“Your honor, he should stop right there.”
–Brian A. Sun, a Jones Day defense lawyer for indicted ex-Sheriff Mike Carona, barked in today's federal court trial after Assistant United States Attorney Brett Sagel called Sun's boneheaded bluff about an alleged sexual relationship between ex-Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo and his sister-in-law Erica Hill. Despite a judge's prohibition, Sun was attempting to smear Jaramillo's morals, but apparently forgot that his own client, Carona–the self-described “Christian conservative,” also had extramarital activities with Hill. Oops. Sagel had pointed out that if the jury was going to learn about Jaramillo's activities with Hill, they should also know about Carona's dalliances. Sun is determined to convince Carona's Orange County jury that Jaramillo, the ex-sheriff's longtime best friend, was the “Satan” in a law enforcement bribery scam and that Carona, who is accused of secretly taking expensive gifts from shady businessmen seeking police influence, was an unsuspecting angel until his 2007 arrest. In 2006, the Weekly published a photograph of Carona, who is close to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, affectionately hugging an organized crime associate at a Newport Beach bar and revealed how the sheriff had allowed a Middle Eastern-born con man to film top secret Homeland Security procedures.
(R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly)
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.