3 found guilty of hate crime in Seattle attack

Three young men charged with a hate crime for attacking a gay man last year in Seattle during gay-pride weekend were convicted yesterday of assault with a deadly weapon and malicious harassment.

Prosecutors and civil-liberties activists said the fact that all three people were convicted of malicious harassment, which is a hate crime, was of particular importance.

"The jury was quite clear that the crime was motivated by the victim's sexual orientation," said King County deputy prosecutor Sean O'Donnell.

He said the 1993 law making it a crime to assault a person on the basis of gender, religious views, sexual orientation or national origin "was designed to punish behavior like this, and it worked."

Defense attorneys for the three men said it was a victory of sorts that their clients were found not guilty of the much more serious charge of first-degree assault.

Police and prosecutors said Vadim Samusenko, 21, David Kravchenko, 20, and Yevgeniy Savchak, 18, were driving around downtown Seattle in a pickup on June 27 when they spied Micah Painter, a landscaper and personal trainer, outside Timberline Spirits, a gay bar at 1828 Yale Ave.

At least one of the three men yelled a derogatory word for a gay man and uttered other slurs at Painter.

Painter made rude gestures in response, witnesses testified during the four-week trial before King County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ramsdell.

Samusenko, identified as the leader of the attack, also was convicted of second-degree assault with a deadly weapon. Prosecutors said Samusenko, with a vodka bottle in his hand, jumped out of the pickup, chased Painter, broke the bottle and attacked him.

Painter, 24, who testified that he defended himself vigorously, was left with wounds on his face and back that required surgery.

Kravchenko and Savchak, who also were found guilty yesterday of fourth-degree assault, joined the attack, kicking Painter after he was already on the ground, prosecutors said.

Samusenko's second-degree assault conviction stems from a separate incident later that night at the Greyhound bus station in Seattle, in which he threatened a man with a gun. That man told police that Samusenko and the two others bragged about beating up a gay man earlier that night.

Prosecutors had charged all three men with first-degree assault, but jurors did not convict them on that charge.

Samusenko faces a mandatory minimum three-year sentence on the two weapons-related convictions alone and likely faces more time on the malicious-harassment and assault convictions.

The case against the three Russian-immigrant defendants was closely watched by gay-rights activists and the Russian-immigrant communities of Snohomish and Skagit counties. Samusenko's attorney, Tom Olmstead, had argued at closing that in light of the defendants' culture and upbringing, it was not particularly egregious for them to have been offended by Painter's apparent open display of his sexual orientation.

Olmstead argued that the derogatory slurs were almost to be expected and could have been ignored. The real fight, he argued, began when Painter responded to the verbal assault with his own confrontational hand gestures and words.

Kravchenko and Savchak face at least a one-year mandatory minimum sentence.

Their attorneys, Pete Connick and Tim McGarry, had argued that they were simply trying to help their friend and break up the fight.

Samusenko, Kravchenko and Savchak have been in custody since their arrests last year.

Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com