeting, Shinn advised Gay to admit 
participation in the string of robberies preceding the Verna 
murder.  Gay followed this advice.  At the beginning of the 
interview, Gay was told that anything he said could and would 
be used against him.  Gay and Shinn each expressly confirmed 
that no deal was in place and nothing had been promised in 
exchange for Gay’s participation in the interview.  Then, as 
recommended by Shinn, Gay admitted collaborating with 
Cummings in a series of five armed robberies.  (Cummings, 
supra, 4 Cal.4th at pp. 1316–1317.)  Gay’s taped confessions 
were played for the jury as part of the prosecution’s case.  (Id. at 
p. 1315; Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at p. 781.) 
On direct appeal, Gay challenged Shinn’s conduct in 
advising him to confess, and later eliciting testimony that the 
confessions were truthful, as deficient.  We found the claim moot 
as to the robbery charges and did not expressly address it in 
connection with the murder charge.  (Cummings, supra, 4 
Cal.4th at p. 1341.)  In resolving Gay’s first habeas corpus 
petition, however, we reached the merits and concluded Shinn 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
19 
performed incompetently.  (Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at pp. 791–
794.) 
That conclusion remains sound.  Shinn had Gay waive his 
right against self-incrimination and confess to a series of armed 
robberies.  He told Gay that if the prosecution did not agree to 
have Gay testify on the state’s behalf, these statements would 
not be used, despite the fact no agreement to that effect had been 
reached.  At a hearing outside the jury’s presence, Gay testified 
that he disregarded the warning that his statements could be 
used against him because he believed his attorney’s contrary 
assurances.  The confessions allowed Gay’s own words to be used 
by the prosecution to establish that Gay and Cummings were 
crime partners, and that each had an equal motive to avoid 
capture and arrest by a police officer, and thus equal motive to 
shoot Officer Verna.  “Shinn not only acted as a second 
prosecutor by creating the evidence that led to petitioner’s 
conviction of the robberies, his conduct permitted the prosecutor 
to portray petitioner as an admitted serial robber who killed a 
police officer to avoid arrest and prosecution for the robberies.”  
(Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at p. 793.) 
Though Shinn may have hoped the prosecution would 
eventually offer a deal, Gay’s “statement was not made in the 
course of plea negotiations, but as a precondition to initiation of 
any discussion of disposition of the charges.”  (Cummings, supra, 
4 Cal.4th at p. 1318.)  Shinn persuaded Gay to confess by 
assuring him his statements would not be used unless a deal 
was struck but had no such agreement with the prosecution.  
During a hearing on the admissibility of his confession, Gay 
learned for the first time there was no agreement that would 
protect him.  Under examination by his own counsel, Gay 
testified:  “I don’t feel I was tricked by [the prosecutor]. . . .  [¶]  
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
20 
I was tricked by you, I feel.”  No competent and loyal counsel 
would have deceived his own client, as Shinn did.  Nor would 
competent counsel have allowed a client to be interviewed in the 
fashion Shinn permitted, following an express advisement that 
any statements could be used in court, without any agreement 
in place to protect the client.  (Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at 
pp. 791–793; see 1 Amsterdam, Trial Manual for the Defense of 
Criminal Cases (4th ed. 1984) § 213(C), p. 1-245 [describing 
understanding that counsel should exercise caution before 
allowing client “to divulge[] any incriminating information to 
anyone”].) 
Consistent with Gay I, we conclude Shinn’s decision to 
have Gay confess to the series of robberies fell well below 
prevailing professional norms. 
C. 
We next turn to the central focus of Gay’s present claim.  
To make out Gay’s defense at trial, Shinn relied largely on the 
prosecution’s witnesses, who collectively provided only limited 
help to the theory of the defense.  Gay argues Shinn took this 
tack not for lack of better options, but simply because he failed 
to conduct an adequate investigation into potential witnesses 
who might have provided much more helpful testimony.  As a 
consequence, Shinn failed to introduce significant testimony 
that would have raised doubts about Gay’s guilt.  Although Gay 
identifies numerous witnesses he claims a competent attorney 
would have called, including various types of expert and lay 
witnesses, we focus our attention on two particular categories:  
(1) eyewitnesses to the shooting who could have described the 
shooter in terms that tended to support Gay’s theory that 
Cummings, not Gay, fired all the fatal shots; and (2) peace 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
21 
officers who could have testified to Cummings’s admissions of 
guilt.  For purposes of our inquiry, these two categories of 
witnesses are enough.4 
Whether Shinn’s failure to call particular witnesses was 
deficient, and whether his investigation before trial was 
deficient, are legally intertwined, and so we must consider them 
together.  “ ‘[B]efore counsel undertakes to act, or not to act, 
counsel must make a rational and informed decision on strategy 
and 
tactics 
founded 
upon 
adequate 
investigation 
and 
preparation.’ ”  (In re Thomas, supra, 37 Cal.4th at p. 1258, 
quoting In re Marquez (1992) 1 Cal.4th 584, 602.)  “[S]trategic 
choices made after thorough investigation of law and facts 
relevant to plausible options are virtually unchallengeable; and 
strategic choices made after less than complete investigation are 
reasonable precisely to the extent that reasonable professional 
judgments support the limitations on investigation.  In other 
words, counsel has a duty to make reasonable investigations or 
to make a reasonable decision that makes particular 
investigations unnecessary.  In any ineffectiveness case, a 
particular decision not to investigate must be directly assessed 
for reasonableness in all the circumstances, applying a heavy 
 
4  
We considered the same two categories of witnesses in our 
decision invalidating the outcome of the penalty retrial, at which 
these witnesses’ testimony had been improperly excluded.  (Gay 
II, supra, 42 Cal.4th at pp. 1214–1218, 1223–1224.)  We 
explained there that “[e]vidence indicating that defendant was 
not the actual shooter would have been important to the jury in 
assessing the appropriate penalty”; the testimony of those who 
identified Cummings as the sole shooter, and those who heard 
Cummings admit to being the sole shooter, might well have 
altered the jury’s decision.  (Id. at p. 1227.) 
 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
22 
measure of deference to counsel’s judgments.”  (Strickland, 
supra, 466 U.S. at pp. 690–691; accord, In re Thomas, at 
p. 1258.) 
1. 
During the shooting, Ejinio Rodriguez was at the same 
location as Shannon Roberts, who testified for the prosecution.  
In a 2003 statement to a defense investigator, Ejinio5 said he 
had been playing in his front yard when he noticed a police 
officer making a traffic stop of a car containing a woman and two 
men.  Ejinio later heard what he initially thought were 
firecrackers.  He saw one of the men, whom he believed was the 
shooter, standing over the officer while the other man remained 
in the car.  The men and woman drove off but made a U-turn 
and returned to the fallen officer.  The other man then got out 
of the car and retrieved the officer’s gun.  Ejinio described the 
shooter as “a black man who had dark skin and was wearing a 
dark shirt.”  Ejinio described the nonshooter who picked up the 
gun as having “much lighter skin.”  The referee found that this 
description “points more strongly towards Raynard Cummings 
than petitioner” as the shooter based on their respective 
complexions and clothing. 
Ejinio’s 14-year-old sister, Irma, was also in the front yard 
of their house when the officer was shot.  The next day, she 
described the shooter to a police officer “as a dark skinned male 
negro, about twenty-five years old with a three[-] to four[-]inch 
afro.”  According to Irma, the shooter was the driver of the car 
and was “black and very tall.  The passenger seated next to the 
 
