2 Admit Killing Pastor in Case That Stirred Charges of Racism : Crime: D.A.’s office was criticized over initial low bail recommended for two white defendants. The victim was a black clergyman who headed a church in Pacoima.

Two white college students admitted in court Wednesday that they shot and killed a black pastor at his Chatsworth home last year.

At the time of the defendants’ arrests, the case triggered charges of racism against the district attorney’s office, prompting it to change its bail policy.

In a plea bargain arrangement, Dana L. Singer, 19, pleaded guilty in San Fernando Superior Court to second-degree murder in the July, 28, 1990, death of Carl White, 54, pastor of Apostolic Temple Church of Pacoima. Philip J. Dimenno, 20, pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter.

In return, the two were promised reduced sentences.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenneth L. Barshop said Singer, who admitted in court that he fired the pistol that killed White, will be sentenced to 20 years to life in state prison and Dimenno will be sentenced to 12 years. Singer could be paroled in 14 years and Dimenno in six, the prosecutor said. Judge Howard J. Schwab set sentencing for Sept. 27.

The killing occurred after the two men went to White’s house to try to persuade him not to report a traffic accident in which Dimenno had rear-ended the pastor’s car. They were arrested three days later after trying to use White’s credit card to buy car tires and wheels.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Billy Webb initially recommended bail of $20,000 each for the two men, an unusually low amount in a murder case.

That led the predominantly black Ministers’ Fellowship of the Greater San Fernando Valley to accuse the district attorney’s office of “lethal racism.” the group charged that the bail would have been much higher if the victim had been white and the defendants black.

The bail was revoked the day after it was granted and the two have been jailed without bail.

Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner subsequently announced that, in the future, prosecutors in branch offices must obtain high-level approval for bail recommendations of less than $250,000 in murder cases.

Most leaders of the ministers’ group were unavailable for comment Wednesday.

But one, the Rev. Nathaniel Ware, pastor of Apostolic New Testament No. 2 in Pacoima, said the plea bargain seemed “like it isn’t enough, because they shot him in cold blood when they were robbing him. It sounds like first-degree murder to me.”

Barshop said prosecutors agreed to the arrangement because “most of our case for first-degree murder would have to be based on statements they (the defendants) made to police. And those statements were not all we would have wanted in a first-degree case.”

The prosecutor cited an interview with police in which Singer, a Cal State Northridge student, said that White seemed about to attack Dimenno, who wanted the accident to go unreported because he feared he would be arrested for an outstanding traffic warrant.

At the time, Dimenno had been accepted at UC Santa Barbara on a scholarship.

According to police testimony at the preliminary hearing in September, Singer told authorities that he fired one round at White, hitting him in the back of the head.

The pastor’s body was found the next day by members of his congregation.

Dimenno’s attorney, Harold Greenberg, said his client accepted the plea bargain “because it just wasn’t clear how the case would come out at trial. It could have been first-degree and that would have meant life without possibility of parole.”

Police initially speculated that the killing might have been racially motivated.

But Barshop said Wednesday that “race played no part in this.

“If the Rev. White had been white it would have made no difference. These guys just didn’t want that accident reported.”