Juicy Fruit in Orange County-The Carona Trial

George Jaramillo and Mike Carona


Today, in the on-going trial of ex-Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona, the star witness was an ex-OC Sheriff's Department secretary named Sandra Murphy-formerly Sandra Trujillo. Her testimony was the most salacious heard to date.

Murphy testified that she became involved in an affair with Carona beginning in 2000 when she was working for Asst Sheriff George Jaramillo (who has previously pleaded guilty to related charges). Jaramillo at that time, was also a partner in a law firm with co-defendant Debra Hoffman (whose trial has been severed from Carona's). Carona was also involved at the time in a sexual relationship with Hoffman according to trial documents.

(If you Cleveland Browns fans are having trouble following this, there is a flow chart available from one of my recent posts on the trial. It will help you keep track of the relationships.)

Anyway, Trujillo went on to testify that she was having trouble with Jaramillo sexually harassing her. He would, according to Trujillo, put his hands on her in inappropriate places. He also reportedly asked her to participate in group sex with him and a couple of his girlfriends, and he showed her nude photos of the ladies in question.

At some point the Orange County Sheriff's Department received an anonymous letter alleging the above sexual harassment by Jaramillo. During the ensuing investigation, Carona told Murphy to deny everything, and that he (Carona) would make it all cease and go away.

In another juicy anecdote, Murphy described an incident in which Jaramillo was caught in a patrol car engaging in a sexual act with a woman. She described how she and the Sheriff cooked up an "alibi" for Jaramillo's wife to the effect that Georgie was getting the woman to sign a petition of some sort in the vehicle (or maybe he was signing the petition, it's not clear.)

And finally, Ms Murphy described a time when Jaramillo told her that he had an audio of Carona having sex in an SUV with some woman in San Francisco. Apparently, so the tale goes, the Sheriff had accidentally activated his cell phone and was "broadcasting live".

(You laugh. There is an old DEA anecdote of a supervisor having sex in his government vehicle one night and accidentally keying his radio mike. He was broadcasting to the radio room and every other agent in their official cars. That was also in San Francisco, by the way.)

But I digress. So what was the purpose of all this salacious testimony? It went to show that Murphy had a close enough relationship with Carona that she had knowledge of their corrupt inner workings. She also testified about Carona's plan to get Debra Hoffman appointed to some board in Sacramento.

In cross-examination, Carona's attorney tried to play up the fact that Murphy is now married to an OC Sheriff's Deputy-one who has close ties to former Commander Bill Hunt-who unsucessfully ran against Carona a couple of years back (see flow chart).

Tomorrow will be the last day for the prosecution, it was announced. That means that George Jaramillo will not be called to testify for the Government-understandable after today's testimony.