3 Skinheads Convicted of Assault, Rights Violation in Anti-Gay Attack

Three reputed members of a neo-Nazi skinhead group were convicted Thursday of felony assault charges and of violating a 1987 state civil rights statute outlawing crimes of hatred in a gay-bashing incident in Laguna Beach.

However, the three were acquitted of charges that they tried to kill their victim.

The conviction was the first in the state under the statute, which outlaws crimes directed at a particular group, prosecutors said.

The misdemeanor civil rights conviction carries no practical weight in the sentencing of the men, but gay community leaders said the charge represented an important social statement of opposition to crimes aimed specifically at gays and other minority groups.

During their trial in Santa Ana Superior Court, attorneys for John M. Moore, 23; Stephen Walther, 18, and Aaron F. Compean, 18, never denied that their clients went to a park in Laguna Beach one night specifically to beat up gays.

The three Huntington Beach men, who then had shaved heads and wore steel-toed boots and Nazi swastika patches, were members of a “skinhead” group that espouses hatred of gays, Jews, blacks and others, prosecutors said.

The three young men admitted that they attacked their victim last July 15 as he walked in an area of Laguna Beach frequented by gays.

The men beat him repeatedly with their fists and a lead pipe; his injuries required 70 stitches.

The assault convictions carry a maximum prison sentence of four years. A date for sentencing has not been set.