Citron’s Lawyer Makes His Moves : Sentencing: Attorney seeks another site, another judge. Former treasurer can get up to 14 years in prison and $10 million in fines.

Former county Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron sought Tuesday to move his sentencing out of Orange County and asked that the judge on his case be disqualified because he performed the wedding of another former county official now indicted on charges of aiding and abetting Citron’s activities.

Citron’s defense attorney alleged a conflict of interest by Superior Court Judge David O. Carter and contended the case should be moved because the entire Orange County bench has been touched by the county’s bankruptcy.

Citron has pleaded guilty to interest-skimming charges filed in connection with the county’s financial collapse and faces up to 14 years in prison and $10 million in fines. He is scheduled to be sentenced by Carter on Feb. 23.

“There is a strong likelihood that no judge of the Orange County Superior Court is qualified to hear the action,” defense attorney David W. Wiechert wrote in his motion to disqualify the judge.

Wiechert asked that the matter be referred to the chairman of the Judicial Council, which oversees the courts in California.

The action comes one day after Carter announced during a hearing that he had performed the wedding of Sharon Esterley, who once worked on the judge’s political campaign for Congress, and former County Budget Director Ronald S. Rubino, who was indicted last week on two counts of aiding and abetting Citron in the interest diversion.

The request was the latest development in a string of recent motions by Wiechert intended to persuade the court that Citron should receive a sentence of probation and community service instead of a prison term.

Citron pleaded guilty in April to six felony counts of securities fraud and misappropriation of funds. As part of a plea agreement obligating him to cooperate with investigators, the district attorney’s office agreed not to oppose an attempt by Citron to be sentenced outside the county.

To build the case for a probation sentence, Wiechert has contended that Citron, 70, was not the sophisticated investor he once held himself out to be and that he could not have acted without the knowledge and assistance of others.

On Friday, Wiechert tried to persuade the judge to let him review the grand jury testimony and other evidence against Rubino because Rubino is charged with participating with Citron in diverting $60 million in interest into the county’s investment pool. But Carter declined, saying he didn’t think the two cases were related.

Then, on Monday, Carter changed his mind, and ordered that Rubino’s testimony and evidence, and that of other county officials, be made available to Wiechert.

At that hearing, Carter also disclosed that he had told the Orange County Grand Jury of his relationship with Rubino before Rubino was indicted, and then announced he did not intend to handle Rubino’s arraignment.

The judge declined to disqualify himself from sentencing Citron, dismissing Wiechert’s request by observing that Orange County “is a small county.”

“To the same extent that Judge Carter’s recusal from presiding over matters pertaining to the Rubino case was in the interest of justice, it logically is in the interest of justice to recuse Judge Carter in the Citron matter,” Wiechert wrote.

Wiechert argued in his request that all Orange County judges be disqualified because their pensions were affected by the county’s fiscal collapse, that court funding has suffered, and that judges, too, are elected officials.