Officer’s Killer Again Gets Death

LAPD Officer Paul Verna’s widow looked across the courtroom at her husband’s killer, who had just been sentenced to death for the second time in 15 years.

“I don’t accept your apology--I never will,” said a tearful Sandy Jackson on Monday. “You viciously took Paul’s life and a part of us.”

Closure for her family will only come when Kenneth Gay is put to death, Jackson said, in a San Fernando courtroom packed with Verna’s family and Los Angeles police officers, including Verna’s now-grown son, Bryce.

Gay, soon to be the 172nd person from Los Angeles County to be on death row out of the 565 in the state, continued to insist that another man had killed Verna. He blamed his plight on a corrupt defense attorney who represented him during his first trial in 1985.

“I’ve never murdered anyone,” said Gay, speaking out for the first time since his penalty-phase retrial in San Fernando Superior Court. He offered an apology for causing the family pain by insisting on his innocence.

Gay was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1983 Lake View Terrace slaying that he and his new defense lawyers argued he did not commit. In 1998, the California Supreme Court overturned the death penalty on the grounds of incompetent counsel, but left intact the guilty verdict. After a retrial, a San Fernando jury in October unanimously recommended death, and Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge L. Jeffrey Wiatt agreed Monday.

Gay acknowledged that he has committed “a number of horrible crimes” in the past, but maintained that another man, Raynard Cummings, was the person who shot and killed Verna. According to prosecutors, Cummings fired the first shot at Verna before passing the gun to Gay, who fired the remaining five bullets. Cummings was also convicted of first-degree murder in 1985 and is currently on death row.

Wiatt said overwhelming evidence against Gay fully supported the death sentence. “You murdered in cold blood Officer Paul Verna,” Wiatt said.

During the retrial, witnesses testified about Gay’s violent past, including robbery victims who recounted how the ex-con had beaten them, and an ex-girlfriend who testified that he firebombed her family’s house. Several prosecution witnesses, including Cummings’ former wife, Pamela, also testified they saw Gay shoot Verna.

Among those testifying for the defense was actor Ed Asner, who unsuccessfully tried to persuade jurors to sentence Gay to life in prison. While Gay was on death row, he wrote a screenplay, “A Children’s Story,” which won an American Film Institute contest in 1994. Asner, a judge for the contest, said he was “highly impressed” and called Gay’s work a “wonderfully encouraging piece about kids.”

Monday in court, tempers flared between prosecutors and Gay’s public defenders.

Deputy Public Defender Kenneth Lezin alleged prosecutorial misconduct because Deputy Dist. Atty. Lawrence Morrison called him a “bozo” during his closing argument. Lezin had objected, but Wiatt overruled him.

Morrison retorted in court that “based on everything this court has heard,” the term “bozo” was a “charitable” description of the public defender.

Lezin also argued that Wiatt had erroneously barred the testimony of several eyewitnesses who would have testified that someone resembling Cummings, and not Gay, fired all the shots, and four statements that Cummings allegedly made bragging that he alone had killed the officer.

On Monday, Wiatt said he had independently reviewed all the facts of the case and believed a death sentence was warranted.

“There is absolutely no doubt in this case that the defendant . . . blasted five shots into this officer, who was just doing his job,” Wiatt said. “My view of the evidence is that the defendant was more culpable than Raynard Cummings.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeff Jonas called Gay a liar and a hypocrite who could have asserted his innocence during the retrial, but chose not to take the witness stand because that would have subjected him to cross-examination.

Jonas also said that the eyewitness testimony the defense claimed could have exonerated Gay was unreliable, and that in other statements, Cummings has said that Gay did fire at Verna, and that Gay also bragged to others that he had killed the officer.

“It’s almost profane listening to [Gay] talk to the family,” Morrison said. “He’s the type of person the death penalty was designed for.”

Dennis Zine, vice president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League and Verna’s former supervisor, wept as he talked about the slain officer, who had won a Medal of Valor, the LAPD’s highest honor, for trying to rescue children from a burning building, and called his death a tragedy for the people of Los Angeles.

“He was everything you wanted in a police officer,” Zine said.

Killers such as Gay, Zine said, “forfeit their right to life when they take the life of others.”