Alleged gang member Abraham Hade of Fremont is due back in court Tuesday to face charges that he stabbed football player Osana Futi to death last April, shortly before the victim would have graduated from Newark Memorial High School.
The trial that began last week is scheduled to resume at 9 a.m. in Dep. 9 of the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse in Oakland.
Defense attorney Tom Knutsen said once testimony resumes the case will take about eight to 10 days to argue before jurors get to decide.
In last week's opening arguments, Knutsen and his opposite, Alameda County prosecutor Elgin Lowe, agreed that Futi's death stemmed from a long-running feud between Newark Memorial football players and Norteno gang members.
Lowe argued that Hade wielded the knife in the attack that occurred about 11 p.m. on April 28, 2012, following a house party on the 4900 block of Hyde Park Drive, near Yellow Stone Park Drive in Fremont.
Futi died at about 1:20 a.m. on April 29. He was 18.
Hade, also 18 at the time, was arrested the day after the attack along with three minors: a 16-year-old girl and two boys, ages 13 and 14, at the time.
Officials have refused to say more about the teens because of rules protecting disclosures about minors.
Knutsen told jurors last week that he believes Futi was killed by a friend of Hade's who was only 14 at the time of the murder. That juvenile told Fremont police that he was the one who stabbed Futi, Knutsen said.
Knutsen also refuted the assertion that Hade was an actual gang member, although he allowed that the defendant did know some gang members.
That could be an important distinction because Lowe has alleged that both Hade and the juvenile in question belong to a branch of the Norteno gang called Fremont Mexican Territory.
The prosecutor argued that, in gang culture, juveniles take blame for crimes comitted by adults because minors face less severe consequences.
Afoa case
The Futi case is linked to another deadly confrontation between alleged Nortenos and Newark Memorial High football players.
In their arguments last week, defense and prosecution attorneys traced the Futi case to animosties arising from the near the intersection of Cedar Boulevard and Birch Street in Newark at about 3:30 p.m. on Dec. 15, 2010.
Newark police have said that Afoa was killed in an act of revenge because he had beaten up a 30-year-old Norteno gang member.
Rafael Tovar, 32, his half-sister, Daniela Guzman, 19, and their friend Daniel Howard, 31, face charges for their alleged roles in the Afoa killing; Tovar and Howard for allegedly perpetrating the act with Guzman as their accomplice.
All three defendents in the Afoa case are scheduled to appear at the Hayward Hall of Justice at 8:57 am on Friday, March 8, to enter pleas after arraignment.
