Pina-Ruiz Denies She Lied in First Penn Trial

Sarah Pina-Ruiz, a key witness in the retrial of Sagon Penn, denied Wednesday that she had lied on the stand in Penn’s first trial and blamed false statements she made while testifying a year ago on a case of mistaken identity.

Pina-Ruiz testified in the first trial that she clearly saw Penn shoot two police officers and then turn the gun on her following a confrontation in Encanto. A civilian ride-along at the time of the March 31, 1985, shootings, she described in vivid detail how she watched Penn move the gun up Police Agent Donovan Jacobs’ chest to his neck and pull the trigger.

Later in that trial, however, defense attorney Milton Silverman stunned prosecutors by producing a witness, Navy housing officer Carolyn Cherry, who testified that Pina-Ruiz told her less than a month after the shootings that she “couldn’t see anything” because “it all happened so fast.”

During the final day of testimony in Penn’s first trial, Cherry even presented a secret tape-recording of her conversation with Pina-Ruiz that was played for jurors--over the strong objections of prosecutors.

Penn, 25, was acquitted last summer of murder and attempted murder in the slaying of Police Agent Thomas Riggs and the wounding of Jacobs. Jurors found Penn innocent of two other charges and deadlocked on the remaining counts, heavily in favor of acquittal. Penn is being retried on those five charges--ranging from assault to attempted murder--before Superior Court Judge J. Morgan Lester.

On Wednesday, Pina-Ruiz explained why her testimony differed from the version of events she gave Cherry--an issue that Silverman has used to raise doubts about her credibility as a witness.

Near the end of her third day of cross-examination by Silverman, Pina-Ruiz said she had denied under oath telling Cherry she could not see the shootings because she thought Cherry was another office employee.

Pina-Ruiz said she had mistaken Cherry for another woman, who she knew only as “Daisy,” and had answered questions in the first trial based on that erroneous belief.

“(Cherry) wasn’t the person I was referring to at all,” Pina-Ruiz said earnestly. “I was not lying . . . As for Miss Cherry, I don’t recall her at all . . . I didn’t recall who she was.”

Pina-Ruiz said that most of her dealings at the housing office, where she and her husband, Navy man Roque Ruiz-Ramos, had applied for quarters after receiving threats following the shootings, had been with Daisy, “an older black woman.”

“I had talked to the older woman many times” while applying for housing,” Pina-Ruiz said. She said she had forgotten Daisy’s name at the time of the first trial--remembering only that “it was an odd name”--and assumed that she was Cherry.

Silverman, acting almost incredulous, asked Pina-Ruiz how she could have confused the two women given all the media publicity about Cherry’s surprising testimony in the case.

Silverman: “You’re saying that you had not seen Carolyn Cherry’s picture in the newspaper or on television or anything like that (before being resummoned as a witness after Cherry had testified about her conversation with Pina-Ruiz)?”

Pina-Ruiz: “No.”

Silverman: “Were you in town?”

Pina-Ruiz: “Yes.”

Still unexplored by the end of Wednesday’s court session was Pina-Ruiz’s testimony in the first trial that she had “never told anyone” she was unable to see the shootings from her position in Riggs’ patrol car.

Testifying on May 6, 1986, under questioning by Silverman, Pina-Ruiz said: “I never told (Cherry) or anyone else that I never saw anything. I saw it very clearly.”

Cherry contradicted that claim in her testimony. And the scratchy, 17-minute tape recording made by Cherry--who said she turned on a tape machine in her desk because she was concerned about Pina-Ruiz’s behavior and wanted a record of the conversation--conflicts with some statements Pina-Ruiz made in court.

On Wednesday, Pina-Ruiz briefly addressed the discrepancy between her statements in the first trial and Cherry’s testimony: “I’m not saying I didn’t say those things to Miss Cherry because obviously I did.”