Arthur Carmona and his two cousins were at a Fullerton nightclub on the evening of Jan. 27 to hear '80s music—not to fight. So when Carmona saw a Toyota idling next to the only available space in an otherwise packed parking lot, he politely waited to see if it would pull in first. When the Toyota failed to make a move, Carmona pulled into the spot. As he got out of the driver's seat, two young men got out of the Toyota and marched up to him.
“That's my space,” one of them said.
Carmona suggested they flip a coin. He called tails and won the toss.
“You got a problem with that?” he asked.
The two men said nothing, but walked away angry. A few minutes later, Carmona's cousin was refused entrance to the club for failing to meet its dress code, so the trio went back to discover that someone had keyed his cousin's brand-new car; a ribbon of paint dangled from its side. Carmona thought he knew the criminal masterminds behind the assault. He went through the parking lot until he found the Toyota and began scratching it. And then, as a kind of flourish, he dented the car with a heavy-duty flashlight.
While he was working with the flashlight, Carmona looked over his shoulder and saw a Fullerton police officer standing just feet away. The cop had a gun, and the gun was pointed straight at Carmona.
This wasn't the first time Arthur Carmona had looked down the barrel of an officer's gun. Eight years earlier, then just 16 years old, Carmona was walking down the street when a Costa Mesa police officer arrested him at gunpoint for the recent armed robberies of a Denny's and a Juice Club in Irvine.
There was never any physical evidence linking Carmona to those crimes, but he vaguely matched eyewitness descriptions of the assailant. Even so, none of those eyewitnesses identified Carmona as the gunman in a lineup. That didn't stop police. They retrieved a Lakers cap linked to the crime and placed the hat on Carmona's head. Yes, some eyewitnesses agreed, that looked like the guy in the robberies. During his interrogation with Irvine detectives, police repeatedly lied when they told Carmona that they had evidence—including videotape—proving that he had committed the robbery.
Charged as an adult, Carmona was sentenced to 12 years in prison. But after the Weekly and Los Angeles Times columnist Dana Parsons began poking holes in the case, eyewitnesses recanted their testimony. On Aug. 22, 2000, Orange County Superior Court Judge Everett Dickey considered the overwhelming evidence that Carmona had been convicted of a crime he didn't commit and ordered him released.
Instead of apologizing for bad police work, overzealous prosecutors and Carmona's two years in state prison, Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas told Carmona he was lucky to be walking free and blamed the media for ruining his case.
“Arthur, it's a rare event that a convicted defendant gets this kind of break,” Rackauckas warned. “You are getting a second chance. Don't let yourself or your supporters down. When you get out, find a job, improve your skills, [and] have a good and productive life—do not commit any crimes!”
After getting out of jail, Carmona moved to San Diego and got a job installing carpet with his father. The work kept him busy and out of trouble. With his mother, who works as a paralegal, he's also traveled to Sacramento to meet with groups like the California Innocence Project, which seeks to free wrongfully convicted inmates in the state's prison system.
His record was supposed to have been wiped clean, but on Jan. 28, at the Fullerton Police Station, Carmona learned he still had a rap sheet. Never mind the media attention swirling around the original case; the Fullerton cop who ran Carmona's background discovered two felony convictions on his record. Somewhere between Dickey's courtroom and the state's Department of Justice criminal database, somebody had forgotten to expunge them.
Carmona spent the next five days in jail waiting to be arraigned for a crime that normally would result in a two-hour jail stint and a modest fine. At his Jan. 31 arraignment at a county courthouse in Fullerton, Carmona overheard the deputy district attorney handling his case say that, because this was a third-strike arrest, Carmona would be charged with felony vandalism and likely spend the next four years in state prison.
That's when a weird case got a little weirder. Carmona's mother, Ronnie, called the one person she knew could help Arthur: Nadia Davis-Lockyer.
Eight years ago, Nadia Davis was a young Orange County attorney and Democratic Party activist who had taken an interest in Carmona's case. These days, she's the wife of the most powerful law-enforcement official in California, Attorney General Bill Lockyer. Just hours after hearing from Ronnie, Davis-Lockyer gave her husband a copy of Dickey's court order showing that Carmona's felonies had been vacated. The next day, Carmona's prosecutor acknowledged that, in fact, he had no criminal record.
“Bill is the boss of the district attorneys in California, but he defers to local control,” Davis-Lockyer said. “He doesn't get in the middle of things unless he sees a serious breach of ethics. I'm glad that the DA agreed to modify how they are handling this, but they should have taken care of that problem immediately. The sad thing is that Arthur spent five days in jail for this.”
The Orange County district attorney's office offered Carmona a new deal: if he pled guilty to felony vandalism, he would receive only 90 days in jail. But Carmona refused to take the deal.
“I think it's B.S.,” Carmona said. “For something like that, it should be a misdemeanor and I should pay a fine. It's not like I tried to rob somebody or burglarize the car. I just keyed the car and gave it a small dent. The prosecutor said I got off easy for those two strikes and I'm like, 'What the hell? I didn't do nothing. Should I have done two years in prison for something I didn't do?'”
Susan Schroeder, a spokesperson for the DA's office, denied Carmona was being treated harshly. “I can tell you that Mr. Carmona is being treated like everybody else under the same circumstances,” Schroeder said. “We're not picking on him.”
At press time, the DA's office continued to insist that Carmona plead guilty to felony vandalism, a charge that could get him 90 days in jail. Carmona has so far refused that offer, and his mother thinks its unfair, given that he's already spent two years in prison thanks to a wrongful conviction—and five days in jail on this charge because his criminal record hadn't been wiped clean. Last week, she suggested an alternative: “You know what? Arthur's needed anger-management classes since the day he got out of prison.”
Carmona agrees he's been an angry guy since spending two years in state prison for a crime he didn't commit.
“Hell, yeah, I'm angry,” he said. “I'm hella pissed off. That's never going to go away.”
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).