Double-Murderer Will Not Face a 2nd Trial Over Death Penalty

A double-murderer whose victims included a mother who was picking her daughter up from Bible study has been spared the death penalty, prosecutors announced Thursday.

A month after jurors could not agree whether Etienne Michael Moore, 25, deserved death for his crimes, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has decided not to seek a retrial on the question and accept the default penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Moore is scheduled to be sentenced by Superior Court Judge J.D. Smith in October for the 5-year-old shooting deaths of Laurie Myles outside a Chatsworth home where her daughter was studying and that of Talin Tarkhanian, whom he killed on orders from another man to earn his “stripes” in a gang.

Deputy Dist. Attys. Janice Maurizi and Edwin Greene said Moore deserved to die for his crimes, but jurors could not agree on a penalty, voting 10 to 2 for death for Tarkhanian’s murder and 9 to 3 for death for killing Myles.

Prosecutors said they decided not to further pursue the death penalty mainly because Tarkhanian’s relatives asked not to be put through another trial. Although any retrial would have been only on the question of penalty, prosecutors would have had to present much of the evidence of guilt, Greene said, because the circumstances of the killings are what made prosecutors seek a death sentence.

“The families, particularly the Tarkhanian family, really expressed the desire not to go through it again,” Greene said. Even though the 10-2 split was promising, he said, there was no guarantee a second jury would unanimously vote for death.

“We didn’t get everything we wanted, but we did all right. We should be feeling OK,” Greene said. He stressed that the case was difficult to solve and complicated to present, relying on hundreds of pieces of evidence and hundreds more witnesses.

Moore, a former Faith Baptist High School basketball star, and another defendant, LaCedrick Johnson, were members of a robbery ring that targeted middle- and upper-class Valley residents, followed them home and struck as the victims were getting out of their cars. Myles was just another robbery victim who apparently did not give up her property quickly enough.

Johnson, who was driving the getaway car when Myles was robbed and shot, was also convicted of Myles’ murder and has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

A third defendant, Shashonee Solomon, 35, ordered the hit on Tarkhanian in part because the woman broke off their romantic relationship. He was sentenced to 38 years to life in prison, the maximum for the charges of which he was convicted.

Jurors failed to agree whether Solomon’s crime met special circumstances that would make him eligible for the death penalty. Smith declared a mistrial on those counts, which prosecutors declined to retry. They accepted the long incarceration instead.

Prosecutors had also alleged that Johnson, 24, was also involved in Tarkhanian’s murder, but the jury hung on those counts. Prosecutors could have retried him, but decided against it because Johnson would not serve any more time in prison for the second murder.