Deputy D.A. Ends Her Fiery Career Quietly

After a 16-year career filled with fireworks, Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol Nelson retired from the job Friday in an unusually quiet manner.

Nelson--an aggressive prosecutor whom a defendant once called a barracuda--is only the second deputy district attorney ever to retire from the Ventura County prosecutor’s office.

Nelson’s decision to retire was prompted by a feud with Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, who disagreed with a report Nelson wrote in a murder case two years ago.

Bradbury effectively demoted the veteran prosecutor and, after nearly two years in the doghouse, Nelson announced her retirement in January.

The only other deputy prosecutor to retire from the office was a former FBI agent who had become a prosecutor here as a second career, officials said.

For Nelson, however, being a prosecutor was the only job of her law enforcement career. She went to law school at age 30 and worked one year for the San Joaquin district attorney’s office. She spent the past 15 years with the Ventura County district attorney’s office, prosecuting a wide variety of defendants, from white-collar criminals to murderers.

She lost only two of roughly 50 major felony jury cases she prosecuted.

On her final day of work, Nelson, 50, received warm send-offs from many of those with whom she has worked over the years, including defense attorneys who opposed her in court.

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Courtroom adversary Robert Schwartz, a Ventura defense attorney, stopped her in the courthouse hallway and wished Nelson the best of luck.

Kevin J. McGee, Bradbury’s chief deputy, called Nelson “a tremendous trial talent, very articulate, persuasive and . . . a commanding presence in the courtroom. We’ll miss her.”

Others in the county’s legal community agreed with McGee. Bradbury, who was out of the office and unavailable for comment Friday, has declined to publicly discuss Nelson’s retirement.

“She’s an outstanding lawyer,” Superior Court Judge Lawrence Storch said. “Certainly one of the best that I have ever seen.”

Defense attorney James M. Farley said that “the district attorney’s office is losing one of their most able prosecutors. They are also losing a very caring and compassionate woman.”

If any defense attorney knows about Nelson’s abilities, Farley does. He often found his clients on the receiving end of one of her sarcastic, but penetrating, cross-examinations.

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No case illustrates that better than Nelson’s prosecution of former community college district Trustee James. T. (Tom) Ely and his wife, Ingrid. Nelson successfully prosecuted the Elys on 32 counts of fraud, conspiracy and embezzlement. Tom Ely died recently before being sentenced.

“Carol and I fought tooth and nail on that case,” Farley remembered. “We really went at it. But through it all I never lost my respect for her.”

Farley also faced Nelson in the 1989 murder case of Linda Axel, who fatally stabbed an elderly worker at a restaurant in Ventura. In that case, Nelson introduced DNA evidence that linked Axel to the killing, the first such use of DNA evidence in the county.

More than victories such as the one in the Axel case, Nelson said being a prosecutor has meant meeting a variety of different people. For instance, her first witness in the Axel murder case, molecular biologist Richard J. Roberts, won a 1993 Nobel Prize.

Nelson has also interviewed a variety of other expert witnesses and learned a great deal about science and other phenomena.

“That’s the best part of it. You feel like you are constantly learning something new, and you are doing it for something that is socially beneficial,” she said during an interview earlier this week.

In her career, she tried about 50 felony cases before juries. She won all but two of them. Her last case, an acquaintance rape, ended in a hung jury that favored the defendant by a vote of 10 to 2.

The 15-year-old alleged victim testified that she had been a virgin prior to the sexual encounter with the defendant, but that turned out not to be true. Nelson said the victim lost credibility with the jury, resulting in the deadlock. She believes the accused rapist is guilty. She said it is not significant that the loss was her final case in Ventura County.

Nelson has not finalized any other career plans, but said she would like to write some academic papers on law enforcement and perhaps do some teaching. She is moving to San Luis Obispo, where her fiance lives.

Nelson, who earned nearly $80,000 a year in Ventura County, said she has been contacted by other district attorneys in California about working in their offices. But she has so far resisted that temptation.

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Some of her colleagues believe she is still one of the best prosecutors in the state.

“She is really more like the prosecutorial version of Leslie Abramson,” senior Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter D. Kossoris said, referring to the high-profile Los Angeles defense attorney representing murder suspect Erik Menendez. “I mean that in the sense that she is relentless.”

As she prepared to leave, Nelson received an unusual parting gift from one defense attorney--a teddy bear.

Some years ago, Nelson was trying a case against that same attorney when the judge presented the teddy bear to the other attorney, who happened to be pregnant at the time. On Friday, that attorney passed the gift on to Nelson, who said she will give it to one of her three grandchildren.