Some smells just won't go away

​The nasty stench of the sheriff-turned-convicted-felon Mike Carona era continues to odorize Southern California.

Today, a state court of appeal based in Santa Ana rejected arguments by Raymond Kiu Jin Yi, one of the many dubious characters Carona handed real Orange County Sheriff's badges before his 2007 FBI arrest. Yi parlayed his newfound importance into pathetic bullying acts during a 2005 round of golf at the Los Serranos Golf & Country Club in Chino Hills.

He whipped out his OCSD badge and asked, "Do you know who I am?" to four men playing golf ahead of his group, demanded to see their driver's licenses, pushed one of them and pointed a cocked semi-automatic handgun at them.

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Rawitz (L) saved Sheriff Carona's sorry ass

​Sadly, Jeffrey M. Rawitz--one of Jones Day's feisty defense lawyers who represented ex-Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona in his federal corruption trial earlier this year--is hospitalized in Los Angeles at Cedars Sinai Medical Center.

During Carona's three-month trial in Santa Ana, Rawitz participated in almost all hearings despite significant spinal cord pain following a pre-trial accident. He often limped in and out of U.S. District Judge Andrew Guilford's courtroom, but always fought strenuously on Carona's behalf. Indeed, Rawitz was singlehandedly the life of the defense--an opinion numerous jurors shared with me after a lucky Carona won acquittal on five of six charges.

The injury has now caused Rawitz to resign not just from Carona's defense team (which is appealing the conviction for sabotaging a federal grand jury investigating corruption at the Orange County Sheriff's Department) but also from Jones Day.

"I am in a lot of pain," Rawitz, 46, told me last night in a phone interview from his hospital bed. "I am really hurting."

And, true to form, he continued to lobby me, perhaps Carona's biggest media critic.

"Someday, I'm going to convince you," he said, "that the government's case against Carona was weak."

I don't know about that assertion given that federal prosecutors Brett Sagel and Ken Julian proved beyond a doubt that Carona was a sheriff-hoodlum with egomaniac tendencies, but I do pray that Rawitz heals quickly.

--R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

Two Top OC Cops Turn Convicted Felons

​He once dreamed of becoming California's first Latino governor. He finagled an improbable transition from Garden Grove police sergeant to the powerful No. 2 post at the Orange County Sheriff's Department (OCSD). He even managed to create a fan club within the George W. Bush White House. But late Monday afternoon, ex-Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo discovered there are consequences to unbridled ambition: a 27-month federal prison sentence and the forfeiture of at least $233,000.

"I am here to say that I am profoundly sorry for what I have done," a weepy Jaramillo (pictured on the left with Sheriff Mike Carona) told U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford before punishment was announced in the bribery case against him. "My cavalier, irresponsible, lackadaisical mode of operation while sitting in a position of public trust was criminal. I need to apologize publicly. I was not raised to violate the law. . . . I blame no one for the circumstances I am in."

But if Jaramillo, who considers himself an expert strategist, thought his words would seal a sweetheart deal that would keep him out of prison in exchange for home confinement, he was terribly misguided. Indeed, the hearing wowed those in attendance (including six reporters) by how quickly Jaramillo and his legal team, headed by Brent Romney, seemed to argue themselves out of the relatively good graces of federal prosecutor Brett Sagel. The Jaramillo strategy combined two parts arrogance and one part contrition, a doomed recipe to anyone awake.

Prior to the hearing, it was Sagel who generously recommended that Jaramillo get a whopping six-point downward departure in the sentencing guidelines based on his willingness to accept responsibility for his crimes and his cooperation for helping to bring down the degenerate former sheriff. Incredibly, though, the defense attacked Sagel in its sentencing brief, calling him a liar and adopting a disrespectful tone that preposterously implied Jaramillo was ethically superior to the assistant United States attorney. At the end of the defense presentations, Sagel stood up, shook his head and said, "I no longer believe he's entitled to a downward departure of all six levels. . . . He still thinks the law applies to everyone but him."

Jaramillo's eyes widened, and he rapidly rubbed his lips and chin with the fingers on his right hand. Sagel compared the ex-assistant sheriff to a child who kills his parents, and then seeks sympathy because he's an orphan. The analogy stiffened Jaramillo's body. Sagel paused. The prosecutor then announced, "We ask for a period of incarceration." Jaramillo slowly shook his head in recognition that his plight now would include a stop in a federal penitentiary. …More >>

Ex-Sheriff Carona to Feds: Please Clean up the Jails before I start serving time!

​Front page stories in both the LA Times and Register today report that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating Orange County's jail system in the wake of recent brutality allegations. "Officials from the department's Civil Rights Division are seeking to determine whether incidents of violence by jail personnel amount to a pattern of violating inmates' rights, the Sheriff's Department confirmed," writes the Times' Tami Abdollah. "The Orange County district attorney criticized deputies earlier this year for a 'code of silence' that he said hampered prosecutors' ability to investigate possible criminal activities."

When dozens of inmates murdered an alleged child porn possessor named John Chamberlain in late 2006 after a deputy allegedly told them the inmate was a child molester, sheriff's personnel refused to allow DA investigators access to the crime scene, even though the DA is supposed to investigate all murders involving the sheriff's dept. The DA is now charging nine inmates with murdering Chamberlain, but ruled against filing charges against the deputy who allegedly outed Chamberlain as a pervert.

