Lawyers for former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona said Thursday that dozens of federal prosecutors have disqualified themselves from prosecuting his corruption case -- and the defense wants to know why.
Carona's lawyers disclosed in federal court in Santa Ana that federal prosecutors in Los Angeles and Orange counties have declared an unspecified conflict of interest and said they could not be involved in Carona's prosecution.
The only prosecutors who haven't disqualified themselves are the two handling the case, Assistant U.S. Attys. Brett Sagel and Kenneth Julian, defense lawyers told U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford.
"We want to find out why. How is it that these two gentlemen are exempt from this?" Carona lawyer H. Dean Steward said after the hearing. "We cannot get an official answer."
Sagel and Julian did not discuss the matter in court, and Thom Mrozek, a U.S. attorney's spokesman, would say only that the two prosecutors are "working in conjunction with prosecutors at the Department of Justice in Washington."
Thursday's hearing was one of the first glimpses into what Carona's lawyers have promised will be an aggressive defense. Defense lawyers said they may ask that Carona's two prosecutors be removed from the case, that the trial be moved out of Orange County and that a secretly recorded conversation between Carona and an associate be deemed inadmissible.
The reason the other lawyers disqualified themselves from prosecuting Carona could prove significant. Brian A. Sun, a Carona lawyer, said he wants to determine whether Sagel and Julian have the same conflict of interest that prompted the other prosecutors to step aside from the case. If there is a similar conflict, he could ask that the two prosecutors be removed from the case. Such a ruling could significantly delay Carona's trial, now scheduled for June 10.
Neither Steward nor Sun disclosed how they learned of the prosecutors' disqualifications.
"We've heard it from many different sources," Steward said after the hearing. He declined to elaborate.
One former federal prosecutor, Wayne Gross, said Thursday that he recused himself from the case because he worked on anti-crime initiatives with Carona. Gross, who was chief of the U.S. attorney's Santa Ana office, is now in private practice. No other prosecutors have publicly discussed the matter.
