L.A. Police Chief on Alert to Testify at Murder Trial

Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams has been ordered to be ready at 24 hours notice to testify in Ventura County Superior Court in the case of a Reseda man charged with murder for his role in a deadly shootout with a controversial police unit last year.

Superior Court Judge Steven Z. Perren refused to quash a subpoena Wednesday ordering Williams to be ready to testify in the case of 33-year-old Robert Wayne Cunningham.

Perren said he wanted to wait until the trial is underway before making a final decision on whether the defense has grounds to call Williams.

Gary Windom, a Ventura County senior deputy public defender, said Williams was at the scene of the Newbury park gunfight for 2 1/2 hours after two officers from LAPD’s Special Investigations Section were shot.

Windom alleged that Williams participated in a “conspiracy of silence” with the officers, by going through pre-interviews with the SIS team members before they spoke with investigators from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

“It is believed that the shooting officers willingly participated in a conspiracy of silence in order to ‘get their stories straight,’ ” Windom said in his declaration in support of the subpoena. “At best, Chief Willie L. Williams was an active participant in the conspiracy of silence. At worst, he facilitated the shroud of secrecy.”

But Deputy Los Angeles City Atty. Debra Gonzales said Windom was overreaching in his declaration.

“I can’t imagine what [Windom] has to back that up,” Gonzales said. “He has a vivid imagination. . . . What he stated does not show that Chief Williams had any relevant evidence to provide . . . anything that [Williams] knows about the incident is second-, third- or fourth-hand.”

Although Williams was at the scene, Gonzales said, the only members of the SIS team he spoke with were the two officers wounded in the June 26, 1995, shootout.

“He went to the hospital to see if they were OK and to ask them if he could do anything for them or their families,” she said.

Both officers--Dets. Phillip Wixon and Larry Winston--fully recovered from their wounds.

In her motion to quash the subpoena, Gonzales included a declaration from Williams in which he states that Wixon and Winston were the only members of the team with whom he spoke, adding that at no time did he discuss particulars of the shooting with any of the SIS team.

The evening of the shootout, the officers had followed Cunningham and Daniel Soly, 26, as the pair drove to a Newbury Park liquor store and deli.

The officers reportedly watched the pair case the store and then rob it at gunpoint. When the men reached their car, the police moved in, and a gunfight ensued that left Soly dead, Cunningham paralyzed and the two officers wounded.

Cunningham, paralyzed from the waist down, was charged with murder, being held responsible for the death of his partner.

Windom has said he plans to look at whether the SIS team fired first. The special police unit has drawn criticism for allowing suspects--while under surveillance--to commit crimes before arresting them.

In April, Cunningham filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the 13-member SIS unit, accusing its members of trying to kill him. That case is not set to start in federal court until March. Opening statements in Cunningham’s criminal trial begin in Ventura Superior Court this morning.