Murder Witnesses Now Say They Lied : Courts: They say police forced them to frame a drug addict for the 1978 slaying of a homicide detective’s son.

Two men who claimed to have been the only witnesses to the 1978 San Bernardino murder of a police officer’s son now say they actually saw nothing, but were pressured by police into giving false testimony that has kept an innocent man in prison for 13 years.

Both of the recanting witnesses, Nicholas Dean Cummings and Ricky Joe Riggins, said in sworn statements filed in court that they committed perjury at the trial of Jimmy David Segura.

They said they believe they can be prosecuted for lying under oath but are coming forward as a matter of conscience.

Segura, now 36, was sentenced to prison for 25 years to life after his 1978 conviction for the murder of David A. Leon, the 21-year-old the son of a San Bernardino city homicide detective.

Segura’s attorney, Donald W. Jordan Jr., filed the recantations in San Bernardino Superior Court as part of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. It asks the court to free Segura because police interfered with his right to a fair trial.

Superior Court Judge Dennis G. Cole on Monday ordered the state attorney general’s office to tell the court by Sept. 11 why Segura’s petition should not be granted. Cole also had been asked to disqualify the district attorney’s office from the case because of allegations that local prosecutors covered up an earlier recantation by one of the alleged witnesses.

San Bernardino Police Department spokeswoman Sherrie Guerrero said Tuesday: “With reference to our investigators, we have complete confidence in their credibility and the integrity of their investigation.”

Calls to the office of Randy Bliss, the chief detective who headed the initial investigation of the case, were not returned. Bliss is now an investigator for the San Bernardino County public defender’s office.

James Hackleman, a chief deputy district attorney for San Bernardino County, said his office is skeptical of the assertion that the wrong man is in prison and “we certainly deny any participation in any cover-up with the Police Department.” The trial prosecutor, John Arden, who is now a Municipal Court judge in Redlands, said it would be ethically improper for him to comment on a pending case.

Jordan said his client, who is being held at the state prison in Soledad, has always maintained his innocence and is eligible for parole. But, because “as the parole board puts it, he refuses to accept responsibility for his crime, they are unlikely to release him on parole.”

In a 200-page petition, Jordan said the murder of Leon, who was shot once in the head and left on the steps of an abandoned school building, triggered exceptional outrage among the police.

“The son of one of their own brethren had been murdered right under their noses and left on public display. This was taken as a deliberate taunt,” Jordan said.

For reasons that are unclear, he said the police responded by stopping, questioning and releasing a number of Latino suspects.

Segura’s mother was a Latino rights activist. Segura himself, identified in the petition as a heroin addict and burglar who had earlier been convicted of voluntary manslaughter in a shooting death, was well known to the police.

For more than two weeks after the shooting, police were telling news reporters they had no leads.

Then they got a call from a police officer in Pismo Beach.

Riggins, a heroin addict who had been living in San Bernardino, had moved to Pismo Beach to be with some friends and had gotten into a fight with one of them. In his sworn statement, he gave this account:

He said the friends had him arrested for assault and told police that Riggins had bragged about having been in a car when the son of a San Bernardino police officer was shot and killed.

Riggins said he made up that story in a pathetic attempt to look like a big shot.

But Bliss, the San Bernardino homicide detective who had been dispatched to interview Riggins, wouldn’t accept that.

Riggins said Bliss questioned him until 4 a.m. when, to get some sleep, “I told him what he wanted to hear--that I had witnessed the shooting.”

Riggins said the next day he tried to recant but decided to stick with the story when Bliss threatened him with prosecution as an accessory to murder. “It was then that I began to fabricate my elaborate story of how David Leon was murdered,” Riggins said. “ . . . The details came later as Bliss fed me details.”

Riggins said he mentioned that he “thought ‘Jimmy and Nick’ were there, but that I couldn’t remember their last names. Of course, I knew their last names well. They were the only ‘serious’ criminals I knew who the police might believe would be capable of killing someone in cold blood.”

Riggins said he had shot dope and committed a burglary with Segura. But, “It was Bliss who mentioned (that Jimmy’s last name was) Segura. I could tell that this name really excited Bliss so I decided to stick with it.”

He said Bliss showed him police reports and news articles to help him “fabricate events which were supposed to have happened during times which were not inconsistent with other events which the officers believed.”

The “Nick” whom Riggins identified as having also been in the car was another heroin addict named Nicholas Dean Cummings.

Police said they wired Riggins and sent him to buy heroin from Cummings, so Cummings could be arrested and pressured to cooperate.

Former San Bernardino Police Officer Dick Lonsford, who monitored the wire, said in a sworn statement that he remembered Riggins making leading statements to Cummings. But Lonsford said his reports on the matter and the tapes later turned up missing.

Cummings was arrested on suspicion of heroin sales and charged with burglary and being an accessory to the Leon murder.

In Cummings’ sworn statement, he said Riggins was brought into the interrogation room, and told him he had to say he saw Segura shoot Leon.

In the petition for the writ, Jordan said a tape of this meeting still exists in which there is a whispered exchange between Cummings and Riggins. A court reporter who transcribed it says she could make out Cummings saying: “You got to tell me what to tell ‘em.”

In his sworn statement, Cummings said he initially refused to cooperate, but after 24 hours of questioning--including an overnight stay at a motel throughout which he was handcuffed to a bed--he changed his mind.

He recanted to police before trial, was sentenced to two years in prison, then said he agreed to testify falsely. His sentence was changed to probation.

Eight months after the trial, Cummings recanted to Segura’s trial lawyer. And seven years later, he contacted the lawyer and recanted again--this time to a court reporter.

Riggins, meanwhile, recanted to several alcoholism counselors in Washington state, where he had moved and finally to a Washington corrections officer.

Segura filed three unsuccessful petitions, acting as his own lawyer before Jordan went to work for him for free earlier this year.

Jordan said that the physical evidence makes him disbelieve that Leon was shot in a car--described by Riggins as a Mustang Mach I that belonged to a woman named Rita. Neither Rita, nor the car, which Riggins said Segura had “burned” were ever found.