Fate of Defendants in Fatal Beating Weighed

The last of three juries began deliberating Wednesday on the fate of one of three reputed skinheads accused of beating the life out of a homeless man in a dirt lot in Lancaster because he was black, a crime that could send each of them to prison for life.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jacquelyn Lacey told jurors in the case against Jessica Colwell, 20, that the defendants beat Milton Walker Jr. to death with a stick and a pipe nearly four years ago to gain status among a group of High Desert bigots who picked fights with members of racial minorities and hoped for an eventual race war.

The killing earned them lightning bolt tattoos, she said, considered a badge of courage among white supremacists. They were all associates of a group calling itself the Nazi Low Riders.

She urged jurors to convict Colwell of first-degree murder with the special circumstance that the killing was racially motivated. If she and the other defendants--Randall Rojas, 24, and Ritch Bryant, 20--are found guilty of that charge, they would spend the rest of their lives in prison without the possibility of parole.

Three juries heard the trial, one for each of the defendants. The juries for Rojas and Bryant began deliberations Monday and Tuesday.

“You must tell Miss Colwell that there is no room for this kind of madness, this kind of expression to follow us into the next millennium,” Lacey told the jury deliberating Colwell’s fate Wednesday.

Walker was beaten in two separate instances on that November night, so the defendants are blaming one another for his death.

Rojas, who allegedly beat Walker in the face with a board, said Walker was killed by Bryant and Colwell when they returned later and beat the man with the board and a metal pipe.

Bryant and Colwell say Walker was already dead when they arrived.

None of the defendants testified. The star witness was Michael Thornton, a former member of the Nazi Low Rider gang. He told authorities that he saw Rojas beat Walker senseless in the first attack. In return for his testimony, Thornton will be tried separately on lesser charges.

Colwell’s lawyer said she hit a man who she thought was dead, and therefore is not guilty of premeditated murder. Medical examiners, however, found no post-mortem injuries.

Colwell’s lawyer said that even if Walker were still alive when Colwell hit him twice in the face with a pipe, she was not strong enough to kill the homeless man.

“Look at the size of this young lady,” John Daley said Wednesday, summoning Colwell, a slim, attractive woman wearing wire-rim glasses. “And look at the injuries that were inflicted on the victim.”

Bryant’s attorney, Norman Kallen, reminded jurors that a doctor testified that Walker was standing when he was hit with the fatal blows, and witnesses say that Rojas was the one to knock Walker to the ground.

“The focus and responsibility lies solely with Mr. Rojas,” Kallen told jurors.

Rojas’ lawyer, Donald Calabria, told a jury Monday that his client was not responsible for the fatal blows, and had no intention of killing Walker. At most, the lawyer said, Rojas is guilty of assault with a deadly weapon.

On the night Walker died, according to testimony, Rojas, Thornton and Bryant went to the vacant lot where Walker lived after a white woman said the homeless man had hit her. As the group approached, they saw Walker beating up a white homeless man.

Calabria said Rojas did not go there to kill Walker, and that Thornton attacked Walker first. Rojas only hit Walker after the victim walked toward Rojas with a knife, the lawyer said.

The three defendants left Walker alive, Calabria said, and Rojas refused to return with Bryant, who allegedly wanted to finish off Walker.

“He has an opportunity to kill him and he does not want to exercise that opportunity,” Calabria told jurors. “He simply didn’t have the intent to kill Milton Walker.”

Lacey argued it was precisely those views that led the defendants to murder.

She reminded jurors that Rojas had told an FBI agent months before the killing that he had planned to earn lightning bolt tattoos, which can only be worn by those who kill a member of a racial minority.

Each of the defendants also bragged to friends about the killing, Lacey said, and later confessed to striking Walker. Bryant admitted to authorities that he checked Walker’s pulse, and, finding he was still alive, beat him for the last time.

Lacey said a medical examiner found that all the blows to Walker’s face contributed to his death.

“You don’t get to say, ‘I hit him, but my buddy over there hit him more so he’s really responsible,’ ” Lacey said. “You don’t get to stand back and say, ‘I’m not as guilty as so and so.’ The law says you’re all guilty.”