5 
We sometimes refer to Ejinio and his sister Irma 
Rodriguez (discussed below) by their first names to avoid 
confusion. 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
23 
driver was a lighter skinned person . . . .”  Like Ejinio, Irma 
described the car driving off, then returning and the light-
skinned passenger getting out to retrieve a gun.  The referee 
found that Irma’s description of the shooter “point[s] more 
strongly towards Raynard Cummings . . . , with the added fact 
that she differentiates between the shooter and a lighter 
complexion male Negro wearing the white long sleeved shirt as 
the front seat passenger.” 
The referee found that Shinn read the police investigation 
file.  Irma’s name, address, and witness statement were 
provided in that file.  Ejinio was mentioned in the file as having 
been present during the shooting and was also identified in the 
grand jury testimony of Shannon Roberts, with whom he had 
been playing.  Despite this, the referee found Ejinio was never 
interviewed before the 1985 trial.  It likewise appears 
undisputed that the defense never interviewed Irma.  Evidence 
at the reference hearing helps to explain why.  The referee’s 
findings and the testimony of Shinn’s investigator, Douglas 
Payne, establish that Payne spent parts of three days in 
January 1985 seeking out eyewitnesses.  Payne confirmed that 
this investigation resulted from directions he received around 
Christmas 1984 to canvas the area near the murder scene for 
witnesses.  By the time Payne conducted his investigation, 19 
months had elapsed since the murder, jury selection was well 
underway, and opening statements were only a month away. 
As with other aspects of performance, we measure the 
sufficiency of an attorney’s investigation according to the 
prevailing norms at the time.  (See Rompilla v. Beard (2005) 545 
U.S. 374, 387; In re Thomas, supra, 37 Cal.4th at p. 1262.)  In 
the early 1980s, the “American Bar Association Standards for 
Criminal Justice published at the time described the duty to 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
24 
investigate this way:  ‘It is the duty of the lawyer to conduct a 
prompt investigation of the circumstances of the case and to 
explore all avenues leading to facts relevant to the merits of the 
case and the penalty in the event of conviction.’ ”  (In re Thomas, 
at p. 1262, quoting 1 ABA Stds. for Crim. Justice (2d ed. 1982 
supp.) std. 4-4.1.)6  Consistent with the ABA standards, a 
contemporaneous treatise stresses the importance of a timely 
investigation:  “[D]efense investigation should begin promptly.  
Speed may not be essential in a particular case, but counsel 
cannot know this until s/he learns something about the case.  
Generally, speed is essential.  Physical facts change.  An object 
of importance may be discarded.  Witnesses may disappear or 
forget.”  (1 Amsterdam, Trial Manual for the Defense of 
Criminal Cases, supra, § 108, p. 1-116; see Kayer v. Ryan (9th 
Cir. 2019) 923 F.3d 692, 714–715 [holding that defense counsel’s 
delay in conducting a capital case investigation may constitute 
ineffective assistance].) 
Shinn’s investigator agreed that Shinn was “going 
through the motions.”  Shinn’s apparent decision to wait until 
the last minute before having his investigator seek out 
exculpatory eyewitness accounts cannot be reconciled with 
prevailing norms.  Shinn’s trial strategy included relying on 
percipient eyewitnesses who said Cummings was the shooter.  
(See In re Lucas (2004) 33 Cal.4th 682, 725 [the reasonableness 
of any limits on investigation should be evaluated in light of 
counsel’s strategy].)  Shinn was retained in August 1983; his 
 
6  
Both the United States Supreme Court and this court have 
treated those standards as persuasive evidence of prevailing 
professional norms.  (See Rompilla v. Beard, supra, 545 U.S. at 
p. 387; Wiggins v. Smith, supra, 539 U.S. at p. 524; In re 
Thomas, supra, 37 Cal.4th at p. 1262.) 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
25 
investigator began working for him no later than May 1984.  
Long before January 1985, one month before opening 
statements, Shinn could and should have had his investigator 
seek out eyewitnesses to determine whether they would testify 
favorably and to preserve their recollections.  We conclude 
Shinn was deficient for not investigating in a timely fashion the 
availability of favorable eyewitness testimony. 
The referee’s findings identify two reasons competent 
counsel might have ultimately hesitated to call Ejinio as a 
witness after interviewing him and learning that his account of 
the shooting was consistent with Gay’s defense.  First, Ejinio 
was young—“about to turn nine” at the time of the shooting.7  
Second, Ejinio was emotionally affected by the shooting.  The 
referee found that when Ejinio testified at the reference hearing 
more than 30 years later, he was “anxious and distressed”; even 
after so much time, “the events of June 1983 were still very 
upsetting to him.”  The referee noted that the child’s parents had 
been reluctant to permit his older sister, Irma, to be involved in 
the police investigation and found it likely “they would have 
[had] a similar reluctance on behalf of the younger Ejinio.” 
The referee’s findings, which we accept, show there are 
reasons why competent counsel might reasonably have decided 
not to call Ejinio as a witness after interviewing him.  But Shinn 
never met with Ejinio, directly or through an investigator, and 
 
7 
The referee further found that had Ejinio testified, the 
trial court would likely have instructed the jury with CALJIC 
No. 2.20.1, an instruction governing the evaluation of testimony 
by witnesses 10 years old or younger.  Gay takes exception to 
this finding because the instruction was not promulgated until 
1986, after Gay’s trial in 1985.  The Attorney General does not 
dispute this point, and we do not adopt this finding. 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
26 
so neither learned what Ejinio might say nor placed himself in 
a position to make an informed tactical decision concerning 
whether potential drawbacks to calling Ejinio might outweigh 
the benefits.  “[S]trategic choices made after less than complete 
investigation are reasonable precisely to the extent that 
reasonable professional judgments support the limitations on 
investigation.”  (Strickland, supra, 466 U.S. at pp. 690–691.)  
Shinn’s failure to call Ejinio as a witness cannot be accepted as 
a legitimate tactical choice because, under prevailing norms, his 
failure promptly to seek out and interview witnesses such as 
Ejinio was not the product of a reasonable professional 
judgment.  (See Wiggins v. Smith, supra, 539 U.S. at pp. 522–
523.) 
When “counsel were not in a position to make a reasonable 
strategic choice as to whether to” present evidence “because the 
investigation supporting their choice was unreasonable” 
(Wiggins v. Smith, supra, 539 U.S. at p. 536), a court must 
consider whether there is “a reasonable probability that a 
competent attorney . . . would have introduced” the evidence the 
attorney’s inadequate investigation failed to unearth (id. at 
p. 535).  Here, eyewitness testimony was critical to the jury’s 
decision about the identity of the shooter or shooters.  And young 
witnesses were already a feature of this trial:  The prosecution 
relied in part on the eyewitness testimony of 12-year-old Oscar 
Martin and 11-year-old Shannon Roberts.  (Cummings, supra, 4 
Cal.4th at pp. 1259, 1262.)8  In these circumstances, there is a 
 
