Washed It!

The young man, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and shackled at the waist, was poised on the witness stand, politely addressing attorneys as “sir” and “ma’am” as he matter-of-factly described the night he and other gang members took turns stabbing a suspected snitch 80 times in a cramped, cluttered garage.

“He didn’t scream or nothing,” testified Jose Covarrubias, now 24, describing how he plunged a folding blade hard into 21-year-old Christopher Ash’s stomach four or five times as he lay dying on his back.

The testimony of the 204th Street gang member with a youthful face and buzz cut, also known as “Chano” or “Criminal,” is at the center of a case on which a Los Angeles jury will resume deliberations Wednesday. Covarrubias’ testimony in the high-profile hate crime trial, should the jury choose to believe it, ties the gang to Ash’s death and to the slaying of a black 14-year-old girl, which authorities say was motivated by the Latino gang’s racial hatred.

Covarrubias, who took the stand last month in exchange for a lighter sentence and escaping the death penalty, offered the jury a firsthand look into the inner workings of a powerful Latino street gang prosecutors said used fear and intimidation to reign over the sliver of Los Angeles known as the Harbor Gateway.

Part of that reign, Covarrubias’ testimony showed, was an unsparing willingness to turn on the gang’s own members when the occasion arose.

Gang members suspected Ash of talking to police about the killing of Cheryl Green two weeks earlier. His body was found on the side of a road in Carson. Autopsy photos showed numerous gashes in his stomach.

Cheryl was shot and killed in December 2006 while hanging out with friends in broad daylight because of her skin color, prosecutors allege. Jonathan Fajardo, 22, has admitted to the shooting in a police interview; his defense attorney disputes that the killing was motivated by race.

“Basically, we’re against all black people,” Covarrubias said of the gang.

Fajardo faces the death penalty if convicted of Cheryl’s and Ash’s killings. A second defendant, Daniel Aguilar, 23, is charged with Ash’s murder for luring him to the garage and partaking in the beating and clean-up.

Because of his cooperation, Covarrubias will be allowed to plead to voluntary manslaughter and receive a 22-year prison term.

When police served a search warrant on Ash’s apartment in the days after Green’s death, the gang grew suspicious, Covarrubias said in his two-day testimony.

A week later, older gang members grilled the younger ones about whether anyone was snitching. Covarrubias testified that he, Aguilar and Ash were all under suspicion. Some mentioned that Ash may be keeping a journal about the gang’s activities, and his fate was quickly sealed. It was agreed that Aguilar, Ash’s best friend, would take him to the garage, Covarrubias testified.

An old-timer known as Raccoon, one of the gang’s leaders, allegedly pulled Covarrubias aside.

“He just told me if I was either with — with them or against them, if I was down for it. And I told him, ‘Yeah,’ ” he testified. “I had no other choice.”

After he stabbed Ash, Covarrubias said, he was overcome by the blood and smell and threw up, dropping the knife. Another gang member grabbed the knife and continued stabbing, he said

As Ash lay still on the floor, Aguilar, who had been watching, kicked him in the legs, Covarrubias said.

The body was rolled up in a blanket and tarp, then loaded onto the back of a van. Everyone worked quietly and methodically, helping with the cleanup, at first hosing down the garage, then turning to paint thinner to scrub the floor when bloody water started running down the sidewalk.

In cross-examination, defense attorneys pointed to what they said were inconsistencies between Covarrubias’ testimony and earlier statements to the police. He admitted under defense questioning that he was under the influence of methamphetamine the night of the killing.

Aguilar’s defense attorney, Antonio Bestard, attacked Covarrubias’ credibility, pointing out that he had been dating Ash’s sister at the time of his killing.

“You participated in the murder of your girlfriend’s brother, right?” Bestard questioned. “And right after that, you would go and then crawl into bed with her, right?”

A violent death retold

Meg Whitman’s record-breaking spending in the race for governor has enabled her campaign to blanket California with more TV ads and mailers than any other in state history, while also tapping new technologies to further broaden her reach.

With nine weeks left until election day, Whitman has donated $104 million of her own money to the campaign, more than any other candidate in California history and within striking distance of the national record for a non-presidential contest, the $109 million spent by businessman Michael Bloomberg to secure a third term as mayor of New York City.

