Verdict due in hate crime trial Verdict due in hate crime trial (October 08, 2004)

Man was perceived as gay, then was beat up

By Jon Wiener

On the first anniversary of the hate crime attack on Mountain View resident Angel Santuario, attorneys delivered their closing arguments in the trial of a third man accused of participating in the assault.

Jerrod Cohn, in tears Tuesday at the end of the week-long trial, stood accused of punching Santuario in the back of the head. He was charged as an accessory to the anti-gay beating that took place Oct. 5, 2003 in front of the Quality Inn on Fairchild Drive.

Two fellow out-of-town construction workers pled no contest to similar charges earlier this year. Brian Walter and Michael Daugherty, who were installing the new track at Los Altos High School at the time of their arrest, both testified last week that Cohn participated in the beating. Cohn said he tried to break it up.

The verdict, expected Wednesday after the Voice press time, will likely hinge on whether the jury believes Santuario's testimony.

Santuario testified, as he told the police the night of the attack, that he was carrying his guitar with him because he had heard Mexican rockers Mana were staying at the hotel. He was walking past the King of Clubs, a gay bar in the neighborhood, when Walter drove by, along with Daugherty and Cohn, swearing at him and yelling an anti-gay slur.

Santuario said he was sitting on the hotel steps strumming his guitar when Daugherty attacked him. He got into a tug-of-war with Walter over his guitar, when he saw Daugherty coming at him. The next thing he knew, Santuario said, he felt a third person hit him in the back of the head, briefly knocking him out as he fell to the ground. The attackers began kicking and hitting him as he lay there and continued to yell out anti-gay slurs.

"I was trying to explain to them that I had a kid," said Santuario. "I had a son, I had another baby on the way, that I wasn't a (expletive)."

Prosecutors filed hate crime charges nonetheless, calling it a crime of perception.

"My client has absolutely no animosity or negative feelings towards gay people," defense attorney Wes Schroeder said during his opening statement. "He knows gay people. He has no problem with them."

Santuario sustained seven broken teeth in the attack, including a couple that lodged inside his cheek. To this day, he said, he suffers migraine headaches at least once a week, preventing him from being able to focus on his job as an auto detailer.

Under cross-examination by Schroeder, Santuario experienced one of these migraines. "I felt like I was going to pass out," the 23-year old father of two said later.

On Monday, prosecutor Dan Okonkwo showed Cohn photos of Santuario, his face swollen where he was hit and bandages over the wounds on his head, taken the night of the attack.

If convicted, Cohn faces a maximum jail sentence of nine years. His family was in attendance all week. Santuario's mother, Maria Marroquin, was in court every day as well. His fiancп remained in the hallway with their 5-month-old daughter.

E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com.

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