Rickey Cummings should learn his fate today for his role in the 2011 ambush-style slaying of two men at an East Waco apartment complex and the gunshot injuries to two others.
Jurors in Waco's 19th State District Court should begin deliberating whether Cummings deserves the death penalty or life in prison without parole by 11 a.m. today, the 12th day of Cummings' capital murder trial.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys will give jury summations after Judge Ralph Strother reads his instructions to the jury at 9 a.m.
Cummings, 23, an alleged member of the violent street gang Bloods, was convicted last week in the March 2011 shooting deaths of Keenan Hubert, 20, and Tyus Sneed, 17, at the Lakewood Villas apartment complex, 1601 Spring St.
Deontrae Majors, 22, and Marion Bible, 23, who were in the front seat of the car, were wounded in the hail of gunfire that pierced the car in which the men were sitting.
Majors and Bible managed to escape the barrage and ran to a nearby apartment.
Defense attorneys Russ Hunt Sr., Walter M. Reaves Jr. and Michelle Tuegel called Cummings' grandmother, two aunts, a cousin and the mother of his 4-year-old son as witnesses Tuesday.
All said Cummings was an intelligent, caring person and a good father.
They said they did not know the ruthless, gun-wielding, drug-dealing, gang-banging side of Cummings that District Attorney Abel Reyna and assistants Michael Jarrett and Greg Davis portrayed during prosecution testimony.
"He is a good kid," said his grandmother, Erma Richards, with photos of Cummings and his brothers and his son, Jayvien, displayed on a screen behind her. "He has always put me up there. I'd do anything in my power for little Rickey to get life. In my heart, I don't feel like he did it."
The defense witnesses agreed that despite Cummings growing up with his father in prison, he was surrounded by a large, loving family whom he could depend on.
"I did my best. We all did," Richards said.
Cummings' cousin, Jarrett Embry, said he went to school with Cummings in Rockdale and Waco. He said he doesn't think Cummings is in a gang because he always wore all colors of clothing and made good grades.
"All Rickey wanted to do was play ball, get the girls and look fresh," he said.
Embry told the jury Cummings should not be subjected to the death penalty.
"If y'all feel like he killed somebody, he should be tried for that," he said. "But it's the same difference if you kill him."
Ruby Brown, Cummings' aunt, testified Cummings is a wonderful father and a loving man.
"He has a good heart," she said. "He will do anything for anybody."
She said Cummings frequently watched her son while she was at work and helped him with his homework.
Under cross-examination from prosecutor Jarrett, Brown confirmed that Cummings was loved as a child and had a good, happy childhood.
Jarrett asked Brown if the choices Cummings made were his own, not something brought on by his upbringing, degree of intelligence or other societal factors. She said he made his own choices, good and bad.
Brittany Hayes, the mother of Cummings' son, said he is a good father who was happy about her high school pregnancy when she was not. She said her young son asks where his father is, adding that she wants Jayvien to be able to maintain a relationship with Cummings.
She said under cross-examination that Cummings does not pay child support but that he and his family have helped her financially.
Prosecutor Davis asked Hayes about an incident in which Cummings came to her job, grabbed her phone to keep her from calling police and threatened to beat her up. She denied the incident, despite Davis reading from a police report about it.
Mitigation expert
The defense team tried to call mitigation expert Amy Nguyen to testify about what she said was a potential link between violent behavior and the "unhealthiness" of the community in which one is raised, exposure to violence, community risk factors and a lack of education.
Davis challenged the relevance of the testimony, especially after Nguyen said she knows nothing about Cummings, his family or the circumstances under which he was raised.
Strother asked Nguyen, after looking at maps and demographic charts she had prepared showing where Cummings grew up, if she was trying to say that a village raises a child. She agreed, but the judge was not swayed, asking what her data meant about him because Strother grew up on a farm.
Reaves argued that the defense was entitled to elicit the testimony, saying jurors could attach any significance they wanted to her testimony.
Davis said he was troubled by the racial overtones of her proposed testimony, adding Cummings should be judged as a man and not as a member of any particular race.
Davis got in trouble early in the trial with his opening statements suggesting that East Waco was a foreign world unknown to jurors where violent murders are committed and people are afraid to report what they see to police.
The judge did not allow the testimony, saying it was not scientifically reliable and was a series of overly broad generalizations.
Defense attorneys declined comment about the ruling after court recessed Tuesday, but the issue may be fodder for an appeal. Jurors will be asked to answer three questions to determine Cummings' punishment:
* Is there a probability that he would commit acts of violence in the future?
* Did he actually cause death of the deceased, or did he not actually cause the death of the deceased but intend to kill the deceased or another or anticipate that a human life would be taken?
* Is there sufficient mitigating evidence to warrant a sentence other than death?
If the jury answers the first two questions "yes" and the third "no," the judge will impose a death sentence. If the questions are answered in any other combination, Strother will impose a sentence of life without parole.
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