Prosecution Says Accused Home Depot Killer Had Drug Plan : Courts: Sean Darnell Slade could face death penalty if convicted in fatal shooting of guard.

Calling it a “brutal assassination,” a prosecutor asked a jury Monday to convict a prison parolee in the shooting death of an armored guard, a case that could lead to the death penalty.

Sean Darnell Slade, 27, faces murder charges in the July 20, 1992, execution-style slaying of Edwin Maldonado during a robbery at a Home Depot hardware store in San Fernando.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Cynthia L. Ulfig portrayed Slade as a hardened criminal who developed a plan to obtain a large sum of cash so he could purchase drugs and become a dealer.

“This plan probably started to form while he was in custody,” Ulfig said. “He wanted to buy a ‘dope sack’ and they would be on Easy Street,” the prosecutor said, referring to Slade and his wife, Jalanda Bell.

Slade was paroled from state prison after being convicted of manslaughter in 1988, only 25 days before the Home Depot case.

Slade had several friends who worked at the hardware store--friends who were not at work “when the bullets flew”--and he knew the armored courier arrived at about same time every day, Ulfig said during her closing argument.

Slade said he had set up a “lick,” meaning “where you lick the place clean, where there are no witnesses left,” the prosecutor said.

The robbers snuck up behind Maldonado, 26, who had just removed $82,000 from the Home Depot safe, and fired into the back of his head before he had a chance to turn around, according to evidence presented at the trial. The gunman then stood over the guard as he lay on the ground and pumped two more bullets into his head, witnesses testified.

A Home Depot employee, who was standing just a few feet from the guard when he was shot, identified Slade as the killer.

A police officer testified that with the $42,000 in cash obtained in the robbery--the balance was in checks--a person could have bought more than five pounds of cocaine that could have been cooked into crack cocaine. “That $42,000 investment would yield you a quarter-million dollars tax-free,” Ulfig said.

When jurors begin deliberations, a process expected to begin Wednesday, they will weigh charges of murder and special circumstances of murder during a robbery and while lying in wait.

If the jury convicts Slade of murder and either of the special circumstance charges, it will be reconvened to determine if he should be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.