VENTURA : Ex-Sheriff’s Official Declines to Testify

Testimony in the trial of a former Sheriff’s Department supervisor accused of stealing a firearm ended Tuesday without the defendant putting on any evidence.

Norman A. Wade, who headed the department’s crime lab until being forced to resign in 1992, is charged with one count of grand theft.

Wade took a gun from the property room and sold it to an Oxnard pawn shop in May, 1991, prosecutors said. The theft was discovered after Wade was forced resign after pleading no contest to an unrelated theft, officials said.

In September, the 49-year-old defendant pleaded guilty to a felony charge in connection with the stolen .357-magnum pistol.

He later rescinded that plea after learning that his conviction would not be reduced to a misdemeanor and would cause him to lose his current job as a toxicologist in Phoenix.

In Wade’s trial, which began Monday in Ventura County Superior Court, prosecutors put on testimony from seven witnesses who linked Wade to the stolen firearm. The defense rested without calling any witnesses or entering any evidence.

Defense attorney Robert A. Schwartz said closing arguments will be heard today.

Wade joined the Sheriff’s Department in June, 1990. He was forced to resign two years later, after pleading no contest to charges of stealing a license-plate registration sticker from the property room and falsifying registration documents for his own car.