By Richard K. De Atley
The Press Enterprise
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Jurors who will decide the fate of Earl Ellis Green heard the man they convicted of slaying Riverside Police Officer Ryan Bonaminio described either as a violent career criminal, or a man whose life was filled with rejection, anger and neglect.
“You will see no more stark contrast between two men,” Deputy District Attorney John Aki told the eight-man, four-woman panel. They jury returned Monday May 21 from a one-week break after finding Green guilty of first-degree murder in Bonaminio’s slaying.
The panel will be asked to decide whether to recommend a death sentence or life in prison without parole for Green, a 46-year-old Rubidoux parolee.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Jean Leonard told the panel she expects them to get the case by June 4, at the latest.
Aki outlined for jurors a string of seven selected felonies committed by Green that stretched from 1990 to 2007, including battery on a peace officer in 1990, vehicle theft, and two occurrences of spousal battery.
“Each act of violence, or threat of violence, is necessary to give a complete picture of the defendant,” Aki told jurors. He said Green’s behavior showed that he was undeterred by his prior felony convictions.
Deputy Capital Defender O.G. Magno reviewed for the jury Green’s convulsive life: He witnessed domestic violence at home and was abandoned by his father at age 7. He was a runaway at ages 8, 11 and 14. Green then was in foster care because his mother refused to take him back. He was a fixture in the juvenile justice system by age 11, and was in the California Youth Authority by 16.
Magno said from his earliest years, Green ran away from problems and had been described as carrying with him a “childlike” belief that everyone was persecuting him. In the late 1980s, Green lost his wife to a car accident in which he was not involved, but it turned him into a “monster,” Magno said.
While the juvenile justice system observed Green’s problems, it never treated or tried to correct them, Magno said. He was diagnosed as bipolar and with auditory hallucinations in prison by 1999, but it went untreated and without medication when he left the system.
“We are not offering an excuse” for Bonaminio’s slaying, Magno told jurors. “But you need to know (Green’s) life before you decide whether he is to live or die.”
Defense attorneys during the trial conceded that Green had killed the officer, but had sought a finding of second-degree murder.
Aki described Bonaminio as a man who grew up in a blue-collar Riverside family, went to local schools, served his country with two tours of duty with the Army in Iraq and gave his life for his community as a police officer.
Bonaminio, 27, died after Green beat him with a solid metal dumbbell bar and then shot the officer with his own service handgun on Nov. 7, 2010.
Bonaminio had been chasing Green on foot near Riverside’s Fairmount Park when he slipped in a muddy planter. Green then attacked the downed officer. Green had jumped and ran from the cab of what turned out to be a stolen semitrailer rig during a traffic stop by Bonaminio.
On a courtroom screen, jurors saw photos from Bonaminio’s youth, as a soldier in Iraq, and his policeman’s funeral. Family members and friends could be heard sobbing quietly.
The tentative witness list for each side will try to bolster their arguments for either aggravation, to find Green was so responsible for Bonaminio’s 2010 slaying that he should be condemned to death, or for mitigation - which takes into consideration such matters as extreme duress or mental impairment - that could lead to a recommendation of the lesser sentence of life without parole.
The prosecution began its case first, and called two former Banning police officers who wound up fighting with Green while trying to arrest him on Oct. 31, 1990, while investigating a possible stolen car. That resulted in Green’s conviction for battery on a peace officer.
In a struggle on the ground with Green to get handcuffs on him, former officer John Ramirez testified about how he accidentally struck his own sergeant on the back of the head with a flashlight.
In the nearly 22-year-old crime, Ramirez had difficulty recalling which injuries Ford suffered from being struck by Green.
Magno brought up that Ramirez had initially told a district attorney investigator he attributed a nose and lip injury on Ford’s face to his flashlight, rather than Green lashing out.
But Ford, who has served as acting police chief for Banning, said he remembered clearly where Ramirez’s blow fell, on the back of his head.
Copyright 2012 The Press Enterprise, Inc.