Defense Rests in Slaying of 17-Year-Old at Auto Shop

Calling just one witness, an attorney Monday rested his defense of Edward Nishida Drake, who is charged with the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old Simi Valley boy 15 months ago.

Defense attorney Stephen M. Hogg said he will call another witness briefly Wednesday before closing arguments and jury instructions begin. Drake is charged with second-degree murder and could face 25 years to life in jail in connection with the shooting death of Leonard Anthony Coppola.

The 52-year-old Drake opted not to take the stand in his own defense Monday. The only defense witness Hogg called was a Simi Valley Police Department crime scene investigator who prosecutors quizzed last week.

Outside court, Hogg said there was no need for his client to testify.

“At the end of every case, we evaluate whether we feel the prosecution has proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt,” Hogg said. “Clearly, we don’t think they have. Keep in mind that they’ve charged this man with murder. They didn’t charge him with manslaughter. They say he willfully and intentionally tried to kill someone. . . . It’s our position that there was no volitionary act.”

Hogg contends that Drake shot his friend Coppola because, in the darkness that October night, he mistook the young man for an armed burglar.

Drake awoke that night to the sound of a tapping on his shop window. It was Coppola, attempting to open a combination padlock, so he and a buddy could retrieve a trailer from behind Drake’s Mercedes-Benz repair business.

Convinced he saw Coppola crouched with his hands clasped in front of him in a combat stance, Drake fired a single shot from his .44-caliber magnum revolver that hit the unarmed Coppola in the face, his lawyer has said.

In the weeklong trial, prosecutors have called witnesses contending that Drake had been drinking earlier that evening and should have been able to see Coppola in the light outside his shop. The defense, meanwhile, argued that things happened so quickly that Drake either jumped back or tripped, winding up on the ground after the shooting, unsure if he had fired at someone or had been fired upon.

Prosecutor Bob Calvert called his final witness Monday as well. David Stenkie testified he had met Drake in jail a month or two after the shooting.

Stenkie testified that Drake had described the shooting to him as occurring when he was walking outside his office, accidentally tripped and his gun went off. “I think he said [the gun] had a hair-trigger,” Stenkie said.

Throughout Monday’s brief testimony, Coppola’s mother, stepfather and aunt sat silent in the courtroom. Clutching a crumpled tissue, the young man’s mother sobbed onto her husband’s shoulder at day’s end.

In court today, lawyers and Superior Court Judge Ken W. Riley will discuss which laws to instruct the jury about.

Drake is charged with second-degree murder, which carries a penalty of 15 years to life, and he used a firearm, which could add up to 10 more years to that sentence. However, it’s possible that the jury could be instructed to consider a lesser charge of manslaughter.

Closing arguments are set to begin Wednesday morning.