A video store owner whose display of Communist Vietnamese symbols in his window inspired protests earlier this year faces video piracy sentencing in Orange County Court today.
Truong Van Tran will offer no defence on a felony charge of copying thousands of videotapes illegally at his store here, his attorney Ron Talmo has told the Los Angeles Times. Tran missed a hearing on the case yesterday but Talmo waived Tran's right to a trial by jury, accepting the prosecution's case against him.
Tran could face up to five years behind bars in the case, but other reports suggest the actual sentence could be lighter.
The video piracy case sprang up during the protests against his Communist displays, when authorities investigated what seemed a burglary at his Hi Tek video store. With protesters chanting outside, law enforcement officers found over one hundred videocassette recorders wired for what they called a large counterfeiting operation.
They also confiscated 147 videocassette recorders and over 17,000 videos, the Times says - mostly Asian soap operas.
In mid-January, Tran instigated two months worth of anti-Communist protests when he displayed a picture of Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh and the flag of the current Communist Vietnamese government in his Hi Tek Video store. Thousands of Vietnamese emigres, including many exiles and political prisoners who fled the Communist regime, protested, considering the symbols offensive.
Tran defended the display as a bid to prompt dialogue in a community which never accepted dissent on the question of the United States normalising relations with Vietnam.
His attorneys had also bid to have Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas removed from the prosecution, after Rackauckas appeared at one of the anti-Communist protests outside Hi Tek and voiced support for the protestors. The defence argued conflict of interest.
A videotape of the incident had Rackauckas telling the protestors, "You have no need of Communist symbols here." Two days after the incident, Tran was arrested in the video piracy case.
