Opinion ID: 1444170
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Murder CountGuilt Phase.

Text: Petitioner alleges that Shinn inexplicably introduced into evidence exhibit C, a statement by Pamela Cummings accusing petitioner of being the person who fired the first shot at Officer Verna and who then left the car and fired the remaining shots into the officer's body. She declared that he did this while codefendant Raynard Cummings was asking what's going on. He also introduced exhibit D, a statement by Raynard Cummings, accusing petitioner of firing all of the shots. In a deposition Shinn could not recall any tactical reason for introducing these exhibits. Petitioner also alleges that Shinn failed to discover and call four witnesses to whom Cummings had admitted that he killed Officer Verna. One, Jack Flores, had been a jail inmate whose declaration states that he was in a cell adjacent to Raynard Cummings in June and July 1983. Cummings described the shooting to Flores, admitting that he had been the only person to shoot Verna. Flores gave a statement to two Los Angeles Police Department detectives on July 11, 1983. He states that he also gave them a letter by Cummings admitting that Cummings did all the shooting. Flores gave the letter to the police. Flores was called as a prosecution witness at the separate trial of the penalty phase for Cummings. He states that he was told that the prosecution did not intend to ask him to testify about Cummings's admissions. Petitioner also alleges that Shinn did not call jail inmate James Edward Jennings who made a statement to the police about Cummings's description of Cummings's role in the killings. Jennings had ridden with Cummings on a bus going to court. In the statement, exhibit E to the petition, Jennings says that Cummings bragged about how he shot and killed Officer Verna and about a series of robberies and auto thefts. Cummings told Jennings that Cummings was in the back seat of the car stopped by Officer Verna. Gay was in the front seat. When the officer asked for identification, Cummings said I've got I.D. He then pulled a gun from between his legs and shot Verna twice in the upper body, once in the neck or shoulder area and once in the upper body area. Verna then spun about, at which time Cummings shot Verna in the back. Allegedly Michael Gaxiola, another jail inmate who was not called as a witness, had been interviewed at the Los Angeles County Hall of Justice about a conversation with Cummings in which Cummings told Gaxiola that he shot Officer Verna because he was not going to go back to jail or allow Verna to jail his wife. Shinn also failed to call Robin Gay, who had waived her privilege against self-incrimination before the grand jury, although she had refused to testify at trial. In her grand jury testimony, she claimed that after the shootings, Raynard Cummings admitted he downed the officer and reenacted events in which Raynard fired the initial shots from the back seat of the car and then got out and shot Officer Verna to death. Petitioner argues that by failing to offer this evidence at the guilt phase, Shinn eliminated any basis for a lingering doubt argument during the penalty phase of the trial.