In response to the news of the Justice probe, the sheriff's department issued the following statement: "We've implemented many changes of our jail procedures and in our use of force policy since the Chamberlain grand jury transcripts and the District Attorney's findings on Chamberlain case were released last year. We continue to review our policies and implement changes to make our staff more accountable and our operations the best possible. We have worked with independent organizations including the ACLU and the Orange County Office of Independent Review and we welcome the DOJ's scrutiny of our operations. We are cooperating fully with their requests."

Good luck, Justice Department investigators! You have chosen an important mission and we fully expect you to get to the bottom of this mysterious pattern of behavior. Here, to get you started, is a link to every story we've run that mentions just one of the jails you're probing, Theo Lacy Men's Jail.

Enjoy!
 

Break out the vodka, boys!

​As Orange County's Republican sheriff, Mike Carona liked to talk tough about granting no mercy to convicted felons, but ever since the ex-top cop turned convicted felon himself earlier this year he's been begging for leniency.

This afternoon, the Ninth Circuit--the nation's most liberal federal appeals court--granted Carona his wish.

Unlike most felons, he'll be allowed to remain free from serving his 66-month federal prison sentence until the appellate court reviews his claim that federal prosecutors cheated to win a conviction. Specifically, the ex-sheriff says it wasn't fair that FBI and IRS agents secretly recorded him and an assistant sheriff discussing cash and gift bribes, ways to thwart a federal grand jury investigating his corruption, his conquests of women during work hours, his massive ego and his close friendships with a multitude of degenerate characters.

U.S. Department of Justice officials, who argued that Carona should begin his punishment on July 24, declined to comment on today's ruling, according to agency spokesman Thom Mrozek.

Our apologies to married men throughout Southern California; your wives are not safe while the "Little Ex-Sheriff" roams free.

--R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

The sheriff partying with a Las Vegas felon before his FBI arrest

In anticipation for this month's arrival of ex-Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona, the federal Bureau of Prisons has issued a new identity for the convicted felon who abused his office by, among other things, attempting to sabotage a federal grand jury investigating OC law enforcement corruption: 

Carona with a mob goon

The Orange County Hispanic Endowment Education Fund (HEEF) is a fine organization that gives out thousands of dollars in scholarships to deserving students every year and has done so for quite some time. Sometime this month, they will hold a reception for prospective recipients. Maybe some young scholar can ask this pertinent question to their elders: why does HEEF still allow disgraced, adulterous, felonious ex-sheriff Mike Carona to sully the group's name?

Among the scholarships currently listed for prospective applicants is the "Mike Corona* [sic] Foundation Law Enforcement Scholarship." Four scholarships to the tune of $1,000 each are available to "high school seniors interested in any aspect of law enforcement." It's one thing to partner with someone like Henry J. Nicholas, who's awaiting trial on multiple felonies but still finds the time to open up learning centers in SanTana; the courts haven't tried him yet, and his alleged crimes were in the private realm. But does HEEF really find it appropriate to accept money from Carona to students interested in law enforcement? My god, what kind of a role model is Carona for such kids? And the sheer huevos of this felon! Having Carona make out a scholarship for future law enforcement officials is like a pedo-priest raising money for a kid's scholarship. This is where standing sheriff Sandra Hutchens or the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs should step in with some moolah to displace Carona's dirty money...but I guess they have their own financial issues to deal with.

As as for HEEF: how can you accept money from such a cretin? And, how DARE one of your own, lawyer Ruben A. Smith, write a letter on Carona's behalf asking for clemency by citing Carona's work with HEEF as an example of what a great guy the pendejo is. In the words of the late, great, decrepit Wally George: SICK, SICK, SICK!

*About the misspelling: Is it a typo, or on purpose? Moxley just told me that it came out in testimony during Carona's trial that his campaign purposely misspelled his name in campaign literature as "Corona" during the 1998 sheriff's campaign to mislead wabs into voting for one of their own. Is HEEF doing it also to make people think this is an actual Mike Corona and not the felon? Inquiring minds want to know!

Galisky says anti-gay bigots knocked her out of OCSD

I just learned that Christine Hanley, one of the last investigative journalists remaining at the already decimated Orange County bureau of the Los Angeles Times, has resigned. …More >>

The opinion page staff at the Los Angeles Times today handed Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens an endorsement of sorts by hailing her policies as "overdue" change following "the political shenanigans" of sheriff-turned-felon Mike Carona. Their evidence that the sheriff is moving the Orange County Sheriff's Department in the right direction? According to the Times, "The cozy circle of the local power elite" and their "political gunslingers" are angrily squealing about her reform efforts.

"The paradox here is that Hutchens' lack of a political bent might be here biggest weakness in an elected office," according to the editorial. "As she increasingly comes into conflict with the entrenched establishment, she risks being voted out in the next election."

(My March cover story profile, "Less Than A Year Since She Was Appointed Sheriff, Sandra Sue Hutchens Has Made Some Powerful Enemies," provides additional evidence of the Times' assertion.)

Though apprehensive about suspected anti-Hutchens political forces seeking to embarrass this sheriff inside District Attorney Tony Rackauckas' office, the paper also applauded the DA's "willingness to question the behavior of sheriff's deputies." Five deputies have been accused of recently testi-lying to help a fellow deputy escape a conviction for twice firing a Taser into a handcuffed suspect sitting in the back of a patrol car. Hutchens claims she is conducting an investigation, but the Times rightly suggests that she "would quell more doubts" if an external agency conducted the probe.

Read the LA Times editorial HERE.

--R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly