Coalition Urges More Prosecutions of Hate Crimes

Minority leaders lashed out here Thursday at Orange County law enforcement’s “failure to fully investigate and prosecute” hate crimes, including the recent beating of a 15-year-old black athlete.

A coalition of Asians, blacks and Latinos expressed frustration over the increasing number of attacks against minorities and vowed to seek help from the federal government--either to hold hearings on hate crimes in Orange County or have the U.S. Justice Department take steps.

“What we have seen time and time again is a failure to fully investigate and prosecute when it’s a hate-crime case,” Eugene M. Wheeler, president of the 100 Black Men of Orange County, said at a news conference. “They want to sweep this under the rug.

“We will remain vigilant and prone to

action, and to urge federal intervention whenever intolerable and morally unacceptable behavior and apparent cover-up persist.”

In response, Orange County Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi said, “The allegations are irrational and irresponsible and don’t deserve further comment.” He insisted that hate crimes here have been prosecuted and convictions won.

Wheeler maintained that in the Aug. 5 beating of the black athlete, Ruben Charles Vaughan III, a Santa Margarita High School honors student, Vaughan and his friends had been “set up” by flyers announcing a nonexistent party.

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While Vaughan was being beaten by a mob of 25 to 30 young white males, Wheeler said some had shouted, “Let’s get that nigger!” The attack occurred in a Trabuco Canyon cul-de-sac, and left Vaughan with a broken nose and jaw and seven stab wounds. He was hospitalized four days.

After an investigation, the district attorney’s office concluded that the attack was motivated by a high school rivalry, not race, and that Vaughan had been an unintentional victim. Wheeler said the coalition seeks to upgrade charges against two defendants in the Vaughan case from assault with a deadly weapon to attempted murder.

“That so many acted together to carry out this carefully plotted gang ambush,” Wheeler said, “is a chilling wake-up call for every person in Orange County.”

At the preliminary hearing for defendants Derek Thomas Jones, 20, of Huntington Beach and Russell T. Scarce, 19, of Lake Forest, Municipal Judge Pamela L. Iles described the attack against Vaughan as “one of the most vicious beatings I’ve seen in a long time.”

Iles urged the district attorney’s office to prosecute the case against the defendants as a hate crime.

Amin David, a Latino spokesman for Los Amigos de Orange County, said Thursday that the judge’s “unprecedented rebuke” of the district attorney’s office “tells us that something is not right.”

The Superior Court arraignment for both defendants is Monday in Superior Court.

A 16-year-old Lake Forest youth also has been arrested in the attack.

Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Glazier said prosecutors are still weighing evidence presented at the defendants’ preliminary hearing to decide whether the case warrants special consideration as a hate crime.

Beside the Vaughan case, the coalition of minority groups focused on other violence, including Jody Robinson, a 20-year-old black resident of Mission Viejo, who was kidnaped, stabbed and beaten to death Aug. 22, in San Bernardino County by reputed skinheads; the drive-by shooting in 1993 of Phillip Lott, a Native American student at El Toro High School; and last year’s beating death of a black woman, Tina Rodriguez, in Brea.

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Defending his office, Capizzi said, “in the Vaughan case, it’s pending, and I can’t comment on that.”

“But beyond that,’ he said, “very, very serious charges have been publicly filed in the Brea case, and there was a conviction. In the Lott case, very serious charges were filed and there was a conviction. Hardly a cover-up.”

A sheriff’s spokesman was not available for comment.

Coalition members included Orange County African American Leadership Roundtable, Asian Pacific Islanders Planning Council, League of United Latin American Citizens, and Native Americans of Orange County.