If you're going to bet against the U.S. government when it brings corruption charges against a public official, you better get some pretty good odds. No one's offered me any, so I ain't betting.
As I sit now in front of the keyboard Thursday afternoon, the jury in the Mike Carona corruption case is in its first couple of hours or so of deliberations. Who knows? By the time you read this today, jurors may have already laid a guilty verdict on the former Orange County sheriff.
That's probably where the smart money lies. Although the much-heralded secretly recorded tape conversations between Carona and former Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl have plenty of ambiguity in them, some portions are potentially deadly for Carona.
In his closing argument Thursday, Assistant U.S. Atty. Brett Sagel cited specific passages from the conversations in 2007 that he says point to Carona's guilt, but he was also persuasive when he discussed the meetings in a different vein. Why would Haidl, the government's star witness, agree to its request to secretly tape-record the conversations if he knew his allegations against Carona were false? And why did Carona, still sheriff at the time, continue the conversations with Haidl after they turned to subjects like lying to a federal grand jury if he was innocent?
So, is Carona's goose cooked? Is there any way he can beat the rap?
If only for the sake of contrariness, let me proffer a road map to acquittal.
We take you to the jury room, where the 11 men and lone woman are laying out the big-picture narrative, which began with Haidl laundering campaign contributions -- at Carona's request -- to help elect him in 1998. Then, with the promise of an assistant sheriff's job in the offing, Haidl began paying Carona monthly bribes of $1,000 that continued until mid-2002.
As jurors contemplate classic bribery cases, this arrangement may give them pause. It boils down to an unpaid assistant sheriff bribing the sheriff. I wonder if there's precedent for that in law enforcement annals.
I don't recall anybody testifying that the original job offer, which Haidl at first didn't jump at, was contingent on Haidl's paying Carona anything. In fact, Haidl testified that the payments were his idea but that he didn't demand anything for them.
