FULLERTON : Judge Gives Skinhead a History Lesson

A 17-year-old skinhead accused of participating in a gang beating of a Chinese-American youth and a friend last July was berated Thursday by a judge who ordered him to stand trial for that attack and a March robbery of two teen-agers in the Orange Mall.

David Richman, a member of the skinhead group “Confederate Front of America,” sat impassively at the close of his two-day preliminary hearing as Judge Margaret R. Anderson of North County Municipal Court ordered him to stand trial on two counts of felony assault with a deadly weapon, committing a racially motivated hate crime and the robbery. Richman, who is being tried as an adult, has pleaded not guilty to each count.

Anderson said she was overwhelmed by the white supremacist literature found by police in Richman’s bedroom and the numerous neo-Nazi tattoos on his body. She called the July 7 beating at Gilman Partin Park of the 17-year-old Sunny Hills High School honors graduate and his white friend “appalling.”

During that attack, the Asian youth was knocked unconscious and his friend bloodied. Two other white friends were able to flee the attack.

“There is no doubt this was a racially motivated crime,” Anderson said. “CFA might stand for Confederate Front of America, but to me it stands for cowardly frightened animals. I am appalled that anyone growing up in this country would have this kind of mind-set.”

She then ordered her court reporter to stop taking notes and began to lecture Richman.

“I suggest that while you are in jail you get a copy of the U.S. Constitution and read it,” she said. “The whites never had the country to themselves. The Mexicans and the Indians once owned this part of the country and they had it stolen from them.”

Anderson ordered Richman held in Orange County Juvenile Hall in lieu of $100,000 bail. He will be arraigned Nov. 4 in Superior Court.

Richman is one of the last of the 10 skinheads to be tried. Eight others have been convicted or pleaded guilty in the case. A 14-year-old Whittier boy also awaits trial.

Prosecutor Gary Paer applauded the judge’s decision and called his case against Richman “overwhelming.”

Christian R. Jensen, Richman’s attorney, said that Richman is a skinhead and possessed racist pamphlets but argued that it cannot be concluded that the assault was bias-related.

“It’s an emotional issue,” Jensen said. “How can anybody not look at those pamphlets and the klansman tattoos and not be appalled? . . . But possessing that material is not a crime and it does not prove the assault was racially motivated.”

During Thursday’s hearing, Fullerton Police Officer Robert Richardson testified that the victims identified Richman in a photo as a leader of the gang that attacked them.

He said the Chinese-American teen told him that he and three of his white friends were walking in the park about 10 p.m. when they were confronted by the skinheads.

The officer said Richman and another skinhead demanded to know if the Asian youngster was of racially mixed ancestry. They then asked the white teens why they are friends with an Asian, calling the Asian youth a racial slur usually aimed at blacks.

Paer introduced numerous crude drawings found in the defendant’s room, including one of a Ku Klux Klan member lynching a black man.