How Many Other Innocents Sit in Jail, Despairing?

* I have followed the case of Arthur Carmona and particularly The Times’ columns of Dana Parsons for quite some time.

The Irvine Police Department picked out Carmona as the criminal and set him up to be identified by placing a baseball cap that was not his on his head. There was absolutely no physical evidence that he committed this crime.

After increasing awareness of the police methods used in obtaining the conviction, growing doubts among the jurors and a public outcry for a new trial, Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas finally relented. However, this was not until he got Carmona to release him and the rest involved in this injustice of any liability for their actions.

Rackauckas demonstrates what separates him from Carmona.

Carmona says nothing against those who perpetrated this injustice against him. The district attorney arrogantly lectures him about getting a second chance and not committing any crimes.

What the district attorney should have done is apologize to Carmona for taking over two years of his life from him and accept responsibility for his and his department’s actions. This would have required integrity and courage.

Carmona is willing to forgive and move on. Rackauckas refuses to accept responsibility, protects himself from liability and won’t even acknowledge, much less apologize for, this gross injustice.

Now which of these two men needs to be warned not to commit any crimes? With Rackauckas as the district attorney and the Irvine Police Department to protect and serve the community, is it any wonder that so many people have so little confidence or faith in the criminal justice system?

JOHN EDWARDS

Huntington Beach

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The Carmona saga has evolved into an urban nightmare. I am appalled that the police and prosecutors were more interested a conviction than in justice.

I will accept that there was a good-faith effort to apprehend and convict an armed robber until the time when exonerating evidence began to accumulate. At that point, the only honorable action would have been for the prosecutor’s office to honestly reevaluate Carmona’s conviction.

Instead, the prosecutor pulled a Quackenbush, dodging and weaving to keep an innocent boy in jail.

The final straw is the document Carmona was “requested” to sign which released the Police Department from the liability of a false arrest.

Although the district attorney denies that there was any coercion involved in the signing of this document, the very timing of this request--before any deal was made for Carmona’s release--absolutely belies this statement.

How many of us would have the grace to forgive his jailers, as Carmona appears to have done?

How many other innocent people sit alone and despairing in a jail cell because of the actions of an overzealous prosecutor? This is certainly a worthy issue to independently explore.

ROBERT J. CAUSTIN

Newport Beach

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The false imprisonment of Carmona is another example of a judicial system that is not merely flawed but completely out of control. Or it is an example of a police state that has no respect for individual rights.

Perhaps the most disturbing feature of this case is the required signature of Carmona, absolving the police of misconduct as a condition of his release, before all charges were dismissed.

Dana Parsons’ laudatory coverage of Carmona’s case should have created universal outrage. But it took another two years for this innocent young man to obtain his freedom.

The arrogant district attorney should be hanging his head in shame instead of declaring that Carmona had a fair trial. It is not a fair trial when the police influence false identification by placing the perpetrator’s hat on Carmona. This, the only “evidence,” should have been rejected by both the judge and the prosecutor.

Who prosecutes the prosecutor? We, as a society that claims to be civilized, give license for the police to kill suspects (innocent or otherwise) on the weakest pretense of self-defense. And we enact laws such as three strikes and those in the drug war, that would be considered “cruel and unusual punishment” by any civilized society. Our “cruel and unusual punishment” by death places us in the same league as Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Our police state and cruel laws are largely sanctioned by the majority of the public--not by a small powerful oligarchy. After all, we are a democracy.

Is is indeed a sad commentary on our “democratic system” that it tolerates such evil behavior in a judicial system that purports to obey constitutional law.

NORMAN F. BATES

Dana Point

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The disturbing case of Carmona, a teenager with a clean record prior to his conviction for robbery and 12-year prison sentence for crimes he did not commit, continues to disturb.

Many of us have long harbored a belief that the legal profession is one in which, in order to be successful, one must exercise more than a small degree of moral pragmatism.

This moral pragmatism, however, has been assigned to defense attorneys primarily. All of us are aware that many a criminal has been acquitted of serious crimes, some capital, through the cleverness of their attorneys.

The attorneys have adeptly exploited loopholes, tenuous evidence or the inadequacy of the prosecution. And many of these defenders have proudly admitted as much.

Somehow, many of us have believed that this moral pragmatism, by the nature of the system, would be held in check by a variety of mechanisms within the district attorney’s office.

The common perception has been that men who have indeed committed crimes have not gone to trial because, although the district attorney may be convinced of guilt, there is insufficient evidence to go to trial with confidence of a conviction.

When a minor with no prior criminal record is arrested, tried and convicted of serious crimes based on evidence which is so specious as to be absurd, is then given a sentence of draconian proportion, is ultimately released due to the pressure of public conscience, and then, upon his release, is given not an apology but a browbeating--and the journalist who spearheaded the sense of public indignation leading to Carmona’s release has his integrity impugned for exercising his 1st Amendment rights by the district attorney himself--then moral pragmatism becomes a lesser concern--one which is overshadowed by the specter of institutionalized sociopa thy.

RON TERRANOVA

Huntington Beach

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The question is: How many Carmonas are there out there?

C.H. GULLETT

San Clemente

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When Carmona decides who to sue over his case, I hope he will break ranks from the usual practice of filing suit against police and prosecutors.

I hope his litigation focuses on jurors like Sandra Dinardo, who said Carmona “wasn’t guilty, and I caved in and went along with the group pressure and sent that boy to jail. . . . The whole thing was a terrible mistake.”

Or perhaps he should focus on “key witness” Casey Becerra, who recanted her testimony.

The police did not represent eyewitness testimony and the prosecution did not find Carmona guilty.

KENNETH J. RAMSEY

Cypress

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Re “Judge Slams Councilman’s Letter as ‘Inappropriate,’ ” Aug. 22:

I hope the citizens of Irvine understand the motives behind politically hungry Councilman Larry Agran. He wants to be mayor.

Agran’s grandstanding attempt of writing a letter on behalf of Carmona to the judge presiding over his trial has caused some problems of his own.

Agran may finally feel some negative backlash caused by his manipulative behavior.

DONALD DAVIDSON

Newport Beach