1 Convicted, 1 Acquitted in CSUN Protest

One student was convicted and another acquitted Monday on charges they attacked police during a protest over ex-Klansman David Duke’s appearance at Cal State Northridge to debate affirmative action in September 1996.

Sergio Gutierrez, 23, was found not guilty by the six-man, six-woman jury of one misdemeanor charge of interfering with a police horse. His co-defendant, Edward Vasquez, 21, who faced four counts, was found guilty of assault with a deadly weapon for throwing a rock at a police officer.

Municipal Judge Lloyd M. Nash ordered Vasquez held on $10,000 bail at Men’s Central Jail. Vasquez faces up to a year in jail and will be sentenced today.

Outside the courtroom, both sides claimed victory in the 10-week trial, presided over by Judge Anthony Mohr. It included more than 30 witnesses, cost more than $200,000 and produced nearly 5,000 pages of transcripts. Prosecutors said the single guilty verdict undercut the contention by defense lawyers that the Los Angeles Police Department used the students as scapegoats to cover up police brutality in breaking up the CSUN protest.

“We’re very happy with the verdict because either they bought the conspiracy theory or they didn’t,” said Deputy City Atty. Michael Pizzuti. “This verdict clearly shows that they didn’t.”

But defense lawyers also hailed the jury’s decision, saying it was a triumph for the rights to self-defense and free speech.

“I feel vindicated,” said Vasquez’s lawyer, Stan Niremberg of the alternate public defender’s office. “The jury understood the underlying defense. What seemed on its face simple was complex because of the serious 1st and 14th Amendment issues.”

“The four-out-of-five acquittals indicates the jury thought the police rioted Sept. 25 and lied throughout this trial,” added co-counsel Meir J. Westreich. “The reason the jury found him [Vasquez] guilty was because they weren’t given the option of self-defense.”

Jurors commenting on the case afterward said their decision was based on a lack of evidence on most of the counts against the pair.

They also criticized the length of the trial.

“The defense was blowing hot air,” said one juror, who asked not to be identified. “It didn’t have to take as long as it did.”

Another juror rejected the defense’s theory of a police cover-up. “We played the videotapes over and over, and in many of them you couldn’t see who did it,” said the juror.

During the trial, prosecutors played a videotape from a local television station that they said showed Vasquez hurling a rock at police officers. That incident was not charged in the case.

The two men were accused of instigating the violence outside a debate over affirmative action between Duke and civil rights leader Joe Hicks. Vasquez was accused of throwing a rock that struck one officer in the head. A 2-pound, softball-sized rock hit an officer’s helmet before bouncing off and hitting a second officer.

While the verdicts were read, Vasquez, a junior majoring in Latin American studies at UC Berkeley, sat quietly, as did Gutierrez, a Mission College student.

During his closing argument, Westreich said that after the protest was over and Gutierrez’s bloody face was shown by the media, officers realized they had overreacted and had abused the students.

Neither Gutierrez nor Vasquez testified at the trial.

Four others were also arrested in the melee and received probation after pleading guilty to lesser charges. Prosecutors said that Gutierrez and Vasquez had turned down an offer.