Slick ‘50s Penalty Did Not Fit the Crime

I don’t believe in guilt by association.

I think people should be held accountable for what they do, not what others do.

And I don’t like it when juries have to be mind readers.

For all those reasons, I recoil at the mass convictions this week of the Slick ‘50s “gang” members from South County. Being convicted of attempted murder--as four teenagers were--means they’ll all go to prison for a number of years.

Knowing that, I’d want to be absolutely certain that all four actually intended to murder someone.

Is that what happened last summer when the four teens, along with a 21-year-old acquaintance, left a 16-year-old boy seriously injured in the street outside a party house? The victim was hit in the face with a bottle and stabbed three times with a knife.

Did all four of the Slick ‘50s set out to murder someone?

Not even the prosecutors alleged that. They alleged only that all four teens were at the scene and all four belonged to the same Slick ‘50s gang.

Convincing the jury they were gang members meant that all four could be charged with the same crime, even as evidence suggested that only one of them, plus the 21-year-old, most likely did the actual damage to the victim.

I can see the wheels clicking in your head. My wheels are clicking, too.

Am I saying that if four guys go on a “payback” mission--but only one shoots out the window and kills someone--that the other three aren’t guilty of murder?

No, I’m not saying that. In my book, all four on the payback mission are killers. They all set out to kill a specific person and designated a shooter.

The district attorney’s office is saying, in so many words, that that’s what happened in the case of the Slick ‘50s, self-named because they dress like James Dean and have some inside lingo. The prosecutors also introduced evidence that, in the past, members of the group (the jury willingly accepted the term “gang”) have precipitated fights.

That meant that, for those prosecuting this case, just being there meant you were attempting murder.

All because the Slick ‘50s is a gang.

The ‘G’ word carries its own deadly weight in Southern California. It smacks of drive-by shootings and Latino and African-American neighborhoods in Orange and Los Angeles counties.

I always thought of gangs as doing their crimes for specific purposes: defending their “turf” or avenging perceived slights or robbing to further their gang agenda. What, exactly, would a ‘50s-loving “gang” be doing. A bunch of guys who like the ‘50s and get into criminal trouble is just that: a bunch of guys who like the ‘50s and get into trouble.

But a gang?

I’m not suggesting that a bunch of middle-class white boys from South Orange County can’t be a “gang.” But imitating James Dean seems like an awfully generous stretching of the term. In fact, one of the boys’ mothers had a year earlier decorated his 16th birthday cake with “Slick ‘50s” across the top.

Most of us over the age of 15 either know or have known teens who hang around together, hit the party scene and inevitably get into fights. My high school had people like that.

Nobody called them gangs. We just called them punks.

But once the prosecutors and the jury agreed the Slick ‘50s were a gang, it was an easy leap to find four of them guilty of the same crime.

Did the jury convince itself that all four intended to kill someone that night? Did they have no doubt that one or two or three of them suddenly found themselves in over their heads?

I guess not.

But where the prosecutors see nothing but attempted murderers, I see accessories to a crime. That would still land the four in jail, where they probably belong, but would spare them years in prison.

The blanket convictions made mind readers of the jurors. They assumed that all the teens had the same intent--rather than sorting out the levels of personal responsibility based on the evidence of who did what.

Some will say verdicts like this clean up our justice system.

I think it makes it murkier, if not dirtier. People going to parties and picking fights are repugnant, but it doesn’t mean they have murderous intent.

Unpleasant teens can hang around with other unpleasant teens. That doesn’t make them guilty of attempted murder when one of them veers wildly out of control.

Well, I have to take that back.

In this case, that’s exactly what the jury decided.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com