Those donations have allowed her to target her campaign mailings to the smallest subsets of voters and sort out which television shows are popular among independent voters. (It turns out they are big fans of “Bones,” the crime show rife with romantic tension, on which Whitman has aired ads.)

Dozens of outside consultants and a paid staff the size of some presidential campaigns run an operation that seems to be the living embodiment of Whitman’s book title: “The Power of Many.” After record amounts spent on television advertising, mail and ground organization, there has even been enough money left over to sponsor a youth soccer team.

“She has the money to do everything,” said Garry South, a Democratic consultant who ran Gray Davis‘ campaigns for governor, “and she is doing everything.”

The heart of the race is still to come, yet Whitman’s personal donations already represent more than twice the amount Arnold Schwarzenegger spent in the last gubernatorial election from all sources of money.

Her campaign spent $25 million on television over the summer, more than what Schwarzenegger spent on TV in his yearlong reelection effort. By the beginning of July, she had spent $7.5 million sending mail to voters, almost double Schwarzenegger’s 2006 tally and a figure that does not count the more recent flurry of mail against her November rival, Democrat Jerry Brown.

Overall, she has nearly tripled the previous California record of personal donations to a campaign, set in 1998 by Democratic businessman and gubernatorial candidate Al Checchi.

Still, for all the spending, polls show Whitman and Brown in a competitive race. Although her campaign points to the millions of dollars organized labor is pouring into the contest on Brown’s behalf, that spending pales in comparison to Whitman’s.

Whitman campaign officials say her personal donations were needed to introduce the former EBay chief and first-time candidate to California voters, to whom she was a mystery a year ago.

“We’re doing things much more aggressively than they’ve ever been done before,” said spokesman Tucker Bounds. “The frequency of the activity and the size of the political organization is an enormous investment, but we believe it will pay off on election day.”

In its ability to do more of everything, Whitman’s campaign most resembles that of President Obama, who was able to translate his immense fundraising operation into a deep use of traditional campaign tactics and a broad reach into new ones, including those harnessing the Internet for his political benefit.

Much attention has been drawn to Whitman’s television outlay, but her spending in less-visible political arenas is eye-opening as well.

Through June, Whitman had spent more than $1.2 million on polling and research, dolling out nearly $227,000 to two firms in June alone.

Democratic consultant Darry Sragow said a typical candidate might spend $300,000 on polling in the primary and a like sum in the general election. Whitman’s figures suggest a sharply different strategy than anything seen before.

“They know as much as anybody could know about the mind-set of the California electorate,” he said.

Allan Hoffenblum, a former Republican consultant who runs the Target Book, a nonpartisan compendium of political races, said Whitman was “doing stuff that is on the level of what an incumbent president would be doing running for reelection.”

Whitman’s research contributes to a detailed voter file that identifies voters by their issue interests and then targets them through an aggressive direct-mail program. Whitman’s mail effort, and her simultaneous television barrage, was devastating to her primary election rival, Steve Poizner. His campaign estimates she sent as many as 20 mailers to Republican homes in the last month of the campaign.

Whitman is now unloading on Brown, releasing ads and mail pieces almost weekly. According to the Brown campaign, Whitman’s ads showed up at least 170,000 times in state media markets from the primary through third week of August, even as multiple mailers were arriving at selected voters’ homes.

Whitman demonstrates the power of her money

There’s no doubt in Christian Vazquez’s mind why he was beaten up as he headed home from work late one night, and it wasn’t for the $10 the attackers stole from him.

“They were after me because I was a Mexican,” the 18-year-old said, his left eye still swollen shut from the assault July 31 while he was walking through Staten Island’s Port Richmond neighborhood. As his attackers punched him, they yelled, “Go home!” and anti-Mexican slurs, according to the police report, which had a familiar ring.

That’s because Vazquez was the 10th Mexican victim of a suspected hate crime in the neighborhood since April. “Why this is happening? If you ask 10 different people, you might get 10 different answers,” said Ed Josey, president of the Staten Island branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, during a march Aug. 6 led by religious and civic leaders to condemn the violence.