8  
Our previous opinion indicated Roberts was 13.  
(Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at p. 1262.)  Reexamination of the 
record confirms that while Roberts was 13 at the time of trial, 
he was 11 at the time of the shooting, the relevant benchmark 
for comparative purposes. 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
27 
reasonable 
probability 
that 
competent 
counsel, 
having 
conducted an adequate investigation, would have presented 
Ejinio’s testimony to bolster Gay’s case that Cummings was the 
lone shooter.  The uninformed failure to call Ejinio was deficient, 
and we must consider whether that deficiency prejudiced the 
defense, a subject we will address below.  (See Wiggins, at 
pp. 535–536.) 
Similar considerations come into play when evaluating 
Shinn’s failure to interview or call as a witness Irma.  The 
Attorney General argues it was reasonable for Shinn not to call 
her because he had been unable to interview her before trial.  
But the reason Shinn did not interview Irma before trial is that 
he did not make a timely effort to do so.  Shinn’s belated 
investigation of potential eyewitnesses is no justification for not 
presenting potentially exculpatory evidence.  It is, rather, a 
mark of counsel’s unprofessional performance.  (See Wiggins v. 
Smith, supra, 539 U.S. at pp. 522–523, 527–528; Strickland, 
supra, 466 U.S. at pp. 690–691.)   
The referee identified two additional considerations that 
could have weighed against calling Irma to testify.  Like Ejinio, 
she was affected by witnessing the shooting.  The referee found 
her emotional state was heightened by the fact that she was 
pregnant at the time.  And while she was older than her brother, 
her contemporaneous description of the shooting contained 
several discrepancies when compared with the testimony of 
other witnesses that might have been fodder for impeachment 
on cross-examination.  Irma told police the day after the 
shooting that the “driver punched the officer in the face and 
pulled the officer’s gun from its holster and shot the officer in 
the neck.  The driver then shot the officer two more times and 
the officer fell backwards.  As the car was leaving someone 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
28 
inside the car threw the gun out of the passenger side window, 
and it landed three feet away from the officer lying on the 
ground.”  The referee concluded:  “While her descriptions of the 
shooter as a dark complected male Negro and the light skinned 
passenger are helpful to petitioner, her recollection of events is 
largely inconsistent with that of the other witnesses.  These 
discrepancies call into question the value and weight of her 
testimony.” 
Again, competent counsel, having interviewed Irma, 
might have chosen not to call her.  But Shinn never met with 
Irma and so could not have made a strategic judgment that her 
testimony would have hurt more than it would have helped.  (Cf. 
Burger v. Kemp (1987) 483 U.S. 776, 794 [defense strategy 
“supported by reasonable professional judgment” where counsel 
at least “interview[ed] all potential witnesses who had been 
called to his attention”].)  Certainly, inconsistencies did not 
prevent the prosecution from relying on the testimony of 
eyewitnesses (even children), or the jury from crediting such 
testimony.  (See Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at pp. 1260–1263 
[discussing the many internal discrepancies in the testimony of 
the prosecution’s eyewitnesses].)  As with Ejinio, there is a 
reasonable probability competent counsel would have called 
Irma, and so we must consider as part of the prejudice flowing 
from Shinn’s limited investigation the impact of her potential 
testimony.  (See Wiggins v. Smith, supra, 539 U.S. at p. 536.) 
2. 
During the guilt phase trial, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s 
Deputy Michael McMullan testified that he and Sergeant 
George Arthur were escorting Cummings when he admitted 
killing Officer Verna, saying:  “ ‘I put six in him.’ ”  (Cummings, 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
29 
supra, 4 Cal.4th at p. 1265.)  Another sheriff’s deputy, Rick 
McCurtin, testified that on a separate occasion he overheard 
Cummings tell another inmate that he had shot Officer Verna 
twice in the back, adding:  “ ‘Then we put four more.’ ”  (Id. at 
p. 1266.)  Deputy Sheriff David LaCasella testified that 
Cummings admitted to putting the first shot in Officer Verna.  
(Ibid.)  While this testimony inculpated Cummings, Gay argues 
that Shinn should have called additional sheriff’s deputies who 
heard Cummings confess that he alone killed Officer Verna and 
who could have exculpated Gay.  We consider two potential 
witnesses, Deputies William McGinnis and Richard Nutt. 
In October 1984, Deputy McGinnis was escorting 
Cummings when Cummings became upset with McGinnis and 
threatened him.  When McGinnis told Cummings that at least 
he, McGinnis, had never shot anyone in the back, Cummings 
responded:  “ ‘[w]ell, I put two in front of the motherfucker, and 
he wouldn’t have got three in the back if he hadn’t turned and 
ran, coward punk-ass motherfucker.’ ”  (Gay II, supra, 42 
Cal.4th at p. 1214.)  McGinnis recorded this statement the same 
day in a report he submitted to the prosecutor, which was 
disclosed to Shinn in discovery.  McGinnis also testified to the 
conversation during an Evidence Code section 402 hearing 
outside the presence of the jury, during which Cummings sought 
unsuccessfully to prevent McMullan’s, McCurtin’s, and 
McGinnis’s statements from being admitted.  Shinn was present 
during that hearing and thus aware of McGinnis’s testimony.  
The Attorney General concedes Shinn never interviewed 
McGinnis and, when the prosecution did not call McGinnis, did 
not have McGinnis testify on Gay’s behalf. 
The referee concluded Deputy McGinnis’s testimony 
“would have been helpful to petitioner.”  We agree.  McGinnis’s 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
30 
testimony would have directly supported Gay’s defense that 
Cummings was the sole shooter and fired the final shots into 
Officer Verna.  And as a peace officer with no evident incentive 
to see the killer of a fellow officer escape punishment, McGinnis 
would have been among the most credible witnesses Gay could 
have called in support of his defense. 
The referee thought the value of the statement was limited 
because Cummings’s statement “was lacking in detail as to the 
identity of the shooter.”  In context, however, Cummings’s 
statement is best understood as an acknowledgment that 
Cummings alone shot Officer Verna.  Cummings made the 
statement in response to Deputy McGinnis’s assertion that 
McGinnis, unlike Cummings, had never shot anyone in the 
back.  Rather than deny that he had shot Officer Verna in the 
back (e.g., because it was Gay who had fired the final shots), 
Cummings justified doing so, explaining that Verna wouldn’t 
have gotten shot in the back if he hadn’t tried to run.  Deputy 
McGinnis himself understood the statement in just this way.  In 
a 2003 declaration, McGinnis said:  “It was clear to me then as 
it is now that Cummings alone pulled the trigger and was the 
sole person responsible for killing Officer Verna.”  Had he been 
called at trial, McGinnis could have testified to his 
understanding of what Cummings meant.9  We recognize that 
the form of Cummings’s statement may not eliminate all 
possible ambiguity, but it would have been more than 
reasonable for the jury to interpret the statement as Deputy 
 
