2 Sentenced to Die for Killing Policeman

Kenneth Gay and Raynard Cummings were sentenced Friday to death for murdering a police officer during a routine traffic stop in Lake View Terrace in 1983.

In a dramatic speech just before San Fernando Superior Court Judge Dana Senit Henry ordered them executed, Gay denied murdering Officer Paul Verna but asked to be put to death anyway.

“These people seek retribution,” Gay said, waving his arm toward the crowd of more than 200 police officers, jurors, and Verna’s friends and family who had come to watch the sentencing. “They’re bloodsuckers,” he said. “They want you to kill me. Kill me! Do that!

“I don’t have any remorse because I didn’t do it,” Gay told Henry.

‘I Didn’t Kill the Guy’

Turning to face Verna’s widow, Sandra, Gay said, “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.”

Cummings said nothing other than to thank his attorneys.

Pacoima residents Gay, 27, and Cummings, 28, were convicted in May by two separate juries of gunning down 35-year-old Verna on June 2, 1983, on a Lake View Terrace street. Cummings fired the first shot into Verna as the officer leaned into the car to ask the two men for identification. Gay then took the gun, jumped out of the car, and fired the remaining five shots into the wounded officer.

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

Jurors Attend Session

Both juries recommended that Cummings and Gay be put to death, and many of the jurors came to the sentencing Friday to see their recommendations carried out.

The men chatted with their attorneys and expressed no emotion while Henry sentenced them to the gas chamber.

“Their conduct was one of depravity with wanton disregard for human life,” Henry said as she pronounced the sentence, calling their guilt “not only beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond all possible or imaginary doubt.”

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

Convicted of Robberies

Because both men had been convicted of committing a number of robberies before murdering Verna, Henry also sentenced Cummings to 28 years and Gay to 24 years and four months in prison for those crimes. The sentences would become effective in the event that the state Supreme Court or the governor overturns the murder convictions.

Under California law, all death-penalty cases are automatically appealed to the state high court.

During the three-hour sentencing hearing Friday, which had to be moved to a larger courtroom because of the size of the crowd, observers repeatedly murmured disapproval as Gay’s defense attorney, Daye Shinn, and Cummings’ defense attorneys, Howard Price and Edward Rucker, asked that Henry modify the juries’ recommendations to life without possibility of parole.

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

Theory Disputed

“I know you think it’s funny, but he could teach other prisoners to read and write,” Shinn said. “Society does not gain anything by killing Mr. Gay.”

All three defense attorneys continued to dispute the prosecution’s “pass-the-gun” theory, contending that only one of the men shot Verna. During a related hearing earlier in the day, Rucker and Price argued that physical evidence showed that Cummings could not have fired any of the shots. Shinn argued that eyewitness testimony proved that Gay did not fire the gun.

Deputy Dist. Atty. John Watson, reciting a litany of crimes the two men had committed both in and out of custody during the years before they murdered Verna, argued during the sentencing hearing that “we would demean ourselves not to” sentence them to death.

“These men beat elderly women, young boys, shopkeepers who weighed no more than 90 pounds and hardly understood what was going on,” he said. “They beat them about the skull, sometimes breaking their hands as they tried to defend themselves. . . . They are liars, thieves, batterers, robbers, woman burners, and murderers.

‘These Men Are Not Human’

“In a spiritual way, in a moral way, in an emotional way, these men are not human,” he said. “They have left a string of human misery that is just stunning in its breadth.”

Sandra Verna had to stop several times to compose herself during a speech in which she asked the court to put her husband’s killers to death. She 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.”

Bizarre Twist

Earlier, the case took a bizarre twist when it was revealed that the judge had received two letters, purportedly written by Cummings and Gay, telling her that the Supreme Court would spare them from execution. The men, whose attorneys feared the letters would influence the judge, denied they had written them.

During a pre-sentencing hearing Friday, handwriting experts called on by defense attorneys said the letters were not the work of Cummings and Gay. Both were written by the same, still unknown person, they said.

Police are continuing to investigate who wrote the letters.