Opinion ID: 2507176
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Defense Evidence Concerning the Circumstances of the Crime

Text: At the penalty retrial, the defense was allowed to offer testimony concerning the circumstances of the murder only from eyewitnesses who had testified at the first trial. Rose Marie Perez, who was a passenger in a car driving on Gladstone Avenue, looked down Hoyt Street and saw Officer Verna falling to the ground. The stopped car's passenger door was open, and defendant was coming around the car towards the officer. There did not appear to be anything in defendant's hands, although there might have been something Perez did not see. Shequita Chamberlain, who was 15 or 16 at the time of the murder, was a passenger in another car on Gladstone Avenue. She heard a sound like a firecracker and saw Officer Verna start to fall. There was a tall, medium-dark-complexioned Black male alongside the stopped car, wearing a dark short-sleeved shirt. He may have had a mustache. She told the driver to turn around, and they went to Hoyt Street to assist the officer. Chamberlain did not identify anyone at a lineup at the police station a few days after the murder. The man she saw could not have been defendant, inasmuch as defendant's complexion was too light, but she did testify that the man she saw had a complexion similar to Raynard's. The defense presented the prior trial testimony of Oscar Martin, who was 12 years old at the time of the murder and was living with his family on Hoyt Street. Oscar saw Officer Verna preparing to issue a ticket. As Oscar watched from the living room window, a man he later identified as Raynard Cummings got out of the back seat on the driver's side and shot the officer four times. Raynard got back in the car and drove off. Oscar ran to the kitchen to tell his mother and did not return to the window. Oscar did not recognize anyone at the lineup. He initially marked (and then erased) defendant's number in the lineup, but he was copying from his mother's card because he did not know what to do. At the police station, when his mother said that the man she saw was White, he tried to explain to her that he had seen the events from the beginning and that the shooter was Black, but she would not listen. No one else in the family saw the shots fired. The burn mark he saw on the shooter's face was like the one on Raynard's face and unlike the mark on defendant's face. Oscar did not see Raynard pass the gun to anyone else or see anyone else with a gun. Marsha Holt's mother, Celeste Holt, whose prior grand jury testimony was read to the jury, was in the back of the house and did not hear the gunshots. But her niece, Gail Beasley, told her about the shooting, so she went to the front of the house and looked outside. Celeste saw a man with a gun and a police officer on the ground. The man with the gun had light skin, similar to defendant's skin tone, and had a Jheri curl and a white shirt. He got in the passenger side of the car, which drove off. She did not see the man's face. Mackey Como testified she was out back, moving furniture, when she heard that an officer had been shot. Because Como was a licensed vocational nurse, she went outside to attend to the officer. After the ambulance took the body away, Mary Cummings, an acquaintance and the mother of Raynard Cummings, walked into the yard and spoke with Como for a few minutes. Former Los Angeles Police Officer Eric Lindquist testified that he interviewed Robert Thompson two or three hours after the shooting. Thompson said that the rear passenger, a medium-to-dark-complexioned Black male, six feet two or six feet three, with a thin build and wearing baggy jeans and a brown short-sleeved shirt, exited the back seat of the car with a gun and was firing it as he approached Officer Verna. Thompson also saw this man bend over as though grabbing something from Verna's waistband. Thompson then left to call the police. [4] Deborah Cantu, Pamela Cummings's sister, testified that she received a phone call from Pamela around 8:00 p.m. on the evening of the murder. Pamela was crying and scared and said she and defendant had offered a ride to a man named Milton Cook and were later stopped by the police. Pamela said she got out of the car to talk to the officer, but the officer went back to the car to see whether the passengers had any identification. Defendant said he did, but Cook pulled out a gun and shot the officer. Defendant was so scared he jumped out onto the ground;. Pamela was so scared she ran back to retrieve her identification card. Milton kept firing, emptying the gun, and then grabbed the officer's weapon. Pamela said that Milton was a tall Black male with a medium complexion; she hoped no one would mistake him for Raynard, who (she said) had been at his mother's house the whole time. Cantu did not learn that her sister was lying until after Cook was released from custody. Dr. Vincent Guinn, an expert in the detection of gunshot residue, estimated the firing distance for each entry wound. He testified that the distance between the gun and wound No. 6, which the parties stipulated was caused by the first shot, was between four and 11 feet. The distance for wound No. 3 was around two and onehalf feet; for wound No. 1, a little over two feet; for wound No. 2, a little over a foot; and for wound No. 4 and wound No. 5, one foot. Dr. William Sherry, senior deputy medical examiner for the County of Los Angeles and an expert in the field of medical examination and evaluation of autopsy reports, testified that all but one of the gunshot wounds were fatal. He also identified which wounds were to the front of the body and which to the back and also opined on the trajectory of the bullet causing each wound. Dr. Martin Fackler, a consultant in wound ballistics, described the likely sequence of the bullet wounds. He testified that if wound No. 6 was first, it was followed by either wound No. 1 or No. 3, and then by Nos. 2, 4, and 5. Because Verna was likely standing when Nos. 1 and 3 occurred and because No. 2 severed Verna's spinal cord, Dr. Fackler opined that Verna was still standing at the time the bullet causing wound No. 2 was fired. The last two bullets, causing wounds No. 4 and No. 5, must have been fired when Verna was already on the ground.