Newly Freed Man Says He’ll Focus on Future, Not Time in Jail

Eighteen-year-old Arthur Carmona tasted freedom Tuesday for the first time in more than two years, saying he had frequently despaired of breathing fresh air again any time soon and had often filled his days in prison reading horror novels and studying Latino culture.

With his mother at his side, a Levi’s-clad Carmona walked out of Theo Lacy Branch Jail at 10:20 a.m., capping a whirlwind 21-hour period in which his conviction for armed robbery was overturned, his 12-year prison sentence was thrown out and a final dispute over who would release him and where was resolved.

As his mother, Ronnie Carmona, talked to reporters outside Theo Lacy, a relieved Carmona sat quietly in the passenger seat of a Toyota Camry, its bumper adorned with a sticker that said “Free Arthur Carmona Now.”

“He’s overwhelmed right now,” Ronnie Carmona said, holding the envelope with $26 of her son’s money a sheriff’s deputy had handed her moments earlier. “He wants to go home.”

Seated in the kitchen of his grandmother’s Santa Ana home a short time later, Carmona, in an interview with The Times, described the sequence of events that had stunned both him and his defense team as “like a dream.”

In fact, he said, as he waited Monday evening for authorities to decide whether he had to be sent back to Ironwood State Prison in Blythe before being released, he wondered whether it was all for real, whether the Orange County district attorney’s office, faced with a possible retrial, really had decided not to oppose his appeal.

“It was like, ‘This is a dream. Maybe this didn’t happen. I’ll be back in Ironwood.’ I pinched myself a couple times,” Carmona said. “I couldn’t believe it till I actually walked out. It felt so good, not breathing institutional air. I told my mom, get me away from here, take me home.”

He expressed gratitude for the support of those who worked to overturn his conviction.

“What I want to say to anyone who supported me in any way--by praying or any kind of law work or just telling me it was going to be all right--is thank you very much.”

Pausing, he said, “That’s a deep sincere . . . right there.”

Carmona was a Costa Mesa High School sophomore when he was arrested in February 1998, a week after his 16th birthday, and later convicted of two robberies, two days apart, in Costa Mesa and Irvine. No physical evidence connected him to either crime; he was convicted almost solely on the basis of accounts by witnesses.

The shakiness of those accounts and a variety of other issues formed the basis of Carmona’s appeal, which began early in 1999. On Monday, the day a special evidentiary hearing was to begin, the district attorney’s office shocked Carmona supporters with its decision not to oppose the dismissal of his conviction.

As Carmona talked Tuesday, his beaming grandmother stood a few feet away preparing a lunch of carnitas, corn tortillas and beans. One of the best things about being free, Carmona joked, “is having a grandma cooking for you.”

He spent the morning with a small group of family and friends who stopped by his grandparents’ tiny home. They showed him notes from well-wishers and gave him a cake with the lettering, “Welcome Home, Arthur.”

Reflecting on his 2 1/2 years behind bars, Carmona said he doesn’t think the experience will leave lasting scars but acknowledged there were times when he “just felt like giving up.”

“It could ruin somebody a lot,” he said. “It won’t happen to me. I won’t let that happen.”

He said he’s looking forward to finishing his high school education and going to college.

In measured tones, he questioned some of the police work, specifically, a controversial and critical moment when police placed a hat, known to have been worn by the robber, on Carmona’s head during a field lineup in which witnesses identified him as the robber. The hat hadn’t been linked to him in any way. On Monday, Irvine police defended the tactic.

“I didn’t understand why they did it, at first,” he said. “After finding out why they did, I thought, ‘Didn’t you at least tell them it wasn’t my hat, it was found somewhere else?’

“That angered me a lot, to put a hat on me that wasn’t mine.”

He distinctly remembers that day in February 1998 when he was stopped at gunpoint by a Costa Mesa police officer who believed Carmona matched the description of the robbery suspect. “He cuffed me. He kept asking, ‘Where’s your gun, where’s your gun?’ I said, ‘Why are you stopping me. He said, ‘You know why.’ ”

Soon, officers from Costa Mesa and Irvine converged. Carmona said some officers high-fived each other, believing they had the robber.

Even so, Carmona said, he did not wish to vilify police or prosecutors. “I was raised to turn the other cheek, look the other direction,” he said. “There’s no reason for me to sink to their level. I’m out. That’s all that matters.”

Carmona, whom school officials diagnosed as having a mild learning disability, said he didn’t testify at his 1998 trial because he felt he’d be unable to speak well. He said that he wasn’t afraid of the prosecutor’s potential line of questioning and that he knew what was at stake, but that he got nervous, even when his own attorney simulated a cross-examination.

Although Carmona knew and counted on his deep well of support while in prison, he struggled with the inevitable solitude.

“I know I had a lot of supporters, but to tell the truth, I still felt like I was alone,” he said. “I was there and they were out here.

“But knowing people were out here made me feel good.”

A wide circle of Carmona’s friends had said he didn’t have the temperamental makeup of an armed robber. Nor, friends and relatives said, did he lack for spending money.

“It’s insane for someone to call me an armed robber,” Carmona said. “That’s not me. I had no reason to do it. My mom took care of me, I had money, I had money in the bank already, I had my whole life ahead of me. Why would I want to do something like that?”

Once he decided he could survive prison, Carmona said, his main concern was for his mother and younger sister.

“My family was out there and they needed me,” he said. “My sister had to stay home by herself and she was only about 12, when mom had to work. That broke my heart. If something had happened to my sister when she was home alone, I probably wouldn’t be able to forgive myself because I wasn’t there.”

He stayed busy in prison, filling each day with some kind of activity to make the hours pass faster. He read law books, Dean Koontz and Stephen King horror novels and history books about Latino and other cultures.

He’s proud of himself for surviving his prison ordeal, even in the face of moments when he told himself, “Forget it--you’re not getting out. Your life is over.”

Asked what’s in the immediate future, he said his plan was to have no plans, to enjoy the tedium of life outside prison. Maybe wash the car. Or go to the mall. Spend time with his family. Or, maybe, just go sit on the beach and watch the sunset.

“Something,” he said, “I haven’t done in a while.”

Times staff writers Stuart Pfeifer, Jack Leonard and Jeff Gottlieb contributed to this story.