2 Killers of L.A. Officer Get Death Sentences

Kenneth Gay and Raynard Cummings were sentenced to death Friday for the murder of a Los Angeles police motorcycle officer during a routine traffic stop in 1983.

In a dramatic speech just before sentencing, Gay denied murdering Officer Paul Verna, but asked to be executed anyway.

“These people seek retribution,” Gay said, waving his arm toward the San Fernando courtroom crowd of more than 200 police officers, jurors who recommended execution, and family and friends of the slain officer. “They’re blood suckers. They want you to kill me. Kill me! Do that!

“I don’t have any remorse, because I didn’t do it,” Gay told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dana S. Henry.

Expresses Condolences

“Mrs. Verna, for what it is worth, I extend my sincere and heartfelt condolences to you and your family, but I didn’t kill the guy,” Gay said, turning to face Verna’s widow, Sandra, who appeared in court to ask Henry to impose the death sentence on her husband’s killers.

Sandra Verna, who had to stop several times during her speech to compose herself, spoke in a trembling voice about how Cummings and Gay “killed our entire family’s dreams and plans.”

“They killed more than one man that day. For me, they killed a love affair between a man and a woman . . . for I truly loved Paul more than I love myself,” she said. “No one who has not done it can know how difficult it is to tell two young boys that the daddy they loved so much, the daddy they admired so much . . . is gone. They are the ones that are punished.”

Cummings addressed the court in muffled tones and thanked his attorneys for representing him.

Gay, 27, and Cummings, 28, were convicted in May of gunning down the 35-year-old Medal of Valor officer on June 2, 1983, after he had pulled their car over on a Lake View Terrace street. Cummings fired the first shot into Verna as the officer leaned into the car to ask for identification. Gay then took the gun, jumped out of the car, and fired the remaining five shots into the mortally wounded officer, according to testimony.

Armed Ex-Convicts

Prosecutors said the two Pacoima men, who had committed 14 violent robberies in the weeks before the slaying, were afraid that Verna would arrest them because they were armed former convicts riding in a stolen car driven by Cummings’ wife, who was not carrying a driver’s license.

The men sat chatting with their attorneys and expressed no emotion as Henry sentenced them.

“Their conduct was one of depravity with wanton disregard for human life,” Henry said. She called their convictions “not only beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond all possible or imaginary doubt.”

Although the judge expressed her “personal doubts” about the death penalty, she said any other sentence “would be an arbitrary and capricious act and would not uphold the laws of this state.”

Additional Sentences

Because both men were convicted by separate juries of committing numerous robberies before murdering Verna, Henry also sentenced Cummings to 28 years in state prison and Gay to 24 years and four months. Those terms would become effective if a higher court or the governor overturned the murder convictions or commuted the death sentences.

During the sentencing hearing Friday, which had to be moved to a larger courtroom because of the crowd, observers repeatedly murmured disapproval as defense attorneys asked that Henry modify the juries’ recommendations to life without the possibility of parole.

The crowd laughed when attorney Daye Shinn suggested that his client, Gay, who has been working on a college degree while in custody, could serve society by completing his degree while in prison.