New Documents in Carter Case Describe Talks With Prostitute

The Orange County district attorney’s office Thursday released new documents on former Harbor Municipal Court Judge Brian R. Carter that detail the exchanges in taped conversations between the judge and a prostitute in which he appeared to be worried about an investigation of their relationship.

“It’s got me deeper into something than I’ve even imagined,” Carter told Della Christine Johnson, an acknowledged prostitute, in the transcripts of a telephone discussion between them recorded June 21, 1984.

The documents also show that in that conversation, Johnson told Carter police had seized her work ledger and that it had his name listed next to an entry noting that he had paid her $100 for sex. Carter then asks Johnson to meet with him before talking with law enforcement officials.

The recording was done by the law enforcement officials as part of an investigation into allegations that Carter misused his position to help his friends and obtain favors from prostitutes.

The district attorney’s office eventually decided against filing criminal charges against Carter. Over Wednesday and Thursday this week, it has released, based on a Freedom of Information request by The Times Orange County Edition, more than 600 pages of documents collected in its investigation. Deputy Dist. Atty. Wallace J. Wade said Thursday that his office would not be releasing the entire Carter file, citing the need to protect the privacy of some people whose names have not yet been disclosed in connection with the Carter investigation. Wade also said that some of the documents have not been released because doing so could affect continuing criminal investigations.

Carter, 63, retired from the bench last week. A disciplinary hearing by the state Commission on Judicial Performance had been pending. The commission dropped its investigation after Carter announced that he would retire. It still plans, however, to have a formal hearing on similar allegations involving Harbor Municipal Judge Calvin P. Schmidt.

Carter, interviewed by The Times on Wednesday after the first batch of documents was released, declined to comment on any of them, adding that he was “enjoying retirement.” “Let them play their games,” he said of the district attorney’s office.

Carter in the past has refused to say anything about his relationship with Johnson. He has strongly denied misusing his position as a judge. Carter said the reason for his retirement was in part to spare his family further public pressure from the pending state commission hearings.

County prosecutors in recent months have refused to discuss their investigation of Carter. The inquiry began in 1984 and continued intermittently over the next 3 years. But on Thursday, Wade said the investigation began after Johnson was arrested in Fullerton and told police of her relationship with Carter.

“That’s definitely what started it,” Wade said. “Once we knew that, we were obligated to try to find out what was going on.”

Johnson had told police that she had agreed--through a friend of Schmidt--to have sex with Schmidt in exchange for a reduced penalty on a traffic matter. But, Johnson said, Carter called her instead, saying that he, rather than Schmidt, was going to collect the free sexual encounter.

Carter was publicly embarrassed last year when court documents were revealed showing that in 1984 the judge once asked Johnson--in a telephone conversation taped by police--to meet him for “love and friendship” because she “owed” him.

Revealed for the first time Thursday are new documents of a second taped conversation between Carter and Johnson in which Carter expressed worry about her ledger being turned over to police.

“The information you’ve given me now is just kind of . . . stunning me,” Carter told her. “We’d better sit down and talk about it.”

In that conversation, Carter denied remembering having paid Johnson $100. But later he complained to her that “I don’t know what would have prompted putting it in writing. . . .”