Carona may use charm strategy

I’ll make every effort not to stretch the point here, but just like Bill Clinton, former Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona knows how to work a room. He’s personable, well-spoken and has that innate speaker’s gift of knowing how to go from serious to funny and back to serious with seeming ease.

And as Carona’s trial nears -- still scheduled to start next month -- it’s hard to picture how he’ll clear himself without testifying. That is, for Carona to stay silent, the government’s corruption case would have to be so unconvincing that Carona’s lawyers would think they could get an acquittal without him taking the stand.

Attorneys on both sides are fighting like mad these days to prepare for that stretch of hours or days when the former sheriff would take the stand. And, to invoke the former president one last time, at least some of the turf in the Carona trial may involve sexual behavior and other alleged character flaws.

Which raises a provocative question for potential jurors, not to mention an interested Orange County audience: Just how much of Carona’s life do we really need to know to divine the truth of the charges against him?

Carona faces several counts that he used his office to enrich himself and pay back favors and that he then tried to encourage one of those money men -- former Asst. Sheriff Don Haidl -- to testify falsely about their alleged financial relationship.

On paper, it is the Haidl relationship that appears most problematic for Carona. Haidl apparently has told prosecutors that he gave Carona thousands of dollars over a six-year period before and after his 1998 election. Immediately upon taking office, Carona got special dispensation from the Board of Supervisors to put the otherwise unqualified Haidl in his administration.

Last year, unaware that Haidl was secretly recording their conversation, Carona allegedly made statements that prosecutors say are incriminating and designed to influence Haidl’s testimony before a grand jury. Some of those transcripts are being released in pre-trial motions and they reveal the then-sheriff as profane and crassly offensive in describing sexual exploits or other situations.

And what does that have to do with whether Carona took money in exchange for political favors?

I’d guess that most people would answer: nothing.

That’s certainly what Carona’s lawyers are arguing. Federal prosecutors, on the other hand, allege that by trying to cover up an affair, for example, Carona showed a propensity for encouraging people to lie. Carona’s attorneys, in papers filed Monday, said the affair is a bogus allegation made by a secretary in the Sheriff’s Department.

Yes, it’s muddled, too much so to itemize here.

That’s why they have trials; but before that, a federal judge will decide whether the trial, already guaranteed to be spicy because of the high stakes for Carona, will be extra spicy.

For instance, is it relevant to corruption charges that transcripts from the secretly recorded conversations show Carona saying he often used a two-word phrase involving a racial slur? Or that he’s locker-room crude when talking about women in various instances?

It’s obvious to me it isn’t, but if your defense against corruption charges is that you ran your department beyond reproach, do you want a jury hearing those other references?

Obviously not, which is why the tawdry stuff represents a significant battleground for the Carona defense team. Perhaps jurors would put no stock in the comments, given that they were made in private to a close associate.

But there’s also human nature. Even in a case largely about allegedly illegal payouts, Carona’s attorneys have to worry that jurors would look more unkindly at a foul-mouthed jerk than they would a squeaky clean upholder of the law.

In a way, the trial may come to resemble politics in that there will be moments both large and small. Sometimes, it’s the seemingly off-point elements of a campaign that voters take to heart and use as their gauge of a candidate. Similarly, it isn’t uncommon for attorneys on both sides to express surprise after cases at the evidence the jurors valued the most.

Any defendant wants to be seen as the good guy, the affable fellow who can charm people out of their shoes. The nice guy who’s being railroaded.

In his element, Mike Carona can charm people. Which is why his attorneys are fighting so hard to have this trial be about money and come down to his word against Don Haidl’s.

And to keep everything else buried in a lockbox.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays and Fridays. 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.