9  
The Attorney General concedes that “[t]he context and 
substance of Cummings’s admissions made ‘clear to [Deputy 
McGinnis] . . . that Cummings alone pulled the trigger and was 
the sole person responsible for killing Officer Verna.’ ” 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
31 
McGinnis did—as an admission of sole responsibility for the 
shooting. 
The referee also concluded that testimony from Deputy 
McGinnis would have been “cumulative to the testimony of 
Michael McMullan and Rick [McCurtin].”  But Deputy McGinnis 
was not a witness to confessions the jury had already heard 
about; his testimony would have detailed an entirely different 
occasion on which Cummings confessed, in a way that clearly 
supported the defense theory that Cummings was the sole 
shooter.  Deputy McCurtin’s testimony suffered from the 
difficulty that saying “ ‘we’ ” put four more in Officer Verna did 
not sound like an admission of sole responsibility for the 
shooting.  (See Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at p. 1266 & fn. 9, 
italics omitted.)  Cummings’s confession to McGinnis, in 
contrast, was understood by McGinnis as just such an 
admission.  We can think of no tactical reason why competent 
counsel would, in a case where codefendants pointed the finger 
at each other for the murder of a law enforcement officer, pass 
up the opportunity to present testimony from a second peace 
officer that placed sole responsibility on the other defendant. 
In 1984, Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputy Richard Nutt was 
tasked with escorting Cummings to the shower.  According to 
the referee’s findings, Cummings said to Nutt, “ ‘Hey Nutt.  I 
killed Verna.  He had about sixteen years on.  When I get out of 
prison you will have about sixteen years on and I will kill you 
too.’ ”  Nutt replied, “ ‘You’re a coward.  I know you shot Verna 
in the back.  If you want to take a shot at me, do it to my face.’ ”  
Cummings did not respond.  Deputy Nutt reported the exchange 
to his “supervisor, Sergeant George Arthur, who declined to take 
a formal report due to the number of similar comments made by 
Raynard Cummings to other Sheriff’s personnel.”  Like Deputy 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
32 
McGinnis, Sergeant Arthur was identified “in reports compiled 
by the investigating officers and provided to the defense in 
discovery materials.” 
There appears to be no dispute that as with Deputy 
McGinnis, Shinn never met, directly or indirectly, with Sergeant 
Arthur or Deputy Nutt.  The referee found that “Nutt’s 
testimony would not have been available to Shinn in 1985 as his 
contact with the persons accused [of] the killing of Officer Verna 
did not come to light until at or near the time of the 2000 retrial.”  
Gay takes exception to this finding.  He argues that had Shinn 
interviewed Sergeant Arthur, Nutt’s supervisor, it is reasonably 
likely he would have learned of the exchange Deputy Nutt had 
with Cummings. 
We decline to adopt the referee’s finding that Deputy 
Nutt’s testimony would have been unavailable to Shinn.  True, 
“the duty to investigate does not force defense lawyers to scour 
the globe on the off chance something will turn up; reasonably 
diligent counsel may draw a line when they have good reason to 
think further investigation would be a waste.”  (Rompilla v. 
Beard, supra, 545 U.S. at p. 383.)  But Nutt’s testimony was 
discoverable with minimal effort.  As the referee found, Nutt 
reported Cummings’s confession to Sergeant Arthur.  As the 
referee also found, Shinn was provided with Sergeant Arthur’s 
name in discovery as a witness to Cummings’s jailhouse 
confessions. 
Gay was charged with the murder of a police officer.  In 
such a case, peace officers would have had every incentive to 
ensure that those responsible were convicted.  Exculpatory 
testimony from a peace officer would have been some of the most 
persuasive evidence a defense attorney could present.  Through 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
33 
discovery, Shinn was aware of evidence that Cummings freely 
confessed to the shooting.  The professionally appropriate 
response to this information would have been to contact each 
peace 
officer mentioned 
as 
having 
had 
contact 
with 
Cummings—including Sergeant Arthur—to ask about any 
confessions they had witnessed or knew of and to solicit evidence 
that Cummings, alone, killed Officer Verna.  Such an 
investigation would have, in all likelihood, uncovered 
Cummings’s confession to Deputy Nutt. 
The Attorney General argues that Deputy Nutt would 
have been readily impeached because he told homicide 
investigators in 2000 that it was Gay whom he escorted to the 
showers and who confessed to killing Officer Verna.  The written 
report prepared by detectives who interviewed Nutt then does 
indicate the speaker was Kenneth Gay, but at the reference 
hearing Nutt identified a booking photo of Cummings and 
testified adamantly and at length, on direct and on cross-
examination, that the detectives had misunderstood his 
statements as relating to Gay, whom he had never met.  The 
referee credited this testimony and concluded it was Cummings 
who confessed to and threatened Nutt.  The 2000 written report 
gives no reason to think Nutt, if called to testify at the 1985 trial, 
would have had any doubt it was Cummings with whom he 
spoke. 
Shinn’s defense of Gay relied in part on highlighting 
prosecution testimony that Cummings confessed to shooting 
Verna.  Calling additional such witnesses, witnesses who could 
support the theory that Cummings alone shot Verna, would 
have been fully consistent with Shinn’s strategy.  Given the 
potential value of peace officer testimony, we can conceive no 
tactical reason why competent counsel would have declined to 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
34 
investigate the availability of such witnesses and instead simply 
relied on whichever witnesses the prosecution chose to call.  
Shinn’s performance in failing to investigate this line of defense 
was deficient.  (See In re Lucas, supra, 33 Cal.4th at pp. 725–
731.) 
D. 
Taken alone, these deficiencies would be troubling 
enough.  But the specific instances of Shinn’s failure to 
competently pursue Gay’s defense must be considered in their 
broader context—namely, the context of an attorney-client 
relationship poisoned at its root by fraud.  As we explained in 
our previous opinion and discussed above, Shinn used deception 
to insinuate himself into the representation of Gay, who was 
originally represented by the public defender.10  An earlier 
reference hearing established the following:  “ ‘While Petitioner 
was in county jail in late June, 1983, Shinn and Marcus 
McBroom introduced themselves to Petitioner.  McBroom 
identified himself as a minister and told Petitioner that he 
represented a group of black businessmen that wished to hire a 
lawyer for Petitioner.  McBroom was an ordained minister.  Both 
Shinn and McBroom encouraged Petitioner to retain Shinn.  
Petitioner said he had no money to retain counsel and Petitioner 
was told not to worry [because] this group of black businessmen 
would take care of Shinn’s fee.  [¶]  Shinn never quoted a fee, 
was paid a fee, or attempted to collect a fee from the alleged 
 
