Judge Orders Review of Hate Crime Prosecutions for Racial Bias

A Juvenile Court judge Wednesday authorized a review of hate crime cases filed in Los Angeles County to determine if there is evidence that prosecutions are racially biased because they primarily target white defendants.

Acting in the case that allegedly set off a spate of four racial attacks in the Antelope Valley, Sylmar Juvenile Court Commissioner Gary A. Polinsky ruled that if there is evidence of bias, the white teenager on trial can defend himself by arguing that he is the victim of racially discriminatory prosecution.

Polinsky will conduct the review after the district attorney’s office turns over files on its prosecutions of hate crimes--those in which criminals allegedly were motivated by malice against the victim’s race, sexual orientation, religion, disability, gender or nationality.

The 16-year-old white youth, an alleged skinhead gang member, is accused in a machete attack on two African American cousins, a boy and a girl. The attack in Lancaster on July 8 was followed by a series of assaults on whites by blacks, which investigators have said may have been retaliatory.

The request for the hate crime records was made by the youth’s defense attorney, Deputy Public Defender James Coady.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol J. Najera called the hate crime defense groundless but said she will turn over records in several weeks. “I think it’s inappropriate for counsel to float these theories when he has no basis for them,” she said.

Carla Arranaga, who heads the district attorney’s hate crimes division, said that of the 30 race-related hate crimes prosecuted against adults in 1995, 18 victims were black, five were white, six Latino and one was of Asian decent. She did not have an ethnic breakdown of defendants, she said.

“We review them with only one factor in mind, if the victim’s race played a substantial role in the crime,” Arranaga said.

Coady also alleged at a hearing Wednesday that there is evidence that the 17-year-old male victim in the July 8 assault threw the first punch and is a member of the Crips gang, a new defense.

Najera said Sheriff’s Department investigators have not said that the victim was a member of the Crips or that he initiated the attack. She said the evidence shows that the attack was racially motivated.

Authorities have said the 17-year-old’s assailants yelled racial epithets and gave a Nazi-style salute before the assault.

Coady said that discrediting the prosecution of hate crimes in general could get the charges against the youth reduced to assault. He said proving that the attack was sparked by the 17-year-old could reduce the risk that his client will be tried as an adult, as prosecutors are trying to do.

The July 8 attack was followed by three assaults on whites by African Americans.

It is suspected that they were retaliatory attacks, because the assailants made references to skinheads or white racists, deputies have said.

A fourth attack was carried out on July 29 by suspected skinheads against a black man waiting for his child at school, deputies said.