Carona trial judge is asked to tell jurors that prosecutors violated ethics guidelines

Attorneys for former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona asked a judge Friday to instruct jurors in his upcoming corruption trial that federal prosecutors violated state ethical guidelines when they instructed a former assistant sheriff to secretly record conversations with Carona last year.

U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford has already denied a defense request to exclude the recordings as evidence in Carona’s trial, now scheduled to begin Aug. 26. During a meeting at a Newport Beach restaurant in 2007, former Assistant Sheriff Donald Haidl recorded a conversation in which prosecutors say he and Carona discussed illicit cash and gifts the sheriff had received.

Guilford ruled that federal prosecutors, by sending Haidl to meet with Carona, had violated state ethics guidelines prohibiting attorneys from contacting parties already represented by lawyers, as Corona was at the time. But the judge said the violation was not significant enough to prohibit prosecutors from playing the recorded conversation at the upcoming trial.

Carona’s lawyers said in Friday’s motion that instructing jurors of the misconduct was a proper remedy for the prosecutors’ violation.

Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting the case, declined to discuss the defense motion. “We’ll respond to the motion in court,” he said.

Also on Friday, lawyers for Carona’s wife, Deborah, asked Guilford to dismiss charges against her. Attorney David W. Wiechert said the grand jury that indicted Deborah Carona had been inaccurately instructed that she violated state law by not listing the gift of a $15,000 watch on a conflict-of-interest form she filed while serving on a board overseeing the Orange County Fair. Because the man who gave her the watch does not do business with the fair, she was not required to report it.

A subsequent grand jury that returned two amended indictments against Deborah Carona – removing the allegation about the watch – may have been tainted by publicity regarding the earlier indictment, Wiechert said.

In addition, he accused the U.S. Attorney’s Office of a “vindictive prosecution,” alleging that prosecutors indicted her because her husband refused to go along with a plea bargain under which she would not have been charged.

The former sheriff, his wife and his former mistress, Debra V. Hoffman, are accused of conspiring to exchange the power of his office for tens of thousands of dollars in cash and gifts. All three have pleaded not guilty.

 stuart.pfeifer@latimes.com