Can’t Shake the Past, Can’t Plan a Future

I remembered his birthday last week, as I have each year since first hearing the details of the arrest and conviction of Arthur Carmona. That first meeting with his mother in early 1999, when Carmona already had been in jail for about a year but was protesting his innocence, fueled a number of my columns over the next 18 months as I lobbied for a new trial.

That effort ended in August 2000 when, on the eve of a hearing to consider new evidence, the Orange County district attorney’s office dropped the two armed-robbery charges and asked that a judge free Carmona from state prison. He was 18 and had been behind bars every day for 2 1/2 years -- or since five days after his 16th birthday.

Last Wednesday, Carmona turned 21, a symbolic moment to see how life has been for him in his 2 1/2 years of freedom. The last time I interviewed him -- the day after his release -- he’d spoken of happiness and college plans. He was too happy, he said at the time, to be bitter.

“I work too much,” were the first words out of Carmona’s mouth last week. But over the next 45 minutes he also talked of the difficulty of making the transition from prison to freedom, his sense that he has not made peace with what happened to him, and an admission that he has had moments when a return to prison seemed preferable to coping on the outside. What blunts that, he says, is an obsession to prove he didn’t commit the robberies.

It’s not an uncommon scenario -- that of an inmate, especially a younger one, feeling lost in society after a period of incarceration. Carmona, because of our relationship during his imprisonment, knew I wanted good news. He wouldn’t give me the easy answers.

I ask if he is happy and optimistic about life. “I wish,” he says, “but that’s not how it goes. For me, at least.”

What people don’t realize, he says, is what it takes to gird yourself to survive in the California Youth Authority and then in state prison -- how, if you appear vulnerable or stand out, you may be physically attacked. You withdraw and seek solace only in your ethnic or racial group, he says. For the first time in his life, he says, he has trouble trusting or befriending people who aren’t of Mexican descent. And because Carmona thought he was facing at least several more years in prison, he had to get tough and stay tough.

I ask why he can’t shake it now. “I’ve tried, but it’s imprinted in my mind,” he says, “because I was there so long and had to act grown-up. I had to forget about being out here. I had to think, ‘I’m going to be in here; this is my home.’ Anybody, anybody, who goes to prison would have to think that way. If they didn’t, good for them, but they’re going to be taken advantage of.”

Carmona works as a carpet installer all around the Southland with his father. He gets up at the crack of dawn and works all day, he says, including some weekends. That’s partly because he has nothing else to do and partly because it keeps him from thinking about his arrest and conviction.

“Nobody wants to think about that,” he says of the twist of fate that cost him so much of a normal teen life. “Nobody. If anybody does, there’s something wrong with them. I guess that’s why I work so much. My dad says I can have weekends off, but I end up having nothing to do.”

Being out of circulation for 2 1/2 years meant he lost contact with some friends. Today, lots of those young men have girlfriends, so he feels like an odd man out.

That, of course, describes lots of young people. For Carmona, I sense, the problem is deeper than that. He tried community college right after his release, but felt both “out of place” and unable to handle the schoolwork. He is convinced he is too far removed from school to make it work. He is scared he couldn’t cut it and would be embarrassed in class.

Carmona’s friends I interviewed a couple years ago, including a minister and official at a food shelter where Carmona volunteered, described a soft-spoken, gentle personality. His mother described him, good-naturedly, as a “goofy” kid who, despite a quiet exterior, had a playful side.

I ask if that’s gone. “I’m still kind of a goofball,” he says, “but I won’t show it in front of other people,” apart from family.

How about anger or bitterness? “Of course, I’m angry. None of this should have happened. It happened. I do whatever I can not to feel that way. It’s tough. Once I start getting mad, I get more quiet. I’m a quiet person, but I get more quiet.”

He knows that’s not healthy and that he needs to put everything behind him. “Once everything gets through with the case,” he says, “when I don’t have to deal with it anymore, that’s when I can start letting go. At least try.”

He has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the cities of Irvine and Costa Mesa and various police officers on matters relating to his arrest. A federal judge recently tossed out the case, saying it should not go to trial. Carmona’s attorney, Gregory Patton, is appealing.

“He was kicked in the teeth by the criminal system,” Patton says, “and now he’s being kicked in the gut by the civil system.”

Carmona is his most expansive when I say that former inmates sometimes talk of going back to the joint. “A lot of times, a lot of times, I wanted to go back,” he says softly, looking me in the eye.

After all the efforts to get out, what voice drives that? “That there’s too much out there [in society],” he says, referring to what he is thinking at those moments. “Too much. That I can’t take it. I feel like somebody is grabbing me by the throat and choking me. I don’t like being in that situation. I thought I wanted to go back. I wish I was back.”

But why? “Because it’s what I got used to. I couldn’t take being out here making my own choices. In there, they tell you what to do, when to eat, when to sleep, pretty much everything, what time for recreation, whatever. It’s harder [to adjust] than what almost anybody thinks.”

How does he fight off those feelings. “I want to kick myself in the head when I’m saying it. I’d start saying, ‘I’m going to go nuts out here.’ Then I’d catch myself saying, ‘What are you saying? Are you dumb?’ ”

I ask which voice wins the argument.

“I start thinking about freedom, and I want to stay out. I want to prove to everybody that I was innocent. That I am innocent. There are still people out there who think I’m guilty. That’s what keeps me out here; that and my family.”

I ask if he sees a future. He smiles, knowing he has caught me in a rhetorical blunder. “Well, I have to,” he says. “I have to think about it, because I’m working hard. I can’t do this forever. It’s too hard. I’d rather own the business. I set goals for myself before all this happened. That came to a halt. My whole life went to a halt. I got thrown into this.”

We shake hands, say our goodbyes. I wish him a happy birthday.

In a semi-jest, I ask, “So, do you feel grown up at 21?”

Not jesting, Carmona says, “I felt grown up since the day I was locked up.”

*

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach him at (714) 966-7821, at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com.