Justice Done--Freedom With No Strings Attached

I made a private promise not to relay the following anecdote about Arthur Carmona unless and until the young man’s robbery conviction was overturned and that day, thankfully, has come.

The source of the anecdote was Ken Wilson, a Fullerton pastor who knows all too well Carmona’s story.

The anecdote, as Wilson relayed it to me in 1999, was that during one of his many sessions with Carmona before his sentencing last year, he told the teenager he had some good news.

An allegation of possible juror misconduct in Carmona’s October 1998 trial had come to light, Wilson said.

What did that mean? Possibly a new trial, he told Carmona at the time.

As it turned out, the juror issue fizzled, but what struck me was how Wilson described Arthur’s reaction.

“When I told him there might be grounds for a mistrial, he wasn’t that happy,” Wilson said. “He said he didn’t want to get out on a technicality.” If he was going to get out, he wanted it to be legitimate.

On Monday, with his tearful mother in the front row and a phalanx of lawyers at his side, Carmona got just that.

No technicality.

Just exoneration and the promise of freedom, with no strings attached.

Today, for the first time in 2 1/2 years, Arthur Carmona, 18, probably doesn’t know what he’s going to do. On the verge of gaining his freedom, he may not even know how to act. He’ll have to buy some clothes. Maybe visit friends. Or maybe grab a bite at the local fast-food joint.

Or, he may do none of the above.

But he’s at least able now to contemplate such things.

The last time he had that option, he was a 16-year-old kid walking down a street, a block or so from a friend’s house in Costa Mesa.

On that afternoon of Feb. 12, 1998--a week after his 16th birthday--Carmona’s biography changed. He was stopped as a robbery suspect and arrested shortly afterward. He’s been in custody every day since.

On Monday, after prosecutors finally decided not to oppose his appeal for a new trial, Judge Everett W. Dickey announced that Carmona’s conviction would be expunged and he’d be free when the state prison paperwork was done.

The moment was punctuated when his mother, Ronnie, hugged her son as he sat--still cuffed and in jail togs--at the defense table.

This time, however, instead of a hug good-bye, it was a hug hello.

Upon Dickey’s announcement, there were no shouts, no spontaneous outbursts in court.

Just a mother collapsing into her son’s arms and then leaving the courtroom, crying softly in a mixture of unspeakable relief and lingering anger over his imprisonment.

Just the sight of Arthur weeping softly as he left the court.

Just the surprising sensation of my own tears and lump in the throat.

Those of us championing Carmona’s bid for a new trial came to court expecting the start of a two-week hearing on possible new evidence that could lead to a retrial. Instead, we got the district attorney’s bombshell.

I got the feeling something was in the air, because Carmona’s attorneys looked more placid than usual. And though it’s not uncommon for court to start late, the delay seemed to drag on longer than usual.

Then, at 1:55 p.m.--25 minutes after the scheduled start of the hearing--Ronnie Carmona looked at me two rows behind her and mouthed the words: “He’s free.”

I mouthed back disbelief, and she repeated it.

A few minutes later, a Carmona supporter dropped a note in my lap. “He will be out today,” it read.

That was not quite accurate, as it turned out, but it was close. Arthur will likely be released sometime today, after prison officials do the requisite paperwork.

Still, in court I couldn’t help but flash back to my first contact with Ronnie Carmona, early in 1999 and a few months after Arthur’s conviction. She wanted me to look into the case and support his bid for a new trial.

I told her I wouldn’t write a word unless convinced he was innocent. I’m not interested in technicalities, I told them.

Neither was she, Ronnie Carmona said. “I know my son. He didn’t do this,” she said that night.

It has been an exhausting odyssey for Carmona and his supporters.

Huge disappointments when Dickey--the same judge who dismissed charges Monday--sentenced him last year to 12 years in state prison.

Huge reasons to hope, when the prestigious Los Angeles law firm of Sidley & Austin agreed to handle his appeal and got a favorable early ruling from the state appeals court.

And then it came down to Monday in court, less than two miles from the robbery in Irvine for which Carmona was first stopped and questioned.

The victory, of course, is for Arthur and his family and friends.

But as I’ve grown more convinced of the weaknesses of the case against him, there’s a larger victory in the sense that justice has been done.

Yet, it is a victory that has brought disturbing questions too.

Is Arthur Carmona the only prison inmate doing time on this kind of evidence? How many other anonymous souls didn’t get the attention of a well-known law firm that put in hundreds of hours, without charge, in preparing his appeal?

Those are troubling issues.

I’d hoped Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas would address them; instead, he chose to impugn me and caution Carmona--even while agreeing to dismiss charges against him--not to get into trouble now that he’s free.

I’ll have more to say about Rackauckas later.

Now, however, I’m going to rest better knowing that justice, at last, has visited Arthur Carmona.