Passing Judgment on Raabe Sentence

* With the sentencing of former Orange County Assistant Treasurer Matthew R. Raabe to a three-year prison term for his leading role in the county bankruptcy (Oct. 4), hopefully this sad period in our local history is over.

As Superior Court Judge Everett W. Dickey said, “ . . . The public has the right to expect that all of its officials will follow the rules meticulously.”

This has been an extraordinarily expensive case, not only in terms of tax dollars lost, but in the cost of jobs for many, and the reputations of a few.

In all of this, it should be made clear that certainly one man had been made a scapegoat, and has suffered because of it. He is former County Budget Director Ronald S. Rubino. Now, thankfully, his name has been “cleared” in the report of the district attorney to the court on the sentencing of Raabe.

“The evidence is clear: [Raabe]--not Citron, not Ronald Rubino--concocted the scheme to steal money from the pool participants. There is simply no reliable evidence to the contrary. In his testimony before the grand jury, [Raabe] fingered Citron and Rubino as the architects of the ‘diversion scheme.’ Citron denied it, Rubino denied it, and the evidence proves that defendant is lying.”

Unfortunately, the court of public opinion often erroneously convicts innocent people, who are swept along in an information-age phenomenon--the “rush to judgment.”

Rubino has always been an honorable, dedicated public servant who, until his upheaval, had devoted his entire professional life to serving county government.

In the millions of words that have been written about the county bankruptcy, and among the tens of thousands of documents that have been scrutinized, analyzed and publicized, it’s really a shame that all too few will have an opportunity to see this pre-sentencing brief.

RICHARD V. SIMON

Newport Beach

* There seems to be a lot of sympathy for Matthew R. Raabe because of his three-year prison sentence.

What if Raabe had had been poor, perhaps a different skin color, and had carefully burglarized thousands of unoccupied Orange County homes for a total amount of $1.64 billion? Would he still have received only a three-year prison term? Would there still be feelings of sympathy?

There are many Californians who are getting 25 years to life in maximum-security prisons for a couple of burglaries of unoccupied dwellings, sometimes over a decade ago, and the commission of a minor offense of petty theft or possession of less than a gram of cocaine. Should we have any sympathy for them? Why or why not?

DOUGLAS W. KIESO

Irvine