10  
We did not ask the referee additional questions about this 
initial fraud; the relevant facts had already been established in 
an earlier reference hearing in connection with Gay’s first 
habeas corpus petition.  (See Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at pp. 794–
795.) 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
35 
group of businessmen.  [¶]  There is no evidence to cause this 
Court to believe that there ever was any group of “black 
businessmen” to pay Shinn’s retainer.  Shinn later told 
Petitioner to tell the court that his parents had paid a retainer 
to Shinn.  This was not accurate.  Shinn never had any 
reasonable belief that he would be paid by any group of 
businessmen or Petitioner’s family.  Shinn’s intent from early 
on was to seek appointment by the Court.’ ”  (Gay I, supra, 19 
Cal.4th at p. 794.)  There were no exceptions to these findings, 
which were amply supported by the record, and we adopted 
them, concluding:  “Shinn engineered both his initial retention 
and subsequent appointment by fraudulent means.”  (Id. at 
p. 795.) 
Thus, from the very outset, Shinn showed himself willing 
to deceive Gay (and the court) to further his own personal ends.  
The duty of loyalty is “perhaps the most basic of counsel’s 
duties.”  (Strickland, supra, 466 U.S. at p. 692.)  Shinn’s 
stunning breach of professional norms casts doubt on the usual 
assumption that counsel thereafter assumed and fulfilled this 
duty, acting in Gay’s best interests and ensuring the 
prosecution’s case would be subject to the requisite adversarial 
testing.11  (See Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at pp. 831–834 (conc. 
opn. of Werdegar, J.).)   
 
11  
Recommending Shinn be disbarred on unrelated grounds 
several years later, the State Bar Court concluded “Shinn ‘lacks 
basic understanding of the most fundamental responsibilities of 
an attorney as embodied in the provisions of the Business and 
Professions Code and the Rules of Professional Conduct.’ ”  (Gay 
I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at p. 780, fn. 5, quoting In the Matter of 
Shinn (Review Dept. 1992) 2 Cal. State Bar Ct. Rptr. 96, 107.) 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
36 
Our evaluation as to whether Gay’s conviction was the 
product of a reliable proceeding also takes into account the 
referee’s findings concerning a second potential conflict of 
interest.  In an unrelated eminent domain action, Shinn 
obtained a judgment of nearly $200,000 for his clients Oscar and 
Marjorie Dane.  The Danes refused to accept the funds, believing 
their property was worth substantially more.  Although the trial 
court ordered Shinn to keep the funds in an interest-bearing 
trust account for the benefit of the Danes, Shinn failed to do so.  
He instead loaned $50,000 of these funds to one person, wrote a 
check for $2,000 to another, and used $70,000 to make 
restitution to a previous set of clients from whom he had 
misappropriated money, Alexander and Rebecca Korchin. 
The Danes contacted the Major Frauds Division of the Los 
Angeles County District Attorney’s Office to complain that the 
City of Santa Monica had stolen their home.  Deputy District 
Attorney Albert MacKenzie and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s 
Department Detective Charles Gibbons determined an eminent 
domain judgment had been entered but no money paid to the 
Danes.  On March 1, 1984, after Shinn had begun representing 
Gay, MacKenzie and Detective Gibbons met with Shinn at the 
Criminal Courts Building in downtown Los Angeles and asked 
Shinn for an accounting of the Danes’ funds.  Eventually, in 
1985, the Danes were persuaded to accept nearly $180,000 from 
Shinn.  Had Shinn invested the Danes’ funds in an interest-
bearing account as the court had ordered, “the Danes would 
have received substantially more.”  MacKenzie declined to file 
criminal charges against Shinn and the case was closed in 1987.  
MacKenzie testified:  “ ‘I could never reach a point where I had 
. . . what I considered . . . a provable embezzlement.’ ”  Thus, 
throughout Gay’s trial, Shinn was the subject of an open 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
37 
investigation by the same prosecutor’s office that was charging 
his client.  He should have reported the investigation to Gay and 
to the trial court; there is no record that he ever did. 
The right to the assistance of counsel secured by the Sixth 
Amendment to the federal Constitution and article I, section 15, 
of the California Constitution “includes the correlative right to 
representation free from any conflict of interest that 
undermines counsel’s loyalty to his or her client.”  (People v. 
Doolin (2009) 45 Cal.4th 390, 417; see Wood v. Georgia (1981) 
450 U.S. 261, 271.)  Whether being the subject of an active 
embezzlement investigation created an actual conflict of 
interest and deprived Gay of his right to the effective assistance 
of counsel depends on “whether counsel ‘pulled his punches,’ i.e., 
whether counsel failed to represent defendant as vigorously as 
he might have, had there been no conflict” (People v. Cox (2003) 
30 Cal.4th 916, 948) and whether Gay was prejudiced thereby 
(Doolin, at pp. 418–421). 
The referee thought this unlikely.  As the referee noted, 
the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office is a massive 
office; the prosecutor who tried Gay’s case was not acquainted 
with the prosecutor who investigated Shinn; and there is no 
indication that the trial prosecutor in this case was aware that 
Shinn was being investigated by another part of the district 
attorney’s office.  For these reasons, the referee concluded:  
“Whatever deficiencies or shortcomings may have resulted from 
Shinn’s representation of petitioner during the 1985 guilt phase 
trial, none can be linked to the embezzlement investigation or 
characterized as an attempt to curry favor with the 
prosecutors.” 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
38 
We agree with the referee that the evidence establishes no 
firm link.  And because Shinn was not available to testify at the 
reference hearing, we have no way to know to what extent his 
concerns about the embezzlement investigation may or may not 
have affected his performance in Gay’s case.  But given the 
history of the representation, we cannot entirely disregard the 
referee’s underlying findings.  (See Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at 
p. 828 [the fraud at the inception of the relationship and the 
embezzlement investigation both “contribute to our lack of 
confidence in the verdict when considered with Shinn’s other 
failings”].)  Those findings establish that after committing fraud 
to obtain representation of Gay, Shinn was soon under 
considerable personal pressure to avoid prosecution by the same 
prosecutor’s office and financial pressure from the looming need 
to make restitution to other clients.  Shinn defaulted on his 
obligation to inform his client, as well as the court.  Although we 
cannot definitively link Shinn’s deficiencies and shortcomings to 
the pending embezzlement investigation, collectively the 
circumstances surrounding Shinn’s representation of Gay 
reinforce our conclusion that Gay did not receive the benefit of 
the assistance of competent counsel loyal foremost to his 
interests. 
E. 
To obtain relief, Gay must demonstrate “a reasonable 
probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the 
result of the proceeding would have been different.  A reasonable 
probability is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in 
the outcome.”  (Strickland, supra, 466 U.S. at p. 694; accord, 
People v. Rices (2017) 4 Cal.5th 49, 80; Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th 
at p. 790.)  Where, as here, counsel’s performance has been 
shown to be deficient in multiple respects, we do not consider 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
39 
each error in isolation.  We instead consider the cumulative 
impact of the errors on the fairness of the trial.  (See Gay I, at 
p. 826.)  How readily deficient performance undermines 
confidence in the trial’s outcome will in part depend on the 
strength of the trial evidence on any decisive points.  A “verdict 
or conclusion only weakly supported by the record is more likely 
to have been affected by errors than one with overwhelming 
record support.”  (Strickland, at p. 696.) 
An analysis of prejudice under Strickland does not involve 
the application of “mechanical rules.”  (Strickland, supra, 466 
U.S. at p. 696.)  Instead, “the ultimate focus . . . must be on the 
fundamental fairness of the proceeding whose result is being 
challenged.  In every case the court should be concerned with 
whether, despite the strong presumption of reliability, the result 
of the particular proceeding is unreliable because of a 
breakdown in the adversarial process that our system counts on 
to produce just results.”  (Ibid.)  We have previously concluded 
that “the cumulative impact of Shinn’s many failings,” both his 
potential conflicts and his specific deficiencies at the penalty 
phase, undermined our faith in the jury’s penalty verdict.  (Gay 
I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at p. 826.)  Today, considering the impact of 
specific additional instances of deficient performance in the light 
of those same conflicts and misfeasance, we conclude Shinn’s 
many failings critically undermine our faith in the jury’s guilt 
phase verdict as well. 
We begin with Shinn’s decision to advise Gay to confess to 
his involvement in a series of robberies, for no evident strategic 
reason and without a firm deal in place that would have 
prevented the prosecution from introducing the confessions 
against him at trial.  (See ante, at pp. 16–18; Gay I, supra, 19 
Cal.4th at pp. 791–792.)  Examining the likely effect on the 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
40 
sentence Gay received, we explained in Gay I:  “The prejudicial 
impact at the penalty phase of the admission of petitioner’s 
statement confessing to the robberies cannot be understated.  
Shinn not only acted as a second prosecutor by creating the 
evidence that led to petitioner’s conviction of the robberies, his 
conduct permitted the prosecutor to portray petitioner as an 
admitted serial robber who killed a police officer to avoid arrest 
and prosecution for the robberies.  That picture of defendant, 
absent any substantial mitigating evidence, would be 
devastating to any hope for a sentence less than death.”  (Gay I, 
at pp. 793–794.) 
The effect at the guilt phase would likewise have been 
considerable.  Among the robbery victims, only a single one 
identified Gay as a participant.  (See Cummings, supra, 4 
Cal.4th at pp. 1306–1311.)  In the absence of Gay’s confessions, 
the prosecution would have had to rely principally on the 
testimony of Pamela Cummings, who asserted Gay was a 
confederate (see ibid.) but was impeachable based on her 
incentive to minimize her own and her husband’s culpability for 
the robberies, as well as her husband’s involvement in the 
murder.12  Instead, the prosecution was able to rely on Gay’s 
own admission that he participated in the series of armed 
robberies, and to replace any doubt that Gay and Cummings 
acted as a team with certainty.  (See Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at 
p. 793 [“The statement Shinn misled petitioner into making, a 
stipulation that petitioner was a serial robber, made it 
unnecessary for the jury to grapple with the question of 
 
