Leader of Asian Gang Convicted of 3 Murders

The leader of the Asian Boyz street gang was convicted Monday by a Van Nuys jury of three murders, seven attempted murders and conspiracy crimes for which he could be executed.

Sothi Menh, 24, and two other defendants were convicted for their roles in a 1995 crime rampage that began with the ambush of a rival Latino gang on lunar new year and included a series of car-to-car shootings that left seven people dead.

The verdicts for the remaining four defendants will be read today, the culmination of a trial marked by the slaying of the father of a key witness and by extraordinary courthouse security.

Police said the case could result in more death penalties than any trial in state history.

At the penalty hearing, defense attorneys are expected to portray their clients as young men scarred by the violence some of them witnessed as children in war-torn Cambodia.

“At a very tender age, [defendant Roatha Buth] watched his two older brothers, 6 and 9, gunned down by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia,” attorney Jack Stone wrote in a motion.

Prosecutors will paint the defendants as ruthless killers who sought to become the most feared Asian gang in Los Angeles.

That fear was heightened after Dong Dinh, the father of the state’s primary witness, was gunned down at his San Jose home. Authorities suspect the defendants were involved in the unsolved crime.

Officers in assault gear have periodically blocked surrounding streets when the defendants arrived and left the courthouse. Armed district attorney investigators guard the prosecutors around the clock, and sheriff’s deputies guard the judge. Seven bailiffs block every entrance and exit to the courtroom.

The strain on security was so great that the county’s head criminal judge said that the case should have been held in the high-security courtrooms of the Criminal Courts Building in Los Angeles.

Five defendants initially faced death, but one was spared that fate Monday. David Evangalista, a former honors student and hospital volunteer, was convicted of one murder, not the four with which he was originally charged.

The jurors convicted Menh and Son Bui, 22, of capital murder. Verdicts due Tuesday could send two other defendants to a penalty trial, where the jury will be asked whether the defendants should be put to death or spend the rest of their lives in prison.

The Asian Boyz gang is made up of Cambodian, Vietnamese and Filipino members whose families immigrated in the 1970s. They are accused of follow-home and home-invasion robberies in which they mainly targeted members of their own ethnic communities.

Detectives say that the defendants targeted not only rival gang members, but also people that they mistook for gang members, as well as strangers.

The trial was dominated by two admitted gang members who turned state’s evidence after they were arrested in a freeway shooting case.

From the witness stand, Troung Dinh and Paul Prado recounted a deadly ambush on a rival Latino gang, an armed mission to seek out and shoot other gang members, and running gun battles in which Asian Boyz members fired two and three weapons, then delivered execution-style blows to their dead or dying rivals.

In her arguments to the jury, Deputy Dist. Atty. Laura Baird said the gang members turned witnesses remembered the shootings down to the last detail “because those shootings were spectacular. It was just like a movie.”

But defense attorneys hammered at the two men’s motives, pointing out that they received immunity for their testimony. The lawyers also picked at inconsistencies and used them to bolster their arguments that the state’s key witnesses are opportunistic liars who are laying blame on the innocent to save themselves.

Security at the trial was tightened after Dinh’s father was slain. Authorities had been protecting Dinh, but had not extended protection to his family because they said they thought that killing a relative was taboo even for this gang, which once before was suspected of killing a witness involved in a murder trial.

Two jurors asked to be excused from the case after hearing about that killing. After three weeks of deliberations, jurors passed a note to the judge Friday afternoon indicating that they were “through deliberating.” They said they had reached some verdicts but were hung up on others.

On Monday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Darlene Schemp accepted the verdicts and declared a mistrial on the charges the jury could not agree upon.

Before the case was turned over to the jury, Schemp dismissed several counts, finding that the evidence did not support them. The dismissal was most important for Evangalista, who initially was charged with four murders and the special circumstance of multiple murder, charges that made him eligible for the death penalty. The judge eliminated two murder charges and other charges relating to one attack, leaving two murder charges remaining.

But while Evangalista was convicted of six attempted murders, jurors found him guilty of only one murder, sparing him the death penalty.

It was a blow to prosecutors, who accused Evangalista of being involved in the killing of Dinh’s father and who had hoped to enter evidence of his involvement in the penalty stage.

The family’s San Jose address was found in Evangalista’s jail issue prayer book in his cell, listed under a phony name and phone number, according to court documents.

“It is more than fair to infer that defendant Evangalista was involved in either setting up the hit and/or providing the address to the killer,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Hoon Chun stated in court papers. Evangalista faces 45 years plus six life sentences.

The verdicts for Bunthoeun Roeung, Roatha Buth, Ky Tony Ngo and Kimorn Nuth are scheduled to be read today.