Arthur Paul Carmona - Appeal and Exoneration

Appeal and Exoneration

Starting several months after Carmona's October 1998 conviction, Los Angeles Times columnist Dana Parsons wrote a series of columns that raised questions about the evidence and argued for a new trial. In January 2000, the law firm of Sidley & Austin (now called Sidley Austin) took on the case for free and in February persuaded the California Court of Appeal to order the lower court to hold a hearing on the new evidence. On August 22, 2000, Sidley attorney Deborah Muns-Park, along with James M. Harris, Robert Fabrikant, and Steve Ellis, convinced Orange County Superior Court Judge Everett Dickey that Carmona had been convicted of a crime he did not commit, and the judge 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.

After getting out of jail, Carmona moved to San Diego and got a job installing carpet with his father. He also traveled with his mother, a paralegal, to Sacramento to meet with groups like the California Innocence Project, which seeks to free wrongfully convicted inmates in the state's prison system.