Jaramillo battle royal turns into no contest

George Jaramillo was nothing if not smooth. Smart guy, lawyer, spokesman for a police department, a No. 2 guy in the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, an honoree of the county’s Human Relations Commission. A future sheriff, perhaps.

Pretty impressive career arc.

That was then.

In the present tense, Jaramillo has smoothed himself into the better part of a year in jail, after apparently thinking he could slide one more fast one past everybody. Instead, the district attorney cornered him, caught him in a story he apparently couldn’t talk himself out of, and squeezed a no contest plea out of him on single charges of perjury and misuse of public funds. Numerous other charges -- the bribery charges that once formed the actual heart of the case against him -- were dismissed in exchange for the plea.

In the grand scheme of things, then, it’s a popgun finish in that Jaramillo likely will do about eight months in a city jail and then spend a couple more years on probation. The corruption alleged was that Jaramillo used a department helicopter for personal use. If every public official who’s ever done that copped to it, we’d have a lot of tainted officials.

The other charge, of lying to the county grand jury, is certainly more serious and stems from Jaramillo’s belief that he could schmooze one more group of people into thinking he was just a guy making a living. The perjury involved his testimony that $10,000 from a Newport Beach businessman, who’d invented an electronic device designed to stop car chases, went to Jaramillo’s wife for work she did, and not to him. However, to verify that employment, the D.A.’s office alleged that Jaramillo falsified some paperwork. Confronted with that and the potential liability it posed for his wife, Jaramillo took the plea.

Talk about your anti-climaxes. I’d been looking forward to Jaramillo defending himself on the original accusations that he’d pushed the law enforcement device -- designed electronically to halt car chases -- in return for bribes.

Maybe the D.A. could have made that case, but Jaramillo’s argument was that he’d gotten clearance to assist the company and that $15,000 he acknowledged receiving was a legitimate consulting fee that he’d reported. Further, the several demonstrations he set up to test the device were done openly.

Sounded like a good defense to me. And like a lot of people who end up copping pleas, Jaramillo once upon a time couldn’t wait to clear himself.

In truth, most of the interest in the case stemmed not from the allegations, but from Jaramillo’s soured relationship with Sheriff Mike Carona. The sheriff and Jaramillo once were best buddies -- Jaramillo was Carona’s campaign manager in his surprising 1998 election victory -- and Jaramillo made no secret of saying he knew where all the bodies were buried.

Jaramillo told me in March 2004 that he couldn’t understand why Carona had dumped him and that, “once everything is finally revealed and there’s no wrongdoing that sticks,” he’d reassess his chances for a future in politics. He disputed my suggestion that his political career was over.

That all rings a bit hollow today. As do his sister-in-law Erica Hill’s accusations to county supervisors and the state attorney general in 2005 that Carona engaged in sexual misconduct with her and that he was “a perverse individual” who “hides his wickedness.”

Carona called for an investigation, and the attorney general’s office said recently that Hill had refused to cooperate, forcing it to drop the matter.

It wasn’t lost on anyone at the time that Hill may have been doing her brother-in-law’s bidding, but the intensity of her charges couldn’t be dismissed out of hand. In a conversation I had with her then, she adamantly denied that she was part of a Jaramillo-led plot to strike back at Carona.

Now that Jaramillo’s saga has ended with a bit of a poof -- the D.A. couldn’t even force him into an actual guilty plea -- we’re not left with much to sink our teeth into.

The notion that Jaramillo can do any credible political damage to Carona now dissipates into the ozone layer.

All we’re left with is another reminder from all the smooth talkers who have preceded Jaramillo in the public arena:

Beware.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.