Carona Was on Defense’s Side in ’97

As he seeks a third term, Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona is casting himself as a crime victim’s best advocate. To sum up this reputation, his campaign website quotes the mother of a 5-year-old girl whose killer was quickly captured in a case that made Carona a household name.

“If you are a victim of crime, Sheriff Carona is the one you want,” Erin Runnion says.

Curtis DeSilva and his family are not so sure.

During a 1997 criminal trial, Carona testified as a character witness for a political ally, San Clemente businessman James McGraw, who was arrested by sheriff’s deputies and accused of pistol-whipping DeSilva, then 16, in a parking lot where DeSilva had been skateboarding with friends. McGraw was ultimately acquitted.

At the time, Carona was county marshal and mounting his first run for sheriff. He knew McGraw through the Lincoln Club of Orange County, according to McGraw’s lawyer. The group of influential Republicans helped launch Carona’s 1998 campaign.

McGraw contributed $1,850 to Carona’s campaign, as an individual and through his business. He made one donation shortly after his arrest and two more after he was acquitted.

Carona and McGraw declined to be interviewed, but defense attorney Jack M. Earley, who represented McGraw at trial, said in an interview that his client felt threatened by the skateboarders and acted in self-defense. Earley also downplayed the significance of Carona’s role in the case and said his testimony was not unusual.

Some criminal justice scholars disagree, saying they could not recall a similar case in which a police chief or sheriff -- or a candidate for the office -- testified on behalf of a criminal defendant arrested by the agency he led, or was seeking to lead. Candidates seeking public office -- and law enforcement officials in particular -- should avoid situations that raise the appearance of a conflict and might be seen as political favors, they said.

“The problem is it gives the appearance of being beholden to campaign contributors. For law-enforcement officials, that’s perhaps the worst danger in terms of these types of conflicts,” said Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University.

Carona’s testimony at McGraw’s trial attracted little media attention. The court file has since been destroyed because the seven-year statute of limitations for preserving misdemeanor cases had elapsed. And the prosecutor on the case declined to be interviewed.

But a police report, campaign records and other documents, as well as interviews with DeSilva and his family, witnesses who testified in court and others familiar with the case provide an account of the events:

DeSilva, now 26, was skateboarding with three friends on a Saturday afternoon in October 1996 in the parking lot of a San Clemente office building that was then home to two computer businesses run by McGraw.

One of McGraw’s associates, Roger Johnson, came outside and asked the skateboarders to leave. As his friends gathered their belongings, DeSilva went to retrieve a shirt he left on a planter box near the building, according to the police report. McGraw then emerged from the building carrying a gun that police later identified as a Beretta 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun, the report says.

McGraw told DeSilva he was “sick and tired of this [expletive],” the report says, and aimed the gun at DeSilva’s head. DeSilva, who thought the weapon might be a BB gun or a fake, tried to push it away. DeSilva was struck in his left temple with the gun and fell to the ground.

When his friends came to his aid, McGraw pointed the gun at the group and said he was going to call police as he backed into his office, the report says. A businessman, Dante Tate, working in a nearby building witnessed the confrontation and came to DeSilva’s aid, lending his phone to call 911.

“I was incensed,” said Tate, recalling the incident in a recent interview.

DeSilva was later treated for a scalp wound and head trauma at a San Clemente emergency room.

McGraw told the deputies he was tired of skateboarders and believed the teens were preparing to attack Johnson, his associate. He said he grabbed the handgun because he feared for Johnson’s safety. He acknowledged hitting DeSilva with his gun but said he did so only after the teen refused to leave and began yelling.

Johnson, who died five years ago, told deputies he was not threatened by DeSilva and said he thought McGraw’s actions were excessive and unnecessary. DeSilva had a poor attitude, he said, but did not deserve to be hit.

Earley said he told jurors that the skateboarders were members of a derelict neighborhood gang known as the Menace Pimps. Earley recalled bringing a skateboard to court as a prop, suggesting it could be used as a weapon. As the jury looked on, he said, he slammed it against the courtroom floor to make his point.

During the trial, Earley said, he had DeSilva’s father removed from the courtroom for coaching his son and told jurors how his client had been mocked by the teens as he was led from the parking lot that day. He said DeSilva and his friends, through their own demeanor on the witness stand and in the courtroom hallway, didn’t help their case.

“My best witnesses were the victims,” he said, “because they acted and looked and talked like hoodlums.”

McGraw, on the other hand, came across as an upstanding citizen who had acted in self-defense. Jurors also saw that he had the support of his family, some of whom testified as character witnesses, and supermodel Kim Alexis, a friend of McGraw’s wife, who sat through the proceedings.

Earley said the point of having Carona and other character witnesses testify was to show that McGraw was not a violent person. Although he did not recall Carona’s specific testimony, Earley characterized it as “a very small part of the case” and “fairly bland.”

“I hate to say it, for Carona’s ego, but he was really far down on my list of who I thought would impress the jury,” Earley said.

Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said Carona’s testimony was not “the most egregious thing I’ve ever seen happen.” The fact that the two ran in the same political circles did not necessarily mean Carona testified as a political favor, she said.

“The bottom line is that people in high office should avoid looking like they’re doing favors,” she said.

Turley said he was troubled that Carona would testify in a case involving allegations of violence against a minor. He said it was more common for law enforcement officials to wait and provide a letter to the court asking for leniency in punishment, rather than weigh in while the question of guilt is being decided.

Meanwhile, DeSilva said he had moved on. One positive thing to come out of the ordeal was that his city finally got a skateboard park, he said. A graduate of a firefighters academy who now works in the grocery business and as a plumber’s apprentice, DeSilva said the experience taught him an important lesson.

“Obviously,” he said, “it goes to show you, power and money can manipulate the system.”