Carmona OKd Pact Absolving Police

As part of a deal that set him free after 2 1/2 years of behind bars, Arthur Carmona and his attorneys signed a pact at the request of prosecutors stating that his earlier conviction on robbery charges was not the result of misconduct by police or the district attorney.

Legal experts said Tuesday that the pact clearly weakens any lawsuit Carmona might file against authorities, but some still believe he might be able to receive some compensation for his incarceration.

Such agreements are being used with increasing frequency by prosecutors as a way of protecting public coffers against costly litigation. Critics, however, contend the pacts amount to coercion against defendants who would sign anything in order to get out of jail.

“There has been a disturbing increase in this practice where a wrongful conviction is exposed and prosecutors basically hold inmates’ freedom hostage over signing some document that’s tantamount to a release,” said Larry Marshall, professor of law at Northwestern University and director of its Center on Wrongful Convictions.

The pact was signed by Carmona on Monday--just before the prosecution decided not to oppose a defense motion to toss out his conviction. A judge then dismissed all charges and ordered Carmona free.

The pact does not explicitly state that Carmona cannot sue law enforcement agencies. But it does stipulate that Carmona’s 1998 arrest on robbery charges was based “upon probable cause.”

One of Carmona’s attorneys, Nadia Davis, said she believes the contract essentially prohibits any type of lawsuit against the district attorney and Irvine and Costa Mesa police. She said Carmona signed the paper because it represented the fastest way to get out of prison.

It “was the only sure thing in [the] 2 1/2 years” since Carmona was arrested, Davis said.

Tori Richards, spokeswoman for Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas, would not discuss specifics of the pact but stressed that no coercion was involved.

“We’re not going to speculate on what would have been the outcome if the defense had not signed this agreement,” Richards said. “No one was pressured to sign anything.”

Such contracts have been upheld by the state and the U.S. supreme courts, said Steven Shatz, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law.

In order to get out of the pact, Shatz said, Carmona would have to prove that he was duped or somehow threatened into signing it.

Moreover, he said, proving misconduct is a huge challenge. To be successful, plaintiffs must prove that their rights were intentionally violated.

Carmona was 16 when he was arrested in February 1998 and charged with robbing an Irvine juice bar and Costa Mesa restaurant. Police detained Carmona shortly after the juice club robbery as he walked along a Costa Mesa street.

When victims of both robberies identified Carmona as the gunman, police arrested him. Carmona and his family professed his innocence for more than two years, noting he was not the type of person to commit such a crime. Active in his church, Carmona never before had been convicted of a crime.

A jury, however, convicted Carmona of both robberies in October 1998. Persuaded by the testimony of witnesses, jurors rejected defense attorney Kenneth Reed’s assertion that police poisoned the witnesses by placing on Carmona a hat worn by the robber during the identification, even though the hat had not been linked to Carmona in any way.

Doubt about Carmona’s guilt first surfaced in a series of Times columns, starting last year. A key witness recanted her testimony after reading a column that laid out the details of the case. Two jurors expressed new doubt about Carmona’s guilt. But Dickey last year refused to grant him a new trial and sentenced him to 12 years in prison.

The Carmona pact did not offer any protection to one possible lawsuit target, Kenneth A. Reed, the attorney who defended Carmona at his 1998 trial.

Carmona’s family and supporters have been critical of Reed’s work, which became the focus of the appeal that eventually helped set the teenager free.

Reed said he is aware the Carmona family may sue him for alleged malpractice.

“If these guys file a suit against me, I’ll be on a witness stand explaining why I did what I did.

“Trial lawyers make a lot of tactical calls. It’s easy to go back and second-guess those decisions,” Reed said. “I thought I won Arthur Carmona’s case until the jury came back and convicted him. I thought Arthur Carmona was not guilty. I was probably more shocked than the family. I’ll never know why they [the jurors] did what they did.”

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Times staff writers Stuart Pfeifer and Jeff Gottlieb contributed to this report.