Opinion ID: 2507176
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Evidence Concerning the Murder of Officer Verna

Text: On June 2, 1983, Officer Verna of the Los Angeles Police Department was part of a motorcycle team assigned to traffic enforcement in the northeast quadrant of the San Fernando Valley. Verna told Sergeant James Leiphardt that he was going to enforce the stop sign at Gladstone Avenue and Van Nuys Boulevard. Verna said he had grown up in that neighborhood and that his parents had moved away only two years earlier. The last thing Leiphardt said to Verna was Be careful. Nine-year-old Martina Ruelas saw Officer Verna that evening. She lived on Hoyt Street near Gladstone Avenue. Sometimes Verna would stop to chat, and she liked him. Around 5:30 p.m., he told her he was going to stop and issue a ticket to a car coming down Gladstone from Van Nuys toward Hoyt Street. He instructed Martina to stay where she was, inside the fence surrounding her home. Verna turned on his red lights. The gray-andblack two-door Oldsmobile Cutlass turned onto Hoyt Street and stopped. The Cutlass was driven by Pamela Cummings. As usual, defendant was in the passenger seat and Raynard Cummings was in the back seat. The car was stolen and had stolen license plates. A week earlier in North Hollywood, Raynard, acting alone, followed Linda Smith into her house after she had parked the car, pointed a gun at her head, and took her car keys. Pamela subsequently swapped license plates with another Cutlass in a mall parking lot. At the time of the stop, the three were on their way to purchase some marijuana in the area. When Pamela saw the officer, defendant told her to relax, it was just a ticket. Despite defendant's words, Pamela got out of the car to meet Officer Verna because she was afraid. They were in a stolen car with a gun [1] under the front passenger seat, and Pamela did not have her driver's license. Verna asked her for her identification and registration. When she said that she did not have the registration, Verna went up to the car and peered inside. He came back to her and asked who was in the car. Pamela answered that her husband was in back, and her cousin was in front. When the officer went back to the car and bent down to talk to the men, Pamela saw a gun barrel come around the headrest and then heard a shot. Verna grabbed his shoulder and turned towards her. Pamela testified that she could not see who was holding the gun, but the parties stipulated at the retrial that Raynard Cummings had fired the first shot. Pamela testified she saw defendant slide across the front seat and exit the car through the driver's side. He shot the officer in the back and angrily said, Take this, you motherfucker. Officer Verna fell to his knees and seemed to be reaching for his gun, but his holster was empty. Defendant stood over the officer, fired a couple more times, and threw the gun down at the officer in an angry manner. Defendant yelled at Pamela to get into the car. She did so and slid over to the passenger side. Defendant got back in the car and drove down Hoyt Street, away from Gladstone Avenue. When they realized that they had left the murder weapon as well as Pamela's identification, defendant turned around. Pamela testified that defendant picked up one or both guns and possibly her check-cashing card, which she had offered to the officer as identification. Defendant got back in the car and continued down Hoyt Street to Gladstone Avenue. Pamela testified that only seconds elapsed between the first and second shots. Defendant was about three-to-five feet from Verna when he fired the second shot, which went into Verna's back, as did the next two. The last two shots were fired when Verna was on the ground. A number of people witnessed the shooting. Some of them testified at the penalty retrial. Robert Thompson was on a ladder, scraping old paint off the trim of his Hoyt Street home, when he heard a police siren and saw a gray car come around the corner from Gladstone Avenue and stop. Thompson saw two White people in front (a woman and a man) and a Black man in the back. The woman, later identified by Thompson as Pamela Cummings, promptly got out of the car and talked to the officer. She came back to talk to the front passenger, apparently about the vehicle's registration, and gestured to the officer to signal that she did not have it. After the officer reached in to remove the car keys, Thompson resumed work on the house. Suddenly, he heard a sound that was unlike the echo caused by his work on the gutter. He turned around and saw the officer backing away from the driver's side of the car, holding his chest. The man in the back seat was pointing a gun at the officer with an arm extended out of the car. Thompson quickly got down off the ladder and sought cover under the yucca trees in his front yard. He saw the front seat passenger, who he had initially thought to be White but who appeared on further inspection to be of mixed race, standing up and pointing a .22-caliber revolver at the officer. Smoke was coming from the weapon as the officer fell. The passenger then stood over the officer, feet straddling the officer's waist, and pointed the gun at the officer's chest and fired. Thompson went into his house to call the police. On the night of the murder, Thompson told police that the Black man in the back seat, wearing a brown short-sleeved shirt, forced open the car door, continued to fire while exiting, and fired the last round at point-blank range. Thompson did not identify defendant in a lineup four days after the murder