Grand Jury Probe in Taggers Case Rejected : Courts: Attorneys will seek federal civil rights charges against man who fatally shot graffiti vandal.

Prosecutors Wednesday rejected a plea from an organization of Latino attorneys seeking a grand jury investigation of the shooting death of an 18-year-old tagger, and the activists said they will now ask federal authorities to bring civil rights charges against the shooter.

Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti added however that he also wanted to “harshly condemn” comments made by the shooter, William Masters II, that the Latino attorneys complained reflected a racist attitude.

Prosecutors last week declined to file murder or manslaughter charges against Masters, 35, of Sun Valley who shot two taggers he said threatened him as they tried to rob him.

Members of the Mexican-American Bar Assn. said Masters should be charged because the coroner’s office determined that the dead youth, Cesar Rene Arce, was shot in the back.

“That indicates that he was removing himself from any alleged confrontation with Masters,” attorney Luis Carrillo said. “That’s why he (Masters) should be prosecuted for manslaughter at the very least.”

Although there apparently were no uninvolved witnesses to the confrontation, police have said that Arce apparently swiveled away just as Masters fired, and the location of the wound did not rule out the conclusion that Masters felt justifiably endangered when he shot Arce, of Arleta, and a companion, David Hillo, 20, of North Hollywood.

Masters was unavailable for comment Wednesday, but said in an interview Friday that Hillo cried “look out!” as Masters pulled a .380 semiautomatic pistol from a fanny pack, possibly causing Arce to flinch away.

Masters said last week he shot on reflex developed by years of firearms training, and thought he had shot Arce in the chest.

A spokeswoman for the district attorney said that Masters and Hillo agreed in interviews shortly after the incident that Arce was within arm’s length of Masters when Masters fired. Hillo told reporters last week that he--Hillo--was about 10 feet from Masters. Carrillo said Wednesday that Hillo now says he was 20 to 30 feet away.

The Latino lawyers also argued that in light of Masters’ comments after he was released from custody last week--referring to Arce and Hillo as “skinhead Mexicans”--the district attorney’s refusal to prosecute Masters will only add to Los Angeles’ racial troubles.

“These are the sort of situations that create what happened after the Rodney King verdict,” said Evangeline Ordaz, an attorney and professor of Chicano Studies at CSUN. Days of destructive riots followed a Simi Valley jury’s acquittal of the LAPD officers who were videotaped beating King.

Arce and Hillo were spray-painting columns supporting the Hollywood Freeway on Arleta Avenue about 1 a.m. when Masters happened by and jotted down their car’s license plate number on Jan. 31. The taggers demanded the paper with the number.

Masters said that after he gave up the paper, the two tried to rob him, which Hillo has denied.

Hillo agrees with Masters that he was holding a screwdriver, but Hillo said he did not intend to use it as a weapon. Masters said Hillo was threatening him with it. Masters shot Hillo in the buttocks, saying later he intended only to disable him, and Hillo was released after brief hospital treatment.

The six Latino attorneys met with Deputy Dist. Atty. Bob Cohen for about 30 minutes Wednesday morning. In addition to urging the grand jury investigation, they asked for all documents pertaining to the case, and asked the district attorney’s office to take a stand on Masters’ controversial comments since his release.

“I do not believe there’s any new evidence that’s been presented to us that would warrant us reopening our investigation or submitting it to the grand jury,” Garcetti said later.

“I will tell you that I would harshly, and do harshly, condemn the individual that was responsible for this shooting, given his comments,” he added.

“Not that he shot--we have made a legal decision that he did not commit a crime. Some of his comments were unfortunate, in my opinion inappropriate, and do not help this community at all.”

Masters also blamed Arce’s mother for her son’s death, saying she must not have been a good parent if her son turned out to be a criminal. He also described the confrontation in an interview with The Times last week as a “situation everyone lives in fear of--a couple of skinhead Mexicans robbing you at 1 a.m. with a screwdriver.”

In that interview, he said the shooting was not racially motivated, and stressed that among the scores of people who have contacted him to praise his act, several were Latinos. He also said he feared “becoming a poster boy for Aryan Nation,” the white supremacist group.

Carrillo said Masters’ reference to “Mexican skinheads” was “a very racist statement, the equivalent of the ‘n-word’ to us.”

He said that in the wake of Garcetti’s refusal to reopen the case, he and his colleagues will seek a meeting with Garcetti himself and conduct their own investigation into the shooting.

The attorneys said they will seek police records from the LAPD, who so far have not released the documents, because no charges have been filed. If necessary, they said, they will take the case to federal authorities, who prosecuted the police officers in the King beating case for violating King’s civil rights.

“If local officials don’t (file charges), that’s what the federal government is for,” said attorney Humberto Guizar.

Masters may still face misdemeanor charges for not having a permit to carry his gun. Additionally, the district attorney’s office is considering whether to charge Hillo with attempted robbery, which could lead to his being charged with Arce’s murder. Under California law, those who take part in a criminal act that leads to a killing, even of a confederate, can be found guilty of murder.

That possibility horrified the Latino lawyers. “Here we have a situation where the victims are being treated like the criminals,” said attorney Jorge Gonzalez.

Masters has drawn widespread public support for his actions. Gonzalez and his colleagues said the support is a byproduct of what they called “anti-Latino hysteria” in California, which they said led to passage of Proposition 187, aimed at illegal immigrants.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Phillip Wynn said race did not enter into the decision not to charge Masters. His office’s decision would have been the same “had the shooter and the tagger been the same race,” he said.