METRO NEWS : Ex-Coach Gets 3 Years for Molesting Teenage Boy : Courts: Man who led track team to five state championships broke community’s trust, father of victim tells judge.

Clyde Ezra Turner, who helped coach Pasadena’s John Muir High School track team to five state championships, was sentenced Monday to three years in prison for molesting a 15-year-old athlete.

Pasadena Municipal Judge Mary Thornton House handed down the sentence after the boy’s father said Turner had betrayed the family and was a pedophile who “spewed a web of deception” to lure boys to his home.

“He committed his disgusting, lewd act, pouncing on [my son] like he was the kill of the hunt,” the boy’s father said. “Balance the scales of justice.”

Thornton House said the 44-year-old Turner, onetime national track coach of the year, had been a revered community leader who violated that trust and deserved prison time.

“There is a strong likelihood the defendant would continue to victimize other minors,” the judge said, quoting from the coach’s probation report.

Turner was sentenced to three years for committing a lewd act upon a child and eight months for exhibiting pornography to a minor, but the terms were ordered to be served concurrently. Turner was credited with 183 days served in jail. He also was ordered to register as a sex offender, pay a $200 fine and undergo testing for AIDS.

Dressed in a blue jail jumpsuit with his hair in a ponytail, Turner rocked silently in his chair, jingling his handcuffs and watching reporters. Gone were the smiles of earlier proceedings.

Turner was convicted in May after a seven-day trial, in which the 15-year-old boy testified that he had watched a pornographic video in the coach’s bedroom in April 1998 and that the coach then molested him.

Another student testified that he saw a pornographic cable program in December 1997 while sitting on Turner’s bed, and that the coach twice pushed him down on the bed.

The jury deadlocked on a second felony count of exhibiting pornography to that youth and a misdemeanor charge of child annoying. Prosecutors decided Monday not to retry Turner on those charges.

Jurors also heard from three former students who alleged that Turner molested them more than 15 years ago. The judge let them testify under a controversial 1996 law that allows prosecutors to use such material to show that a defendant is predisposed to sex crimes.

Before sentencing, attorney W. Anthony Willoughby asked unsuccessfully for a new trial, saying that testimony violated his client’s constitutional rights. He cited two appellate court decisions in similar cases.

Thornton House said a third appeals court had found the law constitutional, but the matter probably will go before the state Supreme Court. Until then, she said, to delay sentencing would be unfair to the defendant and his victims.

Willoughby also told the judge that the district attorney’s office demanded the maximum sentence for his client but gave probation to the wife of Pasadena City Councilman Chris Holden after she pleaded no contest to having sex with a teenage boy.

Outside court, Deputy Dist. Atty. Amy Suehiro said Turner had molested boys for 25 years.

“There is no comparison; the defendant is a serial molester,” she said.

Turner built Muir’s boys track program into a national powerhouse.

The family of the 15-year-old boy has sued the Pasadena Unified School District, accusing it of covering up previous complaints about Turner.

District officials denied there were prior allegations until prosecutors released a 1983 confidential district memorandum about a student complaint.