and instead identified two Black males with dark complexions. [2] Before the grand jury, Thompson said again that the medium-complexioned Black man in the back seat got out of the car with the gun and fired at the officer. Thompson did not publicly identify defendant as the passenger or the shooter until the preliminary hearing, almost three months after the murder. Thompson also identified Pamela Cummings as the driver and Raynard Cummings as the back-seat passenger. In an interview with defense counsel prior to this retrial, Thompson returned to his original statement that it was Raynard Cummings who had exited the car and fired the shots. At the retrial, Thompson said he lied to defense counsel because he did not want to talk to them. Thompson also said that he considered defendant to be a medium shade of Black, although he had thought defendant was White before he exited the car. Thompson testified that the murder had been haunting him for 17 years, that the case had changed him into a person he did not want to be, and that this part of his life had been ruined by defendant and Raynard Cummings. In the house next door to Thompson's, Marsha Holt testified that she was in a bedroom, talking to her mother, Celeste Holt, when she saw the officer follow the car to a stop. The woman who was driving (later identified as Pamela Cummings) got out of the car and, according to Marsha Holt, so did the tall, light-skinned, mixed-race front passenger (later identified as defendant). The officer, the driver, and the front passenger were talking, so Marsha Holt looked back at her mother, and told her what was happening. Suddenly, Marsha heard a gunshot. After a gap of two to 30 seconds, she heard more gunshots, one after another, and the officer fell straight back. The officer reached for his gun and pulled it out of his holster, but it dropped out of his hand and fell onto the street. Pamela jumped back in the car, made a U-turn at the corner, and came back. Meanwhile, defendant picked up the officer's weapon and hopped in the car on the passenger side. He pointed the gun at Marsha Holt and her cousin, Gail Beasley, as though to warn them not to say anything. Marsha Holt said she saw defendant get out of the passenger side of the car and fire two shots, but she heard four or five shots in all. She also said that defendant got out of the car before any shots were fired. She did not identify anyone in a lineup as the shooter because defendant had shaved in the meantime and had acquired a scar, but she realized it was him later on. She identified defendant's photograph before the grand jury and at the preliminary hearing and identified Pamela Cummings and defendant in person at the preliminary hearing and at both trials. She did not see the face of the man in the back seat, but she was acquainted with Raynard Cummings, since his mother and her mother were good friends. [3] Gail Beasley testified she had been in the kitchen of the same house, which has a window looking onto the street, when the Cutlass was pulled over. Beasley testified that the shooting began when the driver got back in the car after talking with the officer. The front passenger (defendant), who was slim and had a light complexion and' a mustache, came around the front of the car and was shooting at the officer. Beasley went inside the house and called 911. She told the police the shooter was a light-skinned Black male, six feet tall, 170 pounds, with a thin mustache and a short Jheri curl, and that he wore jeans or dark pants and a burgundy or burnt orange short-sleeved shirt. Beasley felt intimidated by being called a snitch by some people in the neighborhood and did not identify anyone at the police lineup four nights later, but did subsequently tell a detective that defendant was the shooter, although he had a scar on his face at the lineup that had not been there earlier. She identified defendant's photograph before the grand jury and identified defendant in person at the preliminary hearing and at both trials. Beasley's recollection differed in some ways from Marsha Holt's. Holt testified that she encountered Beasley after observing the shooting, on the way out of the house. Beasley, however, testified that she went to the bedroom where Holt and her mother were and informed them that an officer had been shot. Holt and her mother responded, What? What's happening?, and gave the impression that they did not know what was going on. Three members of the Martin family, who lived across the street from Robert Thompson, also testified for the prosecution. Hans Martin, who was 15 years old at the time, observed that Officer Verna had made a traffic stop as he and his family returned from the supermarket. Hans was in the kitchen when he heard gunfire. His brother Oscar, then 12 years old, came in and announced that the officer had been shot. Hans ran to the front of the house and saw defendant get out of the car, now heading in the opposite direction, and remove the officer's gun from his holster. Defendant got back in the car, which drove off. Sabrina Martin Medina, who was 14 at the time, also saw defendant retrieve a weapon, but she said the gun was a few feet away from the officer. Rosa Martin, the children's mother, was also inside the house when she heard gunfire and went to investigate after Oscar announced that the officer had been shot. She too saw defendant pick up a gun from the street. Before defendant got back in the car, he pointed the weapon at their house as though to say, I know who you are and I know where you live. Rosa used the officer's two-way