Carmona Sues Over Robbery Conviction

Arthur Carmona, a Santa Ana teenager whose 1998 armed-robbery conviction was dismissed earlier this year, filed a federal lawsuit Monday alleging that two police departments and his former defense attorney deprived him of his civil rights.

Before he was released in August after 2 1/2 years in prison, Carmona signed a pact exonerating police from blame in his conviction.

“We don’t believe [these pacts] are enforceable,” said Charles Ferrari, an attorney representing Carmona and his mother, Veronica Sandoval Carmona, who is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages. “The idea of allowing someone to gain their freedom conditioned on releasing liability is so abhorrent” that it will not be upheld in court, the lawyer said.

Flanked by his mother, Ferrari and another attorney, Carmona, now 18, sat quietly as the lawsuit was announced during an afternoon news conference in Santa Ana. “He was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time,” attorney Gregory Patton said of his client. “Arthur is doing his best to pick up the pieces, but things are very difficult for him. His family has been shattered, and he’s lost many friendships.”

Carmona was arrested in February 1998 as he walked along a Costa Mesa street. He was charged with robbing an Irvine juice bar and a Costa Mesa restaurant. Based on eyewitness accounts, Carmona, then 16, was convicted of the crimes and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

After a key witness recanted her testimony and two jurors expressed doubts about Carmona’s guilt, a judge set aside the conviction and ordered Carmona freed in August.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, names as defendants the Costa Mesa and Irvine police departments as well as attorney Kenneth Reed, who defended Carmona. The suit alleges that Carmona’s ordeal resulted from a combination of legal malpractice, negligence and the “illegal and fraudulent” coaching of eyewitnesses.

Carmona was convicted of the two robberies, the lawsuit contends, “even though there was no physical or circumstantial evidence linking him to either robbery.” Instead, the lawsuit maintains, prosecutors relied on eyewitness accounts from people who had been falsely told by police that there was physical evidence linking Carmona to the crime and that it was an “open and shut” case.

At the same time, the lawsuit states, defense attorney Reed--appointed by the Orange County Superior Court--put on “virtually no defense” by failing to investigate the eyewitness accounts adequately or call witnesses who could have provided the teenager with an alibi.

“Apart from suffering the unimaginable horror of being confined for crimes he did not commit,” the lawsuit states, Carmona “was denied the right to attend his last two years of high school, attend his high school prom or do any of the other things the average teenager would do.”

Spokesmen for the Costa Mesa and Irvine police departments would not comment on the case.

Reed did not return a phone call seeking comment. In the past, Reed has said that he did his best to defend Carmona. “If these guys file a lawsuit against me,” he said in August, “I’ll be on the 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. I thought I won Arthur Carmona’s case until the jury came back and convicted him.”