Carr Responds
This is to set the record straight about your “DA Courts Trouble” blurb in your Dec. 30 (“The Year That Sucked,” Cover Story).
Vahid Hosseini was murdered in a bank parking lot after withdrawing $50,000 in cash. His family sued the bank for failure to provide adequate security for its customers. The family’s civil lawyer hired my husband, a retired police detective and expert on bank robberies, to consult on their claim.
I did not see a conflict in my husband taking on that work because no suspects had been identified, much less charged. Further, whether the bank failed to maintain adequate security is totally unrelated to any subsequent prosecution of the killers. In hindsight, I failed to foresee that in the event the case was solved, people might be concerned that my husband was working on behalf of victims in a case being prosecuted by my office.
Months later, when the police made arrests and my office filed charges, I immediately advised the assistant DA overseeing homicides that my husband was working on the civil lawsuit. Unfortunately, the supervisor who was going to tell the assigned attorney went out on an emergency medical leave. The assigned attorney discovered the issue several weeks later. That was the delay you refer to, not a “reluctance” to remove myself from the case.
A furor followed, mainly because the assigned attorney, Jeff Rosen, decided to run for district attorney and use this case as a campaign issue.
The case itself is now in the hands of the Attorney General’s office, which is vigorously prosecuting the homicide charges. The civil lawsuit has settled. My husband ceased working on the civil case and returned all of the money he had earned.
Dolores Carr, District Attorney
Climate Cost
The United States was criticized for having no climate law enacted before the recent Copenhagen summit. The climate bill pending in Congress includes massive federally backed loans to the nuclear industry. The Congressional Budget Office has determined that the risk of default on the loans is well above 50 percent.
The nuclear industry cannot find private-sector financing for its planned reactors. As reported by Mother Jones magazine, the industry is pushing for a bill provision to create an office within the Department of Energy (DOE) that would have authority to award loan guarantees without congressional review. Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) are sponsoring such legislation.
Congress so far has given the DOE authority to distribute $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for more nuclear facilities. The nuclear industry wants at least $100 billion in loan guarantees. We taxpayers are about to subsidize the nuclear power industry, if the pending climate bill passes.
Philip Ratcliff
Cloverdale
Block That Metaphor
To letter-writer Pieter S. Myers (“