The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to review the case of a former federal police officer who was convicted of murdering a young man in Hollywood more than three decades ago.
Pierre Alphonse Romain, now 59, was convicted in August 2017 of first-degree murder for the June 29, 1987, shooting death of Jade Maurice Clark.
Romain is serving a 27-years-to-life state prison sentence.
He and an alleged accomplice were initially arrested about a month after the shooting, but charges were dismissed before trial based on insufficient evidence. At the time of his initial arrest, Romain was an active candidate for a job as a Los Angeles Police Department officer.
Romain was arrested again in 2003, while employed as a Department of Defense police sergeant at Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo.
At the time of his 2003 arrest, Romain had applied for a job with the San Francisco Police Department. A call from that department’s background investigators prompted now-retired Los Angeles Police Department Detective Rick Jackson to re-examine physical evidence from the cold-case shooting.
More sophisticated DNA testing technology allowed detectives to use a bullet fired from Clark’s gun to tie Romain to the case, authorities said.
Romain was wounded in the arm while trading shots with the fatally injured Clark, who had a .25-caliber pistol under his seat, police said.
Deputy District Attorney Tannaz Mokayef told jurors during the trial that the DNA evidence was undeniable.
“There is no getting around the DNA,” the prosecutor said.
The prosecution alleged that Romain was a 22-year-old gang member at the time of Clark’s killing — an assertion the defense contested. Police said Romain had crashed a friend’s customized Nissan 300 ZX just before he and an accomplice tried to take a nearly identical model from Clark, who was parked outside a club at 845 N. Highland Ave.
Romain’s attorney, Winston Kevin McKesson, told jurors that the allegations against the defendant were “false” and that his client’s career had been “left in limbo.”
“He was a trained policeman … Everything he did was inconsistent with gang membership,” McKesson said in his closing argument.
“… After 32 years this day has come!” the victim’s mother, Yolanda, told the judge at Romain’s August 2019 sentencing, lauding Jackson for his hard work and dedication to demonstrate that “families can see it’s never too late for justice.”
She lashed out at Romain, saying he was “nothing more than a thief that stole Jade’s life,” and “kept living his life a lie and full of deception to become a police officer.”
“Police officers take an oath to protect and serve and to protect the public … Citizens and the public needed protection from him,” the victim’s mother said.
In a July 17 ruling, a three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected the defense’s challenge to evidentiary rulings made by Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler in Romain’s trial, along with the defense’s contention that the defendant received ineffective assistance from his trial attorney.