Doubts About Carmona’s Guilt

* Re “ ‘I Am So Very Sorry,’ Key Eyewitness Tells Carmona,” June 27:

I would like to thank The Times, which brought this injustice to light.

How many times in the last few years have we had to come to terms with destroying the lives of the innocent? That’s right, we did it.

After all, who do the police officers, district attorneys, public defenders and judges work for?

If our employees act in bad faith in our name and we do not speak out and hold them accountable, we are to blame.

Here we have a case of a 17-year-old whose only connection to the crimes for which he has been convicted may have been manufactured by our employees.

The guilty and innocent should be afforded the same protections against abuses of power. If we allow those in whom we have bestowed authority to make up the rules as they go along, there is no truth.

How can there be truth when those charged with finding it are busy stacking the deck in the first place? If this is allowed then any of us may find ourselves looking out on the world from behind bars.

If in a few years it is found that this young man is innocent, what will we do? Offer him money and hope he will take it and go away, sure that this could not happen to us.

ERIC M. WASHINGTON

Stanton

* The story of the apparently improper conviction of 17-year-old Arthur Carmona has been tugging at me ever since Dana Parsons’ first column about it several weeks ago.

Juror Casey Becerra’s letter to Arthur, reported in the June 27 Times, apologizing for what happened to him after the jurors were misled by authorities is an incredible contrast in human kindness versus the never-admit-a-mistake attitude of prosecutor Jana Hoffman.

HARVEY H. LISS

Irvine