COURT UPHOLDS CONVICTION OF GANG MEMBER 3-JUDGE PANEL DENIES APPEAL.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Staff Writer

LANCASTER - A state appeals court upheld the conviction and 10-year prison sentence of a gang member convicted of beating a man in a mini-mart parking lot, running over a man outside a bar and threatening a sheriff's deputy.

The three-judge panel of the Second Appellate District rejected Amado Sahagun's assertion that his trial was unfair because the beating victim and two witnesses were questioned about his gang affiliation and a detective testified that gangs retaliate against witnesses and people they believe were disrespectful.

``(I)n our view, given the callous and gruesome nature of the assaults, especially the hit and run incident, we doubt that the gang evidence would have further inflamed or prejudiced the jury against Sahagun,'' the appellate ruling said in upholding Sahagun's conviction.

Sahagun, 30, was convicted in 2001 of assault, battery, criminal threats, assault with a deadly weapon and leaving the scene of an accident in three unrelated incidents that occurred between June 1997 and September 1999. He was sentenced to 10 years and four months in prison.

Sahagun appealed, contending, among other things, that the trial judge erred in admitting gang evidence, and that there was insufficient evidence to support his criminal threats conviction.

The trial judge had ruled that gang evidence was relevant to explain why witnesses recanted their prior statements implicating the defendant.

Sahagun was convicted of the June 1997 beating outside a Lancaster AM/PM market of a man he accused of raping his former girlfriend. The victim told detectives he was pulled from his car, beaten and kicked by a group of men, one of whom he knew as ``Junior'' or ``Junior Boy,'' Ortega's nickname.

The victim has never been charged with rape, officials said.

Sahagun was also convicted of threatening in July 1999 a sheriff's deputy who pulled over a Cadillac in which Sahagun was a passenger. The deputy arrested Sahagun after discovering there was an arrest warrant for him in the AM/PM beating.

The deputy said Sahagun refused to get out of the patrol car at the Lancaster sheriff's station, spit at his face and hair, and threatened to kill the deputy's children and rape his wife.

Sahagun asserted that the deputy wasn't really afraid and should have taken into account that Sahagun was drunk and later apologized for the threats.

Sahagun was also convicted of running over a man in September 1999 after a fight among several men in the parking lot of the Schooner's nightspot in Lancaster.

After the fight broke up when one of the participants fired a gun into the air, a Schooner's bouncer testified, he saw Sahagun get into an SUV and drive over a man who stepped in front of the vehicle and put his hands on the hood.

The SUV dragged the man for a distance, then drove off, officials said. Schooner's owners got the license plate and officials discovered the SUV was registered to Sahagun's mother.

A detective who investigated the AM/PM beating testified during the trial that Sahagun had admitted he was a gang member in a Pacoima-based gang.

Karen Maeshiro, [phone]

karen.maeshiro(at)dailynews.com