Man Enters Guilty Plea to Hate Crime Stabbing

A Yorba Linda man pleaded guilty Monday to charges that he stabbed an African American teenager three years ago in Buena Park in what prosecutors labeled a hate crime.

Earlier this month, Jeffrey Stuart Martin, 24, had pleaded not guilty to the same charges. The new plea will allow him to avoid a trial. His attorney, Michael A. Molfetta, said Martin believes that will be to his advantage.

“It’s something that he wanted to get behind him,” Molfetta said. The stabbing, he said, happened shortly after Martin was released from the California Youth Authority. “He was young,” the lawyer said. “He was under the ideologies of the youth prison system, and he has made comments that he feels bad. He’s regretful.”

U.S. Atty. spokesman Thom Mrozek said he believes Martin may have changed his plea in hopes of more lenient treatment.

“Generally, people who plead guilty before trial do get a reduced sentence,” Mrozek said. “The defendant is sparing the government and the court system the expense of a trial and also taking away the risk of going to trial.”

Martin faces a maximum punishment of 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced Dec. 4 in federal court.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Tom D. Warren said that, though Martin’s sentence will be based mainly on the severity of the offense and his criminal history, ultimately a judge will decide his fate.

Federal prosecutors say Martin, then a white supremacist with a shaved head, was a member of a group called Insane White Boys. Outside a house party in Buena Park on Oct. 26, 1996, he and four other skinheads encountered a 16-year-old walking home from work on San Rafael Drive near La Palma Avenue about 9 p.m., authorities stated.

The group began to follow the youth and yelled racial obscenities at him. Martin was charged with stabbing the teen once in the side with a knife, investigators said.

The boy ran to his home several blocks away, and the group fled on foot. The youth was treated at a local hospital and released.

Before being indicted June 29 in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, Martin was in state custody at the Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange for unrelated assault and firearms charges. He has since been moved to federal custody at the Santa Ana Jail and will stay there until his preliminary hearing in September on the state charges.

Martin’s case is only the second in Orange County in which the U.S. attorney’s office has alleged that a hate crime was committed. Kevin Dale of Orange pleaded guilty and was sentenced in April for his assault of a Native American man outside a 1996 punk-rock concert in Orange.