Executive Sentenced to Life Term in 1963 Slaying : Courts: New computer technology linked Vernon Robinson to fingerprints at scene of Hollywood clerk’s murder.

Still proclaiming his innocence, a former cleaning company executive was sentenced Friday to a life term in prison for his conviction in the slaying 30 years ago of a Hollywood drugstore clerk.

The only evidence that linked Vernon Mathis Robinson, 48, to the crime was fingerprints found at the scene that police matched to him in 1990 through new computer technology.

In handing down the sentence, Superior Court Judge Nora M. Manella rejected Robinson’s plea for probation, a request based partly on grounds that the strangulation and bludgeoning death of Thora Marie Rose in her apartment on Detroit Street happened so long ago.

Manella denied the request, saying, “Most people who strangle and bludgeon someone don’t get a 30-year reprieve. . . .

“The irony here is not that it took so long to bring this case to trial, but that it took so long for him to be held accountable,” the judge said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul W. Turley had argued vigorously against any leniency. Robinson, he said, forfeited his right to mercy by lying on the witness stand about his whereabouts the night Rose was slain in her bed and by continuing to say he has been wrongly convicted.

“The very first day of Mr. Robinson’s rehabilitation will begin when he stands up, looks (Rose’s daughter) in the eyes and says, ‘I beg your forgiveness,’ ” Turley said.

Even then, a life sentence is appropriate because Robinson “needs to be punished for what he has done,” the prosecutor said.

Rose’s daughter, Donna Goodwin, who was 20 years old at the time of the slaying, was in court Friday with her two children, husband and a family friend.

Goodwin told Manella that the murder of her mother had a profound effect on her family that continues to this day.

Robinson’s court-appointed lawyer, Bruce G. Cormicle, contended that the life sentence “is effectively a death sentence” for Robinson because a parole board will not give him a release date until he admits the crime for which he was convicted.

Outside the courtroom, the Rev. James Lawson, pastor of Holman Baptist Church, where Robinson’s relatives are members, said he believes Robinson was convicted because he had an ineffective defense.

“I understand why he was convicted, but I still have serious doubts about it,” the minister said. “It’s a question of having the money you need to put on the kind of defense you must have to counter the state’s case.”

Cormicle indicated that he will appeal the sentence as well as the conviction, based partly on the fact that he inadvertently allowed jurors to be given documents that contained statements Manella had ordered edited out because they were unfairly prejudicial.

Rose was killed Oct. 3, 1963, during what police believe was a burglary and attempted rape.

Investigators found at least 35 fingerprints they matched to Robinson in Rose’s apartment and on kitchen windows that had been removed so someone could gain entrance.

Since his arrest in Minneapolis in 1991, Robinson has maintained that the fingerprints could not be his because he had been undergoing basic training in the Navy in San Diego on the night of the murder.

A defense witness who has since died backed up the alibi at an extradition hearing in Minneapolis for Robinson, saying he remembered them being together at the naval training base.

But Navy records indicated that Robinson was not in San Diego the night of the killing, but in training in Santa Monica under circumstances that allowed him to leave at night.

The records also showed that Robinson and the alibi witness were never in training in the same place at the same time.

Cormicle did not challenge the accuracy of the records.