Ex-Gang Member Denies He Forced Testimony : Crime: Prosecution witness says that he persuaded his cousins to break a ‘code of silence’ about a drive-by shooting but that he never told them what to say.

A reformed gang member denied Wednesday that he coerced his cousins into revealing to police the names of three defendants in a Garden Grove gang-related double slaying last year that involved the death of a 4-year-old boy.

Ralph Rodriguez of Santa Ana said he did persuade others to break the gang “code of silence” and tell police what they knew about the Sept. 16, 1989, random shooting on La Bonita Avenue. While he admitted that he personally suspected one of the defendants--based on a description he was given of a truck the gunmen used--Rodriguez vehemently denied defense insinuations that he told his cousins what to say.

Wednesday was the second day of testimony in the trial over what stands as Orange County’s worst incident of gang violence.

The proceedings are also unique because Judge Tully H. Seymour has ordered two juries to hear the case at once. One of the defendants had been granted a separate trial when a scheduling problem threatened to prevent his lawyer from having time to adequately prepare. But at the last minute, the problem was resolved, so Seymour devised a way to conduct the two trials simultaneously.

When the case opened Tuesday, one of the two jury panels was forced to sit in the back of the courtroom and had trouble hearing testimony and seeing evidence.

On Wednesday, however, Seymour moved the proceedings to a larger courtroom and conditions improved.

The three defendants--Roman G. Menchaca, 19; Luis P. Valadez, 28, and Robert P. Figueroa, 20--are associated with the 5th Street Gang in Santa Ana and are charged with murder in the drive-by shooting deaths of Miguel (Smokey) Navarro, 18, and Frank Fernandez Jr., 4. Six other people were wounded, including a 2-year-old boy and a 26-year-old man whose leg was amputated as a result of bullet wounds suffered in the incident.

Prosecutors contend that the defendants’ motive in the shooting stemmed from a long rivalry with the 17th Street Gang. The shooting occurred just a block north of 17th Street.

Rodriguez has been a central figure in the La Bonita Avenue investigation. He was related to many of the victims and persuaded some of them to name their assailants to police.

But while Rodriguez himself is only a minor prosecution witness--he was not at the scene of the shootings when they occurred--he has become important to defense attorneys. Some of them theorize that eyewitnesses could not identify any of the people in the truck and did not report names to the police until Rodriguez told them to.

“I screamed at them; it was: Knock off the code of silence. I did not tell them what to say,” Rodriguez testified.

Rodriguez has gained attention as a hero in the case because he has stepped forward to cooperate with the police despite threats made on his life by others associated with the 5th Street gang, to which he once belonged.

But Wednesday, his personal life took something of a beating in the courtroom. He reluctantly admitted that he was a convicted child molester and that four years ago--10 years after he said that he had left gang life--he was convicted of trying to intimidate a prosecution witness. When defense attorney David A. Zimmerman raised the issue, in front of the jurors, of the child molestation conviction, Rodriguez turned to Judge Seymour.

“Do I have to answer that?” he asked.

The judge said he must.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Avdeef used Rodriguez’s testimony in part Wednesday to explain to jurors a motive for the shooting. The 5th Street and 17th Street gangs have been at war for years, with violence on both sides, Rodriguez said.

Why would some of his cousins not want to break the code of silence? Avdeef asked him. Rodriguez’s response:

“They do not tell the police so they can avenge the crime themselves.”

Rodriguez said it was the death of the 4-year-old, a son of one of his cousins, that convinced him that the code had to be broken.

The defense claims that it was too dark for anyone at the scene to identify the shooters. And the defense hit hard at police reports, claiming that the reports show not only that the cousins would not tell police who the assailants were, but that the cousins told Rodriguez, a confidante, they could not identify anyone.

The trial is scheduled to resume today, when some of the eyewitnesses are expected to testify.