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Man gets life for killing Pittsburg police officer
By Malaika Fraley CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Jul 24, 2008
RICHMOND — A 21-year-old Antioch man was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 2005 slaying of a Pittsburg police officer who was shot to death as he chased two armed robbery suspects.
Andrew Moffett, 21, is the second person to be sentenced for killing Officer Larry Lasater, 35, on April 23, 2005. Moffett's co-defendant, Alexander Hamilton, who fired the fatal shots, was condemned to death.
A Contra Costa County jury convicted the pair last year of first-degree murder and multiple counts of second-degree robbery.
"You have really taken no responsibility for your actions," Lasater's widow, Jo Ann Luster, told Moffett at his sentencing hearing in Judge Laurel Brady's Richmond courtroom. "You may not have shot Larry, but your actions that day led to his death.
"Larry was a wonderful person — funny, smart and a devoted family man," said the widow, who gave birth to the couple's son, Cody, three months after the killing. "Because of you and the other one, Larry was robbed of being a father and being a father was what he wanted most."
Moffett was 17 when he and Hamilton robbed a supermarket cashier and bank branch tellers inside a Raley's supermarket and then fled in a stolen car that subsequently crashed. Moffett had run far from Hamilton when Lasater was shot by Hamilton, who lay hidden in the grass of the De Anza Trail. Prosecutors said Moffett took a leadership role in planning the robbery and procured the gun Hamilton used. They charged him with Lasater's murder under the felony murder rule, which holds accomplices liable when a killing occurs in the commission of certain felonies.
Moffett has made numerous attempts to get a new trial. He fired his first lawyer, alleging incompetence, and he tried to fire his current attorney Thursday as his sentence was being read. That attorney, G. Wright Morton, has argued Moffett should not have been tried with the shooter in the crime. He has questioned whether Moffett was competent, and had hired several doctors to assess Moffett's mental health. One said he was impaired.
Deputy District Attorney Harold Jewett has said that Moffett understands the felony murder rule, he just won't accept it.
Addressing the court Thursday, Moffett questioned the law. "It doesn't matter that I was blocks away from the murder, nowhere in sight or earshot of the shots. The DA said it doesn't matter. What does he mean it doesn't matter?" he asked.
He turned to look at Lasater's family when he apologized to Lasater's widow, mother, brother and "little Cody." He told his mother and grade school-aged sister, who cried during most of the proceeding, that he loved them.
"He deserves a second chance," Felicia Boissiere, Moffett's mother, told the court. "It is wrong to send my son to prison for the rest of his life for a murder he did not commit. It's immoral and it's unconstitutional."
Brady said she had the option of giving Moffett a term of 25 years to life in prison but felt the maximum sentence was appropriate given the violent nature of the crime and his role in it. Brady said she was particularly influenced by trial testimony from the Raley's cashier who said the memory of Moffett holding a gun to her head has turned her into a fearful recluse.
"It has changed her life profoundly," Brady said. "She was never the same."
Reach Malaika Fraley at mfraley@bayareanewsgroup.com .
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