radio to call for help. While waiting at the police station, she described the man who retrieved the gun as White. Oscar, however, said the man was Black, with a dark complexion like their neighbor's. A police department field identification card dated June 2, 1983, recovered from the scene bore Pamela Cummings's name. Officer Verna's gun holster was empty. Meanwhile, defendant and the Cummingses drove to Raynard's aunt's house. Defendant took off his gray long-sleeved dress shirt; he had a white T-shirt on underneath. Pamela changed clothes, too. Each man had taken a gun out of the car. Defendant called Robin, his wife, to ask her to pick him up. Pamela and Raynard went to Raynard's mother's house. When defendant called Robin, he said that something had happened and he seemed very excited. When she picked him up, he seemed very nervous. He started to tell her what happened, then stopped. Later on, Pamela and Raynard Cummings came by the apartment. Raynard was jumpy and nervous. According to Pamela's testimony, Raynard and defendant each claimed credit for and reenacted the shooting. Raynard held out a gun and said, I got him good. Pow, pow, pow. Defendant did the same thing with his hand. Robin, however, testified that only Raynard reenacted the shooting and took credit for it; defendant denied any involvement. Raynard explained that he would rather have killed a cop than have a cop kill him. Robin also testified that Raynard seemed concerned that she not call anyone and had Pamela follow her even when she stepped outside for a cigarette. Pamela denied keeping watch over Robin or being concerned that Robin would contact the police. At some point, Robin drove Pamela to the Motel 6 where the Cummingses had been staying so that Pamela could pick up some of her clothes. On the way back to the apartment, Pamela asked Robin to pull the car over. Pamela called the police from a pay phone and, without identifying herself, said she had been in the car when the shooting of the officer occurred, along with defendant and one Milton Cook. Pamela did not know Milton Cook personally, but defendant knew him, and Pamela said they all had agreed to implicate him if they were ever arrested. Cook, who was tall and dark-complexioned, was similar in height and skin tone to Raynard Cummings. Early the next morning, defendant and Raynard left in Robin's car. Later that day, Raynard called Pamela to say that they were in San Diego and instructed Pamela and Robin to meet them there. The women got on a bus in North Hollywood and headed south. Robin had a phone number they were to call once they arrived. The police, meanwhile, had commenced surveillance of Pamela and Robin that morning. Two Los Angeles Police Department detectives boarded the bus in plain clothes at a stop in downtown Los Angeles and sat four seats behind them. The detectives followed the women after they got off the bus in Oceanside, used a pay phone in the bus terminal, walked to a residential area, and then hid in some bushes for 15 to 20 minutes. When Pamela and Robin emerged from the bushes they were worried about being followed they got into Robin's car and proceeded in a southerly direction. Defendant and Raynard Cummings were crouched down in the back seat. The women stopped once at a convenience store to ask directions to Phoenix. Robin's intent in going to Oceanside had been to get defendant away from Raynard and have him turn himself in to the police. Once she got in the car, however, she realized her plan was naive. While Pamela was driving on the highway, she saw an occupant in the car behind them pass a walkie-talkie to another occupant. She was about to explain what she had seen when a helicopter lit up the sky and police cars converged on them and forced the car to a stop. Pamela and Robin were ordered out of the car; to the surprise of the officers, defendant and Raynard were in the back of the car. Defendant was lying down on the rear floorboard; Raynard was stretched out on the back seat. Verna's service revolver was found on the floorboard, where defendant had been. Defendant also had a buck knife in his jacket; the knife had been taken from Richard Hallberg during the robbery in Reseda. The arresting officers noticed that defendant had an abrasion on his left cheek; he did not have it when Pamela and Robin got in the car. Following her arrest for murder, Pamela made two statements to police placing defendant and Milton Cook at the scene. She claimed that Cook shot the officer. At the retrial, Pamela conceded that she falsely implicated Cook in order to protect Raynard, since Cook was similar in height and skin tone to her husband. Cook had no involvement in this crime, however. The district attorney eventually agreed to drop the murder charge against Pamela in exchange for her cooperation. She then pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of being an accessory to murder and to a couple of robberies and was not sentenced until after she testified at the first trial. Robin, too, was convicted of being an accessory to murder and was convicted also of one count of robbery. The parties stipulated that Raynard Cummings fired the first shot, that two of Raynard's fingerprints were recovered from the inside grip of Officer Verna's service revolver, and that there was no latch or locking mechanism obstructing the free movement of the back of the driver's seat in the Cutlass that Pamela Cummings was driving on the day of the murder. Pamela Cummings testified also that the front seat had been moved forward so that she could reach the steering wheel.