California
Man convicted of killing cop after 40 years in retrial
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A man accused of killing a Los Angeles police officer during a traffic stop four decades ago has been convicted again in a retrial this week.
Jurors deliberated for two weeks before finding Kenneth Gay, 65, guilty of murdering Officer Paul Verna in 1983. Gay, who has been incarcerated roughly four decades already, will serve a life sentence because he was convicted of murder with special circumstances.
“It’s not exactly happiness. We’ve been in trial for 11 weeks and to have the jury be out so long, it was agonizing,” Sandy Jackson, Verna’s widow, told the Los Angeles Times. “But the end result was what it should be. (Gay) should not be out among us.”
Prosecutors said Gay and his co-defendant, Raynard Cummings, were passengers in a car that Verna, a motorcycle officer, stopped for speeding through a stop sign in Lake View Terrace, a suburban neighborhood in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley.
Prosecutors said the two men, who had committed more than a dozen robberies in the weeks prior, thought Verna would arrest them because they were armed ex-convicts riding in a stolen car.
Verna wrote down Pamela Cummings’ name — a crucial move that later helped detectives solve the murder — and leaned into the car to ask Cummings and Gay for identification. Fear of being arrested, Cummings fired the first shot and then, prosecutors say, passed the gun to Gay, who jumped out of the car to pump another five bullets into the officer.
The original trial was held in 1985 and separate juries convicted Cummings and Gay, who each accused the other of being the shooter, and recommended the death penalty.
Three years later, the state Supreme Court overturned Gay’s death sentence on the grounds of incompetent counsel, but left the guilty verdict in place.
The court again sentenced Gay to death in 2000 after a retrial just for the penalty phase of the case. The high court overturned that, too, and later the justices unanimously decided to vacate Gay’s initial guilty conviction. The justices wrote that Gay’s attorney, who was later disbarred and has since died, among other things, did not introduce crucial evidence that might have swayed the jury to come to a different verdict.
Gay had insisted on his innocence and maintained that Cummings was the lone shooter. Cummings remains incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison.
Indiana
Woman gets life in prison without parole for killing 5-year-old son
PORTLAND, Ind. (AP) — A northeastern Indiana woman convicted of killing her 5-year-old son has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
A Jay County judge sentenced Chelsea Lanett Crossland, 28, on Thursday after accepting the jury’s recommendation that Crossland face life in prison without parole for Christian Crossland’s March 2022 death.
Jurors had convicted the Portland woman in July of murder and neglect of a dependent resulting in death.
An autopsy found that Crossland’s son died as a result of “complications from blunt force trauma” to his head and face and that he had also suffered from malnutrition, The Star Press of Muncie reported.
According to court documents, Crossland beat, choked and spanked her son and at times did not allow him to eat “for days at a time.”
Maryland
Oral surgeon convicted of murder in girlfriend’s overdose death
ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) — An oral surgeon was convicted on Friday of a murder charge in the death of his girlfriend who overdosed on anesthetic drugs that he administered at his Maryland home.
Jurors heard testimony that James Ryan, 50, set up an intravenous stand to administer the addictive drugs to his 25-year-old girlfriend, Sarah Harris, who was found dead at his Montgomery County home in January 2022.
Ryan faces a maximum of 55 years in prison when he is sentenced at a date to be determined, The Washington Post reported.
An autopsy found that Harris died of intoxication from ketamine, propofol and diazepam.
Prosecutors argued that Ryan showed “an extreme indifference” to Harris’ life by continuously supplying her with drugs as her addiction and health worsened. She weighed 83 pounds (37 kilograms) at the time of her death.
Montgomery County Assistant State’s Attorney Jennifer Harrison said Ryan was a skilled oral surgeon who knew how risky the drugs could be.
“And despite his vast knowledge and training in the field, he continuously provided these dangerous, deadly anesthetic drugs to Sarah Harris over a period of time even as he watched her deteriorate before his eyes,” the prosecutor told jurors.
Ryan did not testify at his trial in Montgomery County Circuit Court. His lawyers argued that Harris died of either suicide or an accidental overdose that she administered to herself. Defense attorney Thomas DeGonia told jurors that Harris had asked Ryan for ketamine for “relief from her depression” months before her death.
Harris began working for Ryan and dating him after she was a patient at his office in Germantown, Maryland.
Indiana
ACLU sues DOC over law blocking gender surgery for inmates
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Civil rights advocates are suing Indiana’s Department of Corrections over the state’s law prohibiting gender-affirming surgery for inmates.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit against the department in federal court in Evansville on Monday.
The lawsuit alleges that the law enacted in April violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment and the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
The ACLU maintains that transgender surgery can be lifesaving. Health experts have found that gender dysphoria, or a sense of unease about one’s gender identity, can lead to depression, anxiety and an increased risk of suicide.
A spokesperson for the corrections department declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb also signed a bill in April prohibiting minors from accessing gender-affirming care such as transgender surgeries or medication. The ACLU has filed a federal lawsuit challenging that law, as well.