12  
The prosecution conceded the weakness of Pamela’s 
testimony in closing argument, describing her as “not a 
completely honest witness by any stretch of the imagination.” 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
41 
corroboration [of Pamela Cummings].  The statement Shinn 
incompetently elicited from petitioner made the prosecution’s 
case.”].)  The taped confessions, played for the jury, portrayed 
Gay through his own words as an active participant and a man 
of violence, someone who modified a knife’s handle to improve 
its grip and make it easier to use, generally carried a gun, and 
even broke his .32-caliber handgun on the head of one 
unfortunate robbery victim. 
In turn, that crime spree participation formed the 
centerpiece of the prosecution’s argument that Gay also shot 
Officer Verna and that the shooting was premeditated.  (See 
Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at p. 1257; Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th 
at p. 827.)  In closing argument, the prosecutor explained why 
Gay had a motive equal to Cummings.  He speculated that 
Cummings and Gay surely would have had “conversations over 
a period of weeks when they are doing the robberies.  [¶]  If you 
are responsible for as many robberies as these men were, that 
subject has got to come up.  [¶]  ‘What are we going to do if we 
run into the police?’  Because now they were committing some 
[crimes] and the reason they have to discuss it is kind of logical.  
[¶]  Maybe it is not something you spend any amount of time 
thinking about, but if you do it, it makes sense th[a]t they talk 
about it.  Here’s why.  [¶]  Two people doing these robberies.  If 
one of them is going to violently resist the police and shoot his 
way out, the other one has to be willing to do the same thing.  
[¶]  If one of them isn’t going to do any shooting and he says, 
‘Oh, no.  If the police get me, I am going to surrender,’ [then] the 
other one has to do the same thing.  [¶]  They have to coordinate.  
[¶]  It wouldn’t make any sense for one of them to react one way 
and the other one to react the other way.  [¶]  Imagine the man 
says I am not going to shoot my way out, I am going to surrender, 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
42 
turns to his partner and says, what are you going to do?  [¶]  He 
says, ‘I am going to shoot my way out.’  [¶]  So in this case, they 
both decide to shoot.”  Describing Gay’s motive, the prosecutor 
asked the jury to “[i]magine how worried you would be if you 
were responsible for 17 armed robberies in the Valley.  You 
would probably be frantic about it.”  The murder was 
premeditated 
because 
“with 
all 
these 
robberies being 
committed, it is obvious that [Cummings and Gay] had to plan 
what their response would be, and in fact they killed Paul Verna 
in accordance with that plan.” 
True, “[t]he evidence of motive was not limited to evidence 
of the robberies of which Gay was convicted, but included 
evidence of the joint commission of another robbery, evidence 
that the car used by defendants was stolen, and evidence of 
parole violation.”  (Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at p. 1324.)  But 
even if the prosecutor could have argued about Gay’s motive to 
escape law enforcement detection, the argument would have 
been considerably weaker had Gay not confessed to his role in 
the lengthy series of armed robberies of which the jury would 
later convict him.  It is unsurprising, then, that the prosecution 
chose to place principal reliance on Gay’s admission to 
committing the series of charged robberies with Cummings as 
the basis for its theory that Gay and Cummings agreed to shoot 
their way out rather than allow themselves to be captured. 
Shinn’s decision to have Gay meet with and confess to the 
prosecution had other collateral consequences.  As part of the 
defense case, Shinn called Detective Holder to testify concerning 
Gay’s interview.  In the course of direct examination, Shinn 
elicited from Holder his belief that Gay was telling the truth 
when he confessed to the robberies but was lying as to the other 
matters discussed that day, i.e., participation in the Verna 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
43 
murder.  According to Holder, Detective Helvin and the 
prosecutor shared these views.  (See Cummings, supra, 4 
Cal.4th at pp. 1269, 1340.)  Shinn thus exacerbated the impact 
of the confessions by putting before the jury evidence that any 
Gay denial of participation in shooting Officer Verna was a lie. 
Moreover, by “falsely assuring [Gay] that the statement 
would not be admissible at trial” (Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at 
p. 781), 
Shinn 
severely 
damaged 
the 
attorney-client 
relationship and Gay’s ability to trust Shinn and assist in his 
ongoing defense.  The court’s ruling that the confessions could 
be admitted left Gay “believ[ing] that Shinn had not acted in 
Gay’s best interest” and that “Shinn had deceived Gay” 
concerning discussions with the prosecution.  (Cummings, 
supra, 4 Cal.4th at p. 1319.)  Gay sought without success to 
dismiss Shinn.  (Cummings, at pp. 1319–1321.)  Thereafter, Gay 
was represented by an attorney in whom he could place little 
confidence. 
In the absence of physical evidence, eyewitness testimony 
describing the shooting was central to each side’s case.  Alone 
among the witnesses at trial, Oscar Martin identified 
Cummings as the sole shooter.  (Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at 
p. 1259; see id. at pp. 1259–1263.)  Had they testified, Ejinio and 
Irma Rodriguez could have provided testimony that also pointed 
to Cummings as the sole shooter.13  Crucially, they also could 
have offered an explanation for why other eyewitnesses seemed 
 
