Documents Subpoenaed From Judge in Carmony Case

Prosecutors have subpoenaed documents from a Superior Court judge to fend off a move to disqualify Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi from pursuing election law charges against GOP political aide Rhonda J. Carmony.

The judge, David O. Carter, who supervises the criminal court calendar, hand delivered the subpoenaed documents Tuesday during a hearing before another judge to set dates for resolving the recusal motion.

Carmony, former campaign manager for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and now his fiancee, is charged with three felonies for allegedly orchestrating a scheme to put a decoy Democratic candidate on the ballot in a special election in the fall of 1995, using petitions that were improperly and fraudulently certified.

Carmony was not in court Tuesday. Her attorney, Creighton B. Laz, said his client was accompanying Rohrabacher on an East Coast fund-raiser.

The charges against Carmony arose out of the 1995 election victory of Republican Scott Baugh of Huntington Beach, who replaced former Assembly Speaker Doris Allen in the 67th Assembly District seat. Baugh, too, faces felony charges of falsifying campaign donation reports that would have shown his association with the decoy candidate. Both Baugh and Carmony have denied wrongdoing.

Carmony attorney Laz filed a motion last month asking the Superior Court to require that the district attorney’s office be replaced as prosecutor by the state attorney general. Laz alleged, among other things, that Capizzi has prosecuted Carmony for her political associations and to enhance his own political career. The district attorney’s office has denied the allegation.

The subpoenaed papers concern an Oct. 9 meeting held in the chambers of Judge James L. Smith, the judge assigned to preside over Carmony’s trial. The meeting was attended by a host of prosecutors and defense attorneys.

In his motion, Laz said prosecutors raised a 13-year-old incident--involving an air conditioner delivered to Smith’s house--to pressure the trial judge to remove himself from the case, an allegation the district attorney’s office denies.

The air conditioner belonged to the Orange Unified School District, which employed Smith’s wife. The appliance was left at the house by a district employee who was later convicted of embezzling school property. Both Smiths appeared as witnesses before the grand jury in 1987 and testified about the incident.

Last month, Smith disqualified himself from hearing the recusal motion and turned the matter over to Carter.

After conducting his own investigation, Carter lambasted prosecutors, accusing them of using the 1983 incident to “muscle” Smith off the case. Carter noted that Smith had earlier thrown out most of the charges that prosecutors brought against Baugh in a grand jury indictment, and the prosecution’s unhappiness with Smith’s action was no secret. Carter eventually removed himself from the case.

Makino gave prosecutors until April 4 to respond to the defense’s recusal motion. He set April 11 as a hearing date in the matter. If witnesses need to testify for the recusal motion, another hearing will be held April 14, Makino said.