"This was no fight. We tried to run away," Schneider said. "We didn't want trouble. In return, they beat us within inches of our lives. I can't tell you what it did to me to see people get such pleasure in hurting us."
Smith and Schneider said they were suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome.
The victims said they were sure that all the minors on trial were involved in the attack.
The defendants' families have said they will appeal the convictions. If the judge sentences the youths to camp, Leo Branton, a semiretired litigator who secured an acquittal for militant black activist Angela Davis in 1972, said he plans to ask an appeals court to order the judge to release the defendants to their families pending the appeal.
Branton said that there was insufficient evidence linking the youths to the crime, and that a jury would have acquitted all of them. All juvenile trials are presided over by a judge. "This was an outrageous distortion of justice," he said.
joe.mozingo@latimes.com
