Carona and supporters ask for leniency as sentencing nears

In a bid for leniency on the eve of his sentencing, former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona says he regrets the words he used on a secret recording that led to his witness tampering conviction but stops short of taking responsibility for trying to influence the grand jury testimony of a former assistant.

Carona is scheduled to be sentenced Monday for pressing Don Haidl to withhold information about cash and gifts during a conversation at a Newport Beach restaurant in August 2007. Haidl was cooperating with the government at the time and was using a hidden microphone. The tape captured a foul-mouthed Carona and Haidl plotting to get their stories straight.

In a letter filed Friday along with dozens of others from his wife, son and a cross-section of supporters who advocate probation, Carona tells U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford that on the advice of his attorneys he cannot speak about the witness tampering charge.

“I want you to know, though, how sorry I am that I permitted myself to be drawn into that conversation with Don Haidl,” Carona wrote. “When Don started talking the way he did . . . I should have gotten up and walked out of the restaurant. I wish more than anything I had done that.”

Probation officers have recommended Carona serve 6 1/2 years in prison. Prosecutors have asked for nine years and oppose a request by the defense to suspend any sentence while Carona appeals his conviction.

In his letter, Carona says he has been humiliated, humbled and financially ruined by the case.

Carona’s letter was one of 71 filed by people such as the mother of 5-year-old murder victim Samantha Runnion and the head of a popular vodka distillery. Many of his supporters strike a similar theme, asking the judge to consider Carona’s entire public service record, especially the good he has done for at-risk and missing children.

Some took the media and prosecutors to task, saying they had twisted the facts at the expense of justice.

The most personal pleas came from Deborah Carona and son Matthew, 18.

“Please don’t destroy us any more. Enough is enough,” Carona’s wife urged the judge, recounting the financial, psychological and physical toll already caused by a trial that she said was turned into a “salacious soap opera” by prosecutors. “I pray that this terror will end.”

Carona’s 18-year-old son was equally emotional.

“I could honestly not ask for any more of a father and without him in my life I would fall. I feel he is my rock that I am built upon and without him I would crumble,” the teenager wrote. “I ask you from the bottom of my heart to see the truth and understand that my dad is not the man that the prosecution tried to portray him as during the trial.”

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christine.hanley@latimes.com