Killer Receives Death Sentence

Before being sentenced to death Monday, convicted murderer Bernard Nelson expressed sorrow over a devastating string of Los Angeles street shootings involving a single gun. But he calmly and defiantly disavowed any role in them.

“I don’t see where I should be obligated to show remorse for crimes I did not commit,” said the 30-year-old gang member, gangsta rap writer and former hospital worker, in a prepared statement. “Undoubtedly I feel sorry for the families and victims involved, as well as my own family. . . . So as I go to death row . . . I can go there with a clear conscience and peace of mind because I know I am innocent.”

After Superior Court Judge Jacqueline A. Connor methodically rejected his motions for a new trial or a reduced sentence, Nelson watched stone-faced as he was given the death penalty for the April 5, 1995, slaying of model and aspiring actor Richard Allen Dunbar II in an attempted carjacking.

In the same downtown court, Nelson was convicted last year of the attempted murder of a security guard who was shot several times outside a Hollywood nightclub in 1996, and the attempted murder in 1997 of a John Doe and two Los Angeles police officers who happened on a drive-by shooting.

Testimony linked Nelson to a .380-caliber Beretta that was stolen in a Van Nuys burglary and ended up as a “community” gun used by at least two gang members in several crimes tied together through ballistics evidence.

Nelson was not charged with all known crimes involving the Beretta. But testimony about one--the 1994 shooting of USC student Lisa La Pierre--was presented during the penalty phase of his trial and the 14-year-old who shot and paralyzed La Pierre said Nelson supplied the gun during a robbery rampage.

Shedding angry tears, members of the Dunbar family vowed Monday to be present if and when the state takes Nelson’s life. “You have no love in your heart; you have no soul, no spirit,” said Dunbar’s sister Christina, who traveled across the country with her parents for the trial and sentencing. “Now that the death penalty is upon you, you can do some soul and spirit searching. . . . You should suffer as long as is humanly possible.”

Cradling some of Richard Dunbar’s modeling trophies, his mother addressed Nelson and told him what it meant to lose a loving son who phoned her every week. “You changed my life,” said Henrietta Dunbar of Toledo, Ohio. “My life will never be the same. . . . He had his dreams and goals. You stopped his life. You also stopped ours.”

Wheeled into the courtroom aisle, La Pierre told the court how the single bullet that damaged her spinal cord changed her life, every moment of it. “When I was first looking at Bernard Nelson, I felt no evil,” she said. “By the end of the trial, I saw so much evil.”

Police Officer Charles Coleman--who along with his partner was fired upon during a drive-by involving Nelson and another man--said that if that day in 1997 had gone differently, “My wife would not have a husband, and my children a father. . . .”

Defense attorney Michael Batista sought a new trial, contending that the key eyewitness to the Dunbar slaying misidentified Nelson and could not possibly have identified the shooter because he was 90 feet away.

Batista maintained, as he had at trial, that the man who shot the security guard was left-handed, not right-handed like Nelson, and that the security guard was only 95% certain Nelson had shot him several times in the body and face.

These arguments, as well as an allegation of juror misconduct, were rejected by the judge.

Along with Nelson’s stepfather, MTA bus driver Richard McCullen, Batista pleaded for Nelson’s life. The attorney reminded the judge that Nelson had been abused as a child by his late father who sometimes taped his mouth shut.

“Life without the possibility of parole is a severe punishment,” Batista said. “Some people even think it is worse than death.”

Nelson was convicted of killing Dunbar after the model parked his BMW outside a friend’s apartment building near Westchester. A witness said there were two shots, a man’s cry for help, then two more shots. Dunbar died of two wounds to the lungs.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Danette Meyers said the victims and their families wanted justice, not vengeance. “The defendant committed the crimes for one reason,” she said. “Greed. . . . He shot a man who begged for his life. Clearly in this case he deserves death.”

Judge Connor agreed, saying the evidence of guilt was “overwhelming” and supported the death penalty. Nelson, she said, had not only repeatedly acted in total disregard for the safety of others but also had encouraged younger gang members to commit robberies.

Likening the prosecution’s case to a car salesman peddling a “lemon,” Nelson contended he was trapped by lies spun by overzealous law enforcement work, and gang members with something to gain. “The guilt will fall on those who manipulated the evidence,” he said. “But time will reveal the truth.”

Dunbar’s father, the Rev. Richard Allen Dunbar I, of Columbus, Ohio, said later that the sentence brings some sense of closure. “He blamed everybody but himself,” he said of Nelson. “He’s evil; there’s nothing to do but eliminate it.”