Deputy’s Killer Gets Maximum Prison Term

Declaring the penalty so inadequate as to be unjust, a judge imposed the maximum prison term of 30 years to life Tuesday on a car thief who shot two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies in Carson two years ago, killing one of them.

“The laws of the state of California are woefully inadequate, both to punish crime and to protect society. And this case underscores that,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Alexander H. Williams III said as he passed sentence on Lionel F. Henry.

The courtroom was packed with dozens of sheriff’s deputies and friends and relatives of the victims.

Henry, 38, was found guilty last July of second-degree murder in the March 19, 1983, killing of Deputy Lawrence Michael Lavieri, 38, and the attempted murder of Deputy Douglas Smith, 32. He will be eligible for parole in about 11 years.

Critical of Code

Smith, whose back wound caused him to retire, was among the spectators Tuesday.

The judge noted that the jury found Henry guilty of second-degree murder, thus making him ineligible for the death penalty. Without further comment on that, Williams criticized sections of the state Penal Code that set the maximum penalty for attempted murder at nine years and restrict judges’ ability to impose full consecutive sentences for related crimes.

Because the state prison system credits prisoners with two days of “good time and work time” for each day behind bars, Williams said, that “means that if you do everything you can to kill somebody, you have to wait at least 4 1/2 years before you can try it again. That is not public protection. That is not justice.”

He also accused the Legislature of offering “a volume discount” for those who commit multiple violent crimes. In most cases, state law limits the length of consecutive sentences for related crimes to one-third of the average sentence that could otherwise be imposed.

Henry sat impassively during the sentencing. His attorney, Ray Newman, sought concurrent sentences for each of the five felony convictions, saying his client was frightened after he fired shots at the deputies.

“This was not a malicious act,” the lawyer said. “I know Mr. Henry has felt bad about what happened; he’s expressed that to me many times.”

Sheriff’s deputies in the gallery stirred at the remarks.

According to his probation report, Henry was convicted of a 1977 attack on a Pomona police officer. He had been arrested in 1981 for assault on two Los Angeles police officers but was released for lack of evidence.

In seeking the maximum sentence, Deputy Dist. Atty. John W. Ouderkirk said: “I suggest to the court that the defendant should spend the rest of his life in a state prison so that this should never happen again to a deputy sheriff or anybody else.”

‘It Was Vicious’

“I think the judge reflected all of our feelings,” the slain deputy’s girlfriend, Jane Landry, said outside court. “It was vicious. It was calculated. It was cold-blooded. There was nothing accidental about anything (Henry) did that day.”

The sentiment was echoed by Smith, who is attending electronics school and working part time in a restaurant owned by relatives.

“I was supposed to have been paralyzed,” Smith said. As it is, he will walk with a limp and live with pain in his right leg the rest of his life, the former deputy said.

Smith and Lavieri were shot after responding to a call about a suspicious person at a Carson service station. When they arrived, Henry was sitting in a car that, it later turned out, he had stolen in San Diego County.

After the deputies ordered Henry out of the car, a struggle ensued. Henry grabbed Lavieri’s revolver and shot both deputies. Although wounded in the head, Lavieri took Smith’s gun and followed Henry into a nearby vacant house, where Henry shot the deputy again in the head, then crushed his skull with the lid of a toilet tank. Henry was captured by passers-by.