In Question of Accused Teen, There Are No Easy Answers

Seventeen-year-old Arthur Carmona knows his fate hangs in the balance, that whatever remains of his youth may be spent in state prison. That’s the way it is when a jury says you committed two armed robberies, even though you say you didn’t.

In a column on Friday I went to bat for Carmona’s bid for a new trial. But I hadn’t met him until I showed up unannounced at his lawyer’s office and asked for an interview.

Police and prosecutors say Carmona is a thug, plain and simple. In February 1998 he robbed a restaurant and a juice bar within two days, both times waving a gun and mouthing obscenities at terrified workers, they say.

On Friday, I met him for the first time after his lawyer took me over to the jail where he’s been for more than a year. I found him polite, unguarded, seemingly at ease but not eager. Soft in appearance, no hint of sullenness or semblance of street tough. No cockiness or obvious edge.

What’s most noticeable is how slowly Carmona responds to every question, even simple ones, sometimes seeming to use his hands to help formulate thoughts. Loquacious he is not. Twitchy he is not. Almost without fail, he looks me in the eye when talking, almost as if that’s helping him understand the questions. More than once, I simply drop a question or try to rephrase it because he says he doesn’t understand it.

A couple of times, he first replies with, “I don’t know what words to use,” but he answers everything in a fairly steady but not downcast monotone. Several times, he manages a grin or crooked smile.

Carmona’s attorney, Mark Devore, let me interview his client without having prepped him. In introducing me, Devore tells Carmona about the Friday column.

“I read it three times,” Carmona says with a grin. “When I read it, it made me feel good.”

Not linked to the robberies by any physical evidence, Carmona was convicted on the testimony of three or four key eyewitnesses. My support comes not as rock-ribbed certainty of his innocence; rather, that the circumstances surrounding the eyewitness identifications were highly questionable.

For example, police placed a hat the robber wore on Carmona’s head while the robbery victims made their identifications. But Carmona was not wearing a hat when he was arrested, and he was never linked to the hat police put on him--or to any of the other physical evidence recovered in the case, for that matter.

Not only that, but one of the eyewitnesses whose testimony convicted him told me she wishes she had known during the trial that the hat wasn’t his. The hat issue, along with alleged mistakes Carmona’s former lawyers made, are part of Devore’s petition for a new trial.

I incorrectly wrote Friday that he’s been in the county jail since his arrest in February 1998. Actually, this teen--whose only other brush with the law was a ticket for riding his bike without a helmet--has been in the Santa Ana City Jail, and that’s where we talked Friday, beginning with legal and civic efforts in his behalf.

“I feel everybody is doing their job, helping as much as they can,” he says. “I believe people are helping me out. It brings my spirits up that people who don’t know me are helping me. It keeps me from getting bummed out.”

I ask how he spends his time. “Mostly, what I do is pray and read the Bible and ask God to help me in my case. He’s the only one I can trust and put my faith in.”

What about your attorney? I ask. “God’s going to help my attorney,” Carmona says, smiling.

He says he’s had to fight off both anger and, on a couple of occasions, tears while in jail. He’s continuing high school studies and he whiles away other spare time by drawing. He’s also learned, he says, how to avoid fights at the jail.

I ask Carmona, who faces up to 30 years in prison, if he’s afraid. “Everyone is scared of something,” he says. “Yeah, I’m afraid.”

I ask if he’s optimistic. “What does optimistic mean?” he asks. I explain, and he says, “I try to keep my hopes high. I know things will work out because I put my faith and trust in God”.

I ask how he feels being identified as an armed robber.

“It gets me confused, because I don’t see how people can say, ‘That’s him.’ These people [at the trial] were saying it was me, and I know I didn’t do it. I started thinking, ‘Why do they think it was me?’ ”

He says he isn’t angry at the witnesses and considers their identifications of him as an “honest mistake.”

Is this soft-spoken, slightly muddled young man the brazen, profane gunman who robbed those two restaurants?

Those who know him say he can’t be.

His mother and former principal described him to me as needing special education classes for a learning disability.

A pastor who has visited him regularly for the last 15 months says, “It’s not that he’s slow, but he doesn’t have what you’d call sharpness of mind. His mentality is not to be outspoken.”

A teen friend of his told me that “if I was to get into it with anyone on the street, Arthur wouldn’t be one to jump in. He’d just stay out of the situation.”

What friends and family say about him, of course, isn’t proof of innocence. But coming on top of all the other problems with the case against him, my interview reinforces my conclusion he deserves a new trial.

I remember police telling me Carmona made no impassioned pleas of innocence. Neither does he with me, other than to reaffirm he didn’t commit the robberies.

I ask what he would say to people uncertain about his guilt or innocence.

“What I want to say is that I believe if I get the motion for the new trial, I believe I’ll get out,” he says. “I’ll be proven innocent.”

Has his 15 months in jail changed him? “I feel like I’m different.”

How so? Pausing for a few seconds, he says, “I feel like an inmate.”

I ask if he thinks about prison. “No, I don’t want to.”

Finally, has jail made him harder?

“Do you mean tougher?” he asks.

No, I say, I mean harder of heart.

“No,” he says. “I could see how it could, but I won’t let it happen to me.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com