Carmona Merits Support

The erasure of the armed robbery conviction for Arthur Carmona after he spent more than two years in prison stands as proclamation of his innocence, despite the intemperate remarks of Orange County’s district attorney.

The case also points up the problems with eyewitness testimony, problems that have been documented in numerous academic studies but which are unknown or glossed over by most jurors. There are fewer more powerful nails in the coffin than a witness’ statement that “He’s the one.”

Carmona had just turned 16 when he was arrested in February 1998. A restaurant in Costa Mesa had been robbed two days earlier. An hour before the arrest, a juice bar in Irvine had been robbed. Police arrested the getaway driver and stopped Carmona, who was on foot. He was bare-headed, but two witnesses asked police if Carmona had a cap because the robber they saw had been wearing one.

Police went to the getaway driver’s house, took the Lakers cap they knew the robber had been wearing, and put it on Carmona’s head, though there was no link between him and the cap. The witnesses saw him wearing the robber’s cap and said yes, he was the robber.

There was no lineup of teenage Latinos wearing caps like that, no chance for the witnesses to look at someone else and see if maybe that person was the robber. Instead, there was police certainty that they had the right youth.

Carmona, diagnosed as having a slight learning disability and unlikely to be a good witness in his behalf, did not testify at the trial. The witnesses were steadfast in their identifications, and he was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Fortunately for Carmona, he had supporters who trumpeted his innocence. His mother was one; his pastor was another. Times columnist Dana Parsons was a third.

After Parsons wrote several columns about the case, a juror told one of Carmona’s new attorneys she had doubts about the verdict and was sorry she caved in to pressure from other jurors. A key eyewitness telephoned Parsons to say she might have been misled by police or prosecutors and gotten Carmona’s identification wrong.

On Monday, with the new lawyers ready to argue that Carmona deserved a new trial, the district attorney’s office agreed to have the conviction thrown out and not to put Carmona on trial again. Before that happened, Carmona signed a statement saying there had been “probable cause” for his arrest.

Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas lectured Carmona to stay out of trouble in a statement that made it seem as if the teenager had somehow escaped jail on a technicality. He said the youth was receiving a “second chance.”

But Carmona never had been in trouble, was an active churchgoer and appears more than ever as someone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time on one February day.

Rackauckas, a former judge, also wrongly accused Parsons of pressuring witnesses. Since when do columnists have more instruments of pressure at their disposal than police or prosecutors? And the juror and eyewitness involved in the trial expressed their doubts before talking to Parsons.

Last January DeWayne McKinney was freed after nearly 20 years in prison when Rackauckas, who had prosecuted him in 1982, concluded that another man probably committed the murder for which McKinney was convicted. Rackauckas urged that McKinney be released. That amounted to a recognition that sometimes the wrong person is convicted of a crime.

Prosecutors are duty-bound to press charges only against those they believe guilty. Yet they know that sometimes innocent people wind up behind bars.

Carmona spent more than two years in prison for a crime he did not commit. He deserves support as he puts his life back together, not misguided lectures.