Carona ally seeks retrial

The longtime martial arts instructor for former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona, convicted of threatening a golfer, is seeking a new trial on the grounds that a bailiff improperly talked with jurors during their deliberations about a gun that was a key piece of evidence in the case.

Raymond Yi, who also was one of Carona’s reserve deputies, was accused of pulling a gun in 2005 on a group of golfers he thought were playing too slowly. He was convicted in May on a single felony count of making a criminal threat and acquitted on all other charges, including three felony counts of assault with a firearm.

Yi’s attorney, John D. Barnett, and prosecutor Nimisha Gohil said Friday that San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Gerard S. Brown, who presided over Yi’s trial, informed them of the breach this week and postponed Yi’s sentencing.

The lawyers said that they did not know how the judge found out what happened in the jury room, but that he told them the bailiff had brought the gun to jurors at their request and answered questions about how the weapon operated. Jurors apparently asked the bailiff where the shell casings ejected and about the size of the bullets, Barnett said.

“It’s very clearly misconduct. I don’t think there’s any dispute about that,” he said. “You cannot have evidence going before the jury on an essential part of the case without both sides being aware of it.”

Barnett said he planned to ask for a retrial on one charge for which Yi was convicted.

Gohil said she would seek to preserve the verdict. If that failed, she said, prosecutors would probably retry Yi. She said her office was researching whether it could prosecute him on all the original charges.

In 2005, Yi played golf at the Los Serranos Golf & Country Club in Chino Hills behind a group that included Marcelo Bautista, a Santa Rosa math teacher, and Bautista’s uncle, Gustavo Resendiz.

According to prosecutors, Yi hit his ball toward the fairway, where Bautista’s group was playing, then drew his gun and twice threatened the men after one of them refused to retrieve his ball.

Barnett has said Yi had acted in self-defense and had drawn his gun only once, after Resendiz swung a golf club his way.

Yi has a black belt in tae kwon do and was sworn in as a reserve deputy in 2002. His sheriff’s credentials were revoked right after the incident.

Bautista and Resendiz have filed a $10-million lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Department. That case is pending.

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christine.hanley@latimes.com