Jose Cruz is a walking testament to what happens when a member turns against the Avenues street gang.
He has 30 scars from the stab wounds he suffered in one attempt on his life -- on his arms, torso and legs. In another attack, he was beaten so severely that he has a visible dent in his skull, according to court papers, "the size and shape of a pistol butt."
His street gang goes back five generations in Highland Park, which for Cruz is five miles and several lifetimes from the downtown courtroom where he is scheduled to testify as the star witness for the prosecution in the trial of a group of childhood friends.
Federal prosecutors, who launched their case last week, contend that the Avenues gang between 1994 and 2000 conspired to kill African Americans on their turf.
Men, women and children were harassed, terrorized, assaulted and slain as gang members sought to force black residents out of Latino neighborhoods, prosecutors said.
Authorities are using a federal hate-crime law based on the amendment to the U.S. Constitution that outlawed slavery, and another law created in the civil rights era, to go after four gang members. Barbara Bernstein, deputy chief of the criminal section of the civil rights divisions of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, is part of the prosecution team.
Attorneys for the defendants -- Gilbert Saldana, Alejandro Martinez, Fernando Cazares and Porfirio Avila -- have asserted that the federal government has no power to involve itself in a common street crime.
Defense attorney Reuven L. Cohen told jurors last week that one of the slayings cited in the charges -- the 1999 shooting of Kenneth Wilson -- was not a hate crime but "a simple gang killing committed out of boredom."
Cohen said the crimes sprang from the "sad" truth of "a tension that exists between African American gangs and Latino gangs."
The first of three former gang members, each in custody and hoping for leniency, testified Monday. Jesse Diaz, who described himself as a tagger from age 12, told jurors the Avenues decided to fight the "infestation" of blacks in Highland Park with a systematic terror campaign designed to run them out of the neighborhood.
Diaz, who has 10 more years to serve in prison for attempted murder, said the Avenues hated all rival gangs. But the antipathy for blacks was different, he said.
