Race-Tinged Case Draws Stiffer Charge

The Orange County district attorney’s office filed additional charges Monday of attempted murder in an attack on a black high school student, but rejected calls by a judge and minority leaders to prosecute the case as a hate crime.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Matthew Anderson said there was insufficient evidence to prove race was a motivating factor in the Aug. 5 assault on 15-year-old Ruben Charles Vaughan III of Tustin, who was beaten unconscious, stabbed seven times and suffered a broken nose and jaw. Moments before, an assailant allegedly yelled “Get the nigger!,” an investigator for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department has testified.

The assault on Vaughan, then a student and athlete at Santa Margarita High School, sparked a protest by a coalition of Asian, black and Latino leaders who criticized prosecutors’ handling of hate-crime cases and urged tougher charges than those originally filed against Vaughan’s alleged attackers.

Anderson reviewed the case and filed attempted murder and other charges against two young men Monday, but said the filing decision wasn’t based on community outrage.

“I made a decision on the facts in the case,” Anderson said.

The attempted murder charges satisfied Eugene M. Wheeler, who, as president of the 100 Black Men of Orange County, was among those upset by how the Vaughan case was being treated.

“We understand it is difficult to get a conviction on a hate crime and the district attorney’s office might feel they do not have enough to prove it,” Wheeler said Monday. “Upgrading the charges to attempted murder is something we are pleased with because that’s what we were hoping for all along.”

Vaughan and his father, Melvin Aaron, could not be reached for comment Monday.

Law enforcement officials believe Vaughan, who now attends Foothill High School, was not an intended target, but was caught in the midst of a “turf war” involving the alleged attackers--graduates or students of El Toro High School--who have a long running rivalry with Santa Margarita students.

But during an Aug. 30 preliminary hearing in Laguna Niguel, Municipal Judge Pamela L. Iles urged prosecutors to consider filing hate-crime charges against Derek Thomas Jones, 20, of Huntington Beach and Russell Takeo Scarce, 19, of Lake Forest.

Iles said she believed there was more to the fight than high school rivalry. “They didn’t say ‘Get the Santa Margarita guy,’ they said ‘Get the nigger,’ ” she said at the hearing.

Jones and Scarce pleaded not guilty to the charges Monday in Orange County Superior Court. They also face felony charges of assault with a deadly weapon and battery resulting in serious bodily injury in connection with the attack on Vaughan.

If convicted of all the charges, they could each face up to 13 years in prison. An additional hate-crime charge would not add prison time to a maximum sentence, Anderson said.

A 16-year-old also faces charges in the case.

Attorneys for Jones and Scarce disagreed with the new charges Monday.

“I don’t think it’s an attempted-murder case,” said Deputy Public Defender Michael B. McClellan. McClellan also said an attack is not always racially motivated even if racial epithets are made. He said many of the alleged assailants were Asian and Latino.

Scarce is also half Asian, said his defense attorney James S. Sweeney. “He’s not the type of guy who would commit a crime like this,” said Sweeney, who said there is evidence Vaughan was also looking for a fight that night.

“There’s evidence that (Vaughan) and the others had taken off their shirts, which is sort of a symbol of ‘Let’s fight,’ ” Sweeney said.

Engineer William R. Scarce said his son was being unfairly portrayed as a racist. He said Vaughan should never have been injured but that he and his friends were also looking for a fight the night of the incident.

“This whole thing is very unfair,” Scarce said.