Death Penalty Urged in Slaying of Officer

A San Fernando Superior Court jury Monday recommended the death penalty for Raynard Cummings, the second of two men convicted of gunning down a Los Angeles motorcycle officer during a routine traffic stop in 1983.

Jurors deliberated for two hours before asking Judge Dana Senit Henry to order the execution of Cummings, 28, for murdering Traffic Officer Paul Verna in Lake View Terrace on June 2, 1983.

Cummings sat impassively as the jury’s recommendation was read, then smiled and chatted with his attorneys as Henry thanked the jurors for their six months on jury duty.

Henry has the option of rejecting the jury’s recommendation and ordering Cummings to serve life in prison without possibility of parole when she formally sentences him Sept. 20.

A separate jury earlier this month recommended execution of Cummings’ co-defendant, 27-year-old Kenneth Gay. Gay is scheduled to be formally sentenced Sept. 4.

At the sentencing hearings, Henry also can order Cummings and Gay to serve as much as 25 years in state prison for additional charges stemming from a violent, six-week string of 14 robberies that the men committed just before Verna’s murder.

The two Pacoima men were convicted last month of first-degree murder with special circumstances for shooting Verna after he stopped them for running a stop sign.

According to testimony during the murder portion of the trial, Cummings fired the first shot into Verna, 35, a 1981 winner of the police Medal of Valor, before handing the gun to Gay, who got out of the car and fired the remaining five bullets into the officer.

Deputy Dist. Atty. John Watson asserted that the men killed Verna because they were afraid he would arrest them for being armed ex-convicts riding in a stolen car driven by Cummings’ wife, who was not carrying a driver’s license.

Attorneys for Cummings, Howard Price and Edward Rucker, argued during the trial that scientific evidence proved that Cummings could not have fired any of the shots.

Two juries heard the evidence against the men because Cummings pleaded guilty to the robberies and Gay did not. Price and Rucker convinced Judge Henry that it would be prejudicial for jurors deciding Cummings’ fate to hear evidence about the robberies.

After Monday’s death penalty recommendation, prosecutor Watson said he was “very pleased” with the verdict.

“The jury thought the evidence was overwhelming,” Watson said. “They told me there were virtually no mitigating factors.”

Cummings’ attorney, Price, had a different interpretation. “Given the nature of the charges and the type of evidence presented and the fact that only firm believers in the death penalty sit on a jury, it’s not surprising,” he said.