Drawing on experience to defend the accused

Retained as Li’s attorney shortly after she became the primary suspect in the murder of her ex-boyfriend Keith Green — a 27-year-old Millbrae man who was found dead two weeks after he had last been seen with Li in late April of 2016 — Carr had been preparing for the weekslong trial for years.

In his last few minutes of closing arguments, Carr told the jurors they had also been drafted, acknowledging they likely didn’t want to be in the courtroom just as the military draftees in the Vietnam War likely didn’t want to be thousands of miles from home. But he reminded the jurors of the stakes if they didn’t follow the instructions they had been given about how to review the facts of Li’s case.

“If you don’t, we are anarchy,” he said. “And if we are anarchy, innocent people get hurt.”

In asking the jury in Li’s trial to think about the principles of the Geneva Convention and the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, Carr was drawing on his own experiences with two tours in Vietnam. Though he was not drafted, he can still remember what his platoon sergeant said to him when he arrived in Vietnam just before he turned 19 as well as the words he imparted to his troops when he returned to the country months later as a platoon sergeant himself.

Carr said the steps he took to craft his closing arguments for Li’s case were no different from the approach he takes on the dozens of cases he is appointed to through San Mateo County’s private defender program, which helps those who cannot afford a retained attorney obtain legal counsel. When he offers guidance to younger lawyers, Carr said he advises them to be introspective, shape arguments they believe in and think about how they relate to their cases emotionally.

“In order to win criminal cases, you have to find a theory of the case that you believe in,” he said. “Because if you can’t convince yourself that your client deserves to be acquitted, how … are you going to convince anybody else?”

More than three weeks after Carr’s closing argument, the jury returned acquitted Li of the murder charge. Though he long believed her to be innocent of the crime, Carr acknowledged he does not always have the opportunity to represent someone he thinks is factually innocent. Even if he thinks clients may be factually guilty of a crime, Carr noted he is obliged by the Sixth Amendment to defend them. He said what many don’t realize about the criminal justice system is what’s tried in a criminal case is whether the state can prove the charges it brings upon someone, not whether the person is factually or morally guilty.

Though he was known to tell stories as a child, Carr said it wasn’t until his second tour in Vietnam that he knew he wanted to defend people for a living. Trained as a helicopter crew chief and door gunner, Carr said his responsibilities as a platoon sergeant included both prosecuting and defending his troops for minor offenses. He said he came away from his two years in Vietnam knowing he had some sense of how to convince people of his arguments, and also that the government isn’t perfect.

“It doesn’t bother me at all to do one of the things we have to do, which is to throw a wrench into the otherwise smooth-running wheels of justice leading inevitably to conviction,” he said. “I learned that in Vietnam that the government isn’t to be trusted, they are to be monitored and carefully scrutinized.”

Rooted in San Mateo County

Though he has tried cases in counties across the state and gone as far as Utah to try a federal case, Carr’s career as a defense attorney has been rooted in San Mateo County. Among the many cases he has worked on, Carr secured an acquittal in 2017 of a Brisbane resident accused of sexually assaulting and murdering a woman on San Bruno Mountain in 1989 and was also part of a team of attorneys who obtained a not guilty verdict for a 95-year-old Foster City man accused of killing his 90-year-old wife in 2015.

The nerves that accompany the courtroom setting have gotten somewhat easier for Carr to control after decades as a trial attorney, but he acknowledged he still gets nervous heading into trial. He said he felt lawyers who thrive in a trial setting benefit from narcissistic tendencies, but noted they also need to be able to share their identities with a jury to build compelling arguments.

“You have to think what you think is more important than what other people think, which is kind of by definition narcissism,” he said. “But in order to do it properly, you have to really analyze yourself and your own motivations.”

Development concerns

Carr became familiar with another type of public forum when he voiced concerns about the heights and designs of several developments proposed for downtown Redwood City in recent years. The approval of a 10-story apartment complex within blocks of his office at 605 Middlefield Road in 2013 spurred Carr and attorney Kevin Frederick, who co-owns the building with Carr, to voice their concerns about subsequent development applications. In 2017, Carr appealed a 20-unit affordable housing proposal submitted by Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco for a lot on the same block as his office.

Though Carr’s effort to reduce the building’s height from six stories to five was ultimately unsuccessful, he has been gratified to see developers largely take note of the need for improved designs and agree to build scaled-down buildings in recent years.

Finding meaning

In his spare time, the 68-year-old Woodside resident maintains and operates a UH-1H Huey helicopter he has owned for some 16 years. From the Hayward Executive Airport, Carr has taken the helicopter to Petaluma to fly over the city’s Veterans Day parades and also flown with several veterans as a form of therapy.

Though he has no plans to retire any time soon, Carr reflected on his 40 years of working as a defense attorney in the county and acknowledged some of his cases, like Li’s, garner more attention than others. But he said those he finds memorable don’t necessarily align with what the public finds interesting. He said he considered some of the minor cases he’s worked on among his greatest victories, such as that involving the daughter of a longtime friend, who had been accused of drunk driving in Colusa County.

In the same courthouse whose exterior was featured in the movie “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Carr defended his client and later got word about her not guilty verdict while he was sitting on her porch down the street from the courthouse. Though it wasn’t one of his biggest cases, Carr admitted the moment was very meaningful for him, as it almost always is when he defends veterans in court.

“For me, the importance of these things is very situational,” he said. “When I walk a veteran on a crime, I feel a lot about that.”

anna@smdailyjournal.com

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