13  
As discussed ante at pages 24 to 26, we find a reasonable 
probability competent counsel would have called both to testify.  
We thus must consider at the prejudice stage of our analysis 
what the impact of this testimony would have been.  (See 
Wiggins v. Smith, supra, 539 U.S. at pp. 535–536.) 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
44 
to think Gay had fired some of the shots.  After the shooter got 
back in the car, both saw the car drive off but then return shortly 
and a second lighter skinned man in a lighter shirt (by inference, 
Gay) get out and retrieve a gun.  Their testimony would have 
supported an argument that those who thought Gay was a 
shooter had indeed seen him outside the car, with a gun, near 
Verna, and thus erroneously inferred he had fired some of the 
shots.  No witness at trial identified Cummings as the shooter 
and Gay getting out only after all the shots had been fired.  In 
the absence of such testimony, Shinn was left to argue that the 
majority of eyewitnesses, who testified Gay fired the final shots, 
were simply mistaken.  We have previously recognized Ejinio’s 
and Irma’s testimony would have “substantially bolstered” the 
theory that Gay was not a shooter when holding that the trial 
court erred in excluding it from the 2000 penalty retrial.  (See 
Gay II, supra, 42 Cal.4th at p. 1224; see also id. at p. 1216.)14 
The case that Cummings was the sole shooter would 
similarly have benefited from the testimony of peace officers 
who heard Cummings confess.  The peace officers the 
prosecution called mostly described statements that could 
 
14  
At oral argument, the Attorney General stressed that 
Ejinio and Irma were farther away from the shooting than 
prosecution witnesses such as Robert Thompson.  But they were 
at the very same location as Shannon Roberts, and at a similar 
distance as Shequita Chamberlain and Rose Marie Perez, each 
of whom the prosecution called.  Nor did closer eyewitnesses 
necessarily have a better vantage.  Thompson, the closest 
witness, was on a ladder across the street facing away from the 
traffic stop.  After the first shot, he testified he got down off the 
ladder, sought out a safe place, and only looked back after 
finding shrubbery to hide behind.  Witnesses farther away were 
not impaired by the need to attend to personal safety. 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
45 
equally point to Gay as a shooter.  In particular, Deputy 
McCurtin testified that Cummings said after he initially shot 
Officer Verna, “ ‘we put four more’ ” shots in him.  (Cummings, 
supra, 4 Cal.4th at p. 1266.)  Deputy LaCasella testified he 
“heard Cummings yell:  ‘You know how he got number six[,] 
don’t you?’  Gay then replied:  ‘Number six?’  Cummings said 
‘yeh,’ and then yelled:  ‘That’s the one I put in the 
motherfucker.’ ”  (Ibid.)  These statements could constitute an 
admission that Cummings fired only one shot, “number 6”—the 
number assigned the gunshot wound from the very first shot by 
the deputy medical coroner who testified at trial (id. at 
p. 1267)—and that by his silence Gay admitted firing the 
remaining five shots.  In closing argument, the prosecution 
urged exactly this interpretation. 
Potential witnesses Deputy Nutt and Deputy McGinnis, in 
contrast, could have testified to statements that more clearly 
tended to exculpate Gay.  (See ante, at pp. 26–31.)  Deputy 
McGinnis’s testimony was among that referenced when we 
criticized the trial court at Gay’s penalty retrial for excluding 
“the far more powerful evidence that [Cummings] himself, on at 
least four occasions, had admitted firing all of the shots.”  (Gay 
II, supra, 42 Cal.4th at p. 1224.)  The testimony of peace officers 
to confessions that implicated Cummings and exonerated Gay 
in the murder of a police officer is among the most compelling 
evidence Shinn could have had at his disposal, had he only 
investigated and developed it. 
These deficiencies matter more because of the state of the 
record at trial.  There was no physical evidence linking Gay to 
the shooting.  (Gay II, supra, 42 Cal.4th at p. 1226.)  
Eyewitnesses’ “versions of the events and identification of the 
shooter or shooters varied greatly.”  (Cummings, supra, 4 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
46 
Cal.4th at p. 1259; see Gay II, at pp. 1226–1227.)  Apart from 
discrepancies in the testimony of each eyewitness as compared 
with the testimony of the others, individual eyewitnesses told 
versions of events and made identifications that sometimes 
changed from the shooting’s aftermath to lineups to the 
preliminary hearing to trial.  (See Cummings, at pp. 1259–1263; 
Gay II, at pp. 1226–1227.)15  The star witness against Gay, 
Pamela Cummings, had evident biases (Gay II, at p. 1227), was 
conceded by the prosecutor to be dishonest, and had originally 
tried to falsely implicate another man, Milton Cook, as the 
shooter until he turned up with an alibi (id. at pp. 1206–1207). 
The Attorney General notes that we have had prior 
opportunities to grant Gay relief based on a claim of ineffective 
assistance of counsel at the guilt phase of his trial but have not 
yet done so.  (See Cummings, supra, 4 Cal.4th at pp. 1339–1342; 
Gay I, supra, 19 Cal.4th at pp. 780, fn. 6, 781–782.)  This is true, 
but it does not affect our evaluation of the claim he now raises.  
Gay did present a similar claim on direct appeal, but because he 
was unable to raise matters outside the record, that claim was 
necessarily incomplete.  (See Cummings, at pp. 1341–1342 
[denying relief based on the inadequacy of the record].)  And 
although Gay raised a guilt phase ineffective assistance claim in 
his first habeas corpus petition, the presentation was likewise 
 
15  
As one example, Robert Thompson identified the taller 
Black man in the backseat as the lone shooter when interviewed 
on the day of the shooting and was unable to identify Gay in a 
lineup shortly thereafter.  Before a grand jury, Thompson 
repeated that the dark-skinned backseat passenger was the 
shooter.  But then at the preliminary hearing and trial, 
Thompson positively identified Gay as the front-seat passenger 
who exited the car holding a gun. 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
47 
incomplete, identifying some but not all of the deficiencies that 
we address today.  In particular, that petition did not plead a 
claim that Shinn was deficient for failing to investigate and 
present testimony from Ejinio Rodriguez, Deputy William 
McGinnis, or Deputy Richard Nutt.  Because Gay’s earlier 
attempts to argue that he received the ineffective assistance of 
counsel at the guilt phase were raised on direct appeal and in a 
habeas corpus petition filed before our clarification of the limits 
on successive petitions (In re Clark, supra, 5 Cal.4th at pp. 767–
782), they do not bar relief on the more complete record he now 
presents (see In re Robbins, supra, 18 Cal.4th at p. 788, fn. 9; 
People v. Mendoza Tello (1997) 15 Cal.4th 264, 267). 
In light of both the specific deficiencies we have addressed 
and the deception at the inception of Shinn’s representation, we 
cannot say Gay’s murder conviction was the product of a 
trustworthy adversarial process.  Defense counsel obtained 
appointment to represent Gay through fraud, counseled him to 
make damaging confessions to the prosecution without 
safeguards to ensure the confessions would not be used without 
a deal (while deceiving him as to whether such safeguards were 
in place), and failed to conduct a timely investigation into 
available testimony from eyewitnesses who would have 
exculpated Gay and peace officers who would have inculpated 
Gay’s codefendant, Raynard Cummings.  Counsel turned in this 
performance in a case where the evidence at trial left open a 
nontrivial possibility that his client bore no responsibility for the 
death of the victim.  And given Shinn’s manifest willingness to 
disregard fiduciary responsibilities, we cannot be entirely 
confident that even the other decisions challenged in the habeas 
corpus petition that might ordinarily fall within the very broad 
range of discretion we generally accord counsel were 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
48 
uninfluenced by Shinn’s readiness to place his own interests 
first and choose an easier, more personally beneficial path over 
the path that would best serve Gay. 
It is not inconceivable that even with the assistance of 
competent counsel, the jury might still have voted for guilt.  But 
“that is not the test.”  (Rompilla v. Beard, supra, 545 U.S. at 
p. 393.)  Gay has shown “that counsel’s errors were so serious as 
to deprive [him] of a fair trial, a trial whose result is reliable.”  
(Strickland, supra, 466 U.S. at p. 687.)  Defense counsel’s 
multiple failings are, in combination, of sufficient gravity to 
overcome the strong presumption of reliability accorded final 
judgments and to undermine our ability to place faith in the 
jury’s determination that Gay shot Officer Paul Verna.  Gay has 
demonstrated prejudice. 
IV. 
We conclude Gay has established entitlement to habeas 
corpus relief on his claim that he was denied the effective 
assistance of counsel at the guilt phase of his trial.  We grant 
relief and vacate the judgment against Gay in Los Angeles 
County Superior Court Case No. A392702 insofar as it rests on 
Gay’s conviction for first degree murder.  The petition’s 
remaining claims will be resolved by later order to be filed 
separately. 
 
 
In re GAY 
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. 
 
49 
Upon finality of our opinion, the Clerk of the Supreme 
Court is to remit a certified copy of the opinion to the Los 
Angeles County Superior Court for filing, and respondent 
Attorney General is to serve a copy of the opinion on the 
prosecuting attorney.  (See Pen. Code, § 1382, subd. (a)(2).) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
KRUGER, J. 
We Concur: 
CANTIL-SAKAUYE, C. J. 
CHIN, J. 
CORRIGAN, J. 
LIU, J. 
CUÉLLAR, J. 
GROBAN, J. 
 
 
See next page for addresses and telephone numbers for counsel who argued in Supreme Court. 
 
Name of Opinion In re Gay 
__________________________________________________________________________________ 
 
Unpublished Opinion 
Original Appeal 
Original Proceeding XXX 
Review Granted 
Rehearing Granted 
 
__________________________________________________________________________________ 
 
Opinion No. S130263 
Date Filed:  February 13, 2020 
__________________________________________________________________________________ 
 
Court:  Superior 
County:  Los Angeles 
Judge:  L. Jeffrey Wiatt 
 
__________________________________________________________________________________ 
 
Counsel: 
 
Gary D. Sowards, Jennifer Molayem, Patricia Daniels and Kimberly Dasilva for Petitioner Kenneth Earl 
Gay. 
 
Lawrence J. Fox, George W. Crawford, Sadella D. Crawford; Drinker Biddle & Reath and Erin E. 
McCracken for Ethics Bureau at Yale as Amicus Curiae on behalf of Petitioner Kenneth Earl Gay. 
 
Debevoise & Plimpton, Donald Francis Donovan, Stuart C. Naifeh, Ina C. Popova and Samantha J. Rowe 
for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as Amici Curiae on behalf of Petitioner Kenneth 
Earl Gay.  
 
Bill Lockyer, Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra, Attorneys General, Robert R. 
Anderson, Dane R. Gillette and Gerald A. Engler, Chief Assistant Attorneys General, Pamela C. Hamanaka 
and Lance E. Winters, Assistant Attorneys General, Sharlene A. Honnaka, James William Bilderback and 
David F. Glassman, Deputy Attorneys General, for Respondent the State of California.   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Counsel who argued in Supreme Court (not intended for publication with opinion): 
 
Gary D. Sowards 
Habeas Corpus Resource Center 
303 Secont St., Suite 400 South 
San Francisco, CA 94107 
(415) 348-3800 
 
Lawrence J. Fox 
Yale Law School 
127 Wall Street 
New Haven, CT 06511 
(203) 432-9358 
 
David F. Glassman 
Deputy Attorney General 
300 South Spring St., Suite 1702 
Los Angeles, CA 90013 
(213) 897-2355