Ruling on Confession in Lavera Murder Trial Expected Today

A judge is expected to rule today on whether the confession of Todd Lavera, charged in the slaying of a Tustin church elder and another man 2 years ago, can be admitted as evidence in his murder trial.

Lavera, 24, made the statement to a Los Angeles police detective after he was taken into custody in the killings of David Eugene Thompson, 30, of Tustin and Leopoldo Salgado, 48, of Los Angeles. Thompson and Salgado were killed within 90 minutes of each other during what police called a late-night crime spree by Lavera and two other men.

Lavera, of Los Angeles, is the first of two of the defendants to stand trial in the slayings, which occurred shortly before midnight April 9, 1987, and early the following day. He is charged with two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances, meaning that if convicted, he could be sentenced to death.

But because Lavera did not fire the gun in either killing, Deputy Dist. Atty. Mark Arnold has said he will not seek the death penalty and instead will push to have Lavera sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Of the others charged in the case, Andre Moore, 19, has already pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder and has been sentenced to 25 years in prison, while Tracy Lavell Carter, 20, is awaiting trial. Both Moore and Carter are from Los Angeles.

Jury selection in the Lavera case began Monday, but opening arguments are not expected until next week.

According to Arnold, the six-page statement Lavera made to police details his involvement in the robberies that led to the slayings and is crucial to the prosecution’s case. Defense attorney Joe Ingber is expected to ask Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Byrne to rule the statement inadmissible as evidence.

Lavera’s statement is considered important because Manuel Figueroa, one of the prosecution’s main witnesses, died of liver problems in January, 1988. Before he died, however, he identified Lavera as one of the assailants in the Salgado slaying. Arnold said that the testimony Figueroa gave during the preliminary hearing would be admitted into evidence.

Figueroa was sitting in the same blue Dodge as Salgado at 1:10 a.m. when Lavera, Carter and Moore allegedly tried to rob them. Police said that Moore fired into the car with a handgun when Figueroa refused to give him money and that when Salgado got out of the car, Carter used the same weapon to gun him down.

Lavera was questioned shortly after the slaying of Salgado when police found him hiding in some bushes. He was arrested in the incident 2 days after the killings.

It was roughly 90 minutes before the Salgado slaying that Thompson was shot and killed as he stood in a telephone booth at Slauson Avenue and Broadway in South-Central Los Angeles.

Thompson and his wife, Namora, had gone to Los Angeles to attend the 50th-anniversary celebration of the Bethlehem Temple Apostolic Church. Thompson, an elder at Greater Zion Apostolic Church in Tustin, had accompanied a busload of church members to the celebration and stopped at the telephone booth at 11:40 p.m. after the bus broke down. Namora Thompson, 40, told police that her husband was calling to get someone to repair the bus when three men approached her car and accosted her.

At the point of a gun, Namora Thompson handed over her purse and was then forced out of her car. Then one of the other men, later identified by police as Tracy Carter, walked up to Thompson in the telephone booth and robbed him. As Thompson stood in the telephone booth praying, Carter allegedly stuck a small-caliber handgun to Thompson’s head and fired, killing him almost instantly.

Arnold said Lavera was being tried for first-degree murder with special circumstances because under state law, he is liable for murder if he participates in a robbery that leads to a killing--even if he did not pull the trigger.

“We want to put him away so he won’t get out,” Arnold said.

The prosecution’s first witnesses are expected to be Namora Thompson and another person who saw the Thompson shooting.

Ingber, the defense counsel, said that “in neither of the homicides is Todd Lavera in possession of any gun that is operable. He did not shoot the Rev. Thompson or Mr. Salgado. The best the people (prosecution) will offer may be evidence that Lavera maybe had a toy gun that may have been used in the robbery of Mrs. Thompson.”