Judge Rules 17-Year-Old Must Be Tried as Adult in Fatal Stabbing

Surrounded by those who had tried to steer him away from crime, a 17-year-old Ventura boy was ordered Monday to stand trial as an adult in the slaying of an Oxnard youth.

Jesse Conchas--track star, B-plus student and a cover boy for the Ventura County Youth for Christ--is unfit to remain in the juvenile system, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Robert L. Shaw ruled.

“He had opportunities that a lot don’t have,” the judge said. “He had the opportunity and intelligence to make choices, and he knowingly made this choice.”

The ruling came after a daylong hearing where the witnesses seemed to be describing two different people named Jesse Conchas.

One was the fourth of five children born to a hard-working Ventura Avenue couple who instilled values in their family, the witnesses said. That Jesse Conchas strived to earn good grades--like the older brother who is pursuing a doctorate at Berkeley--and still managed to work part time and run track at Ventura High School, they said.

Then there was the other Jesse Conchas portrayed in the testimony--the one who kept a sawed-off shotgun and a handgun at the family home; the one who hung around with gang members despite the objections of his parents and the sanctions of the Juvenile Court; the one who carried a knife and, on May 3, used it to fatally stab Jose Lopez Navarro, 16.

Conchas, dressed in navy blue sweat pants and a sweater with “Juvenile Hall” stamped on the back, showed almost no reaction to the testimony and hardly looked at the witnesses. As he entered and left the courtroom, he raised his eyebrows in a silent signal to his father, seated in the front row.

As a court interpreter translated the proceedings into Spanish for the father, several witnesses vouched for Conchas’ good character.

Alice Lerma, a supervisor at the Target store in Ventura where Conchas worked for 1 1/2 years, described him as “a very eager worker, a self-starter . . . very dependable . . . well-mannered.”

His track coach, Morris H. Scoggin, testified that Conchas had earned at least two varsity letters in track and cross country. “He was a hard worker,” Scoggin said. “The only time he missed practice was because of work.”

Jeffrey Cheeseborough, an official of Ventura County Youth for Christ, portrayed Conchas as a leader who had recruited new members to the fellowship. Conchas was one of several group members featured on the cover of a Youth for Christ brochure, Cheeseborough said.

Patrick Barker, a psychologist hired by the defense, said Conchas appeared to be the product of a “stable family with positive social values . . . He has good support and modeling from his family.”

But even with those advantages, several witnesses said, Conchas was unable to resist the allure of his neighborhood gang, the Ventura Avenue Gangsters.

One of Conchas’ brothers “asked me to keep an eye on Jesse,” said Thomas Temprano, former assistant principal at Ventura High. “He didn’t like Jesse’s associations.”

Conchas’ parents threw away his gang attire after failing to persuade Jesse to give it up, Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard E. Holmes told the judge.

Cheeseborough said that when he asked Jesse Conchas about his friends’ gang connections, “his response was typical of Avenue kids. He would say: ‘These are my friends, this is where I live, this is what we do.’ ”

Late on May 2, only a few hours before the fatal stabbing, Ventura police stopped Conchas and cited him for allegedly being in the company of known gang members--a violation of Conchas’ probation, according to Edith M. Moore, a county probation investigator. Why he was on probation was not disclosed, although an earlier witness said he had been accused of stealing a shotgun.

Conchas not only remained with the gang members, Holmes said, he armed himself with a knife. He and his associates gathered at Camino Real Park, where Conchas got into a fight with Navarro, a member of an Oxnard gang. Conchas stabbed Navarro, then chased him about 100 yards before stabbing him again from behind, according to testimony.

“If you can’t be deterred by an immediate police warning that night, then you can’t be deterred,” Holmes said. “His parents can’t stop him, police can’t stop him, probation can’t stop him. The defendant is determined to be a violent gang member.”

Conchas’ attorney, James Matthew Farley, acknowledged that Conchas’ record on probation “is atrocious.” But he urged Judge Shaw not to view Conchas as another gang “leper” who cannot be saved.

“Jesse Conchas is not beyond healing, beyond saving,” Farley said.

“True, he followed the wrong road . . . he knew better,” the attorney said. “But there are too many kids on the pile out there. If we can do something for one of them, we should.”

He urged Shaw to keep Conchas in the juvenile system, where the maximum punishment he could receive would be confinement at a California Youth Authority facility until his 25th birthday.

But Shaw ruled that Conchas was unfit for the juvenile system under two criteria: the gravity of the offense and the degree of criminal sophistication exhibited.

“I don’t see how the court can make any other decision,” Shaw said. Moore’s probation report had also recommended that Conchas be removed from the juvenile system.

Shaw ordered Conchas to remain at Juvenile Hall with bail set at $250,000. Conchas is scheduled for arraignment Friday on murder and assault charges in Ventura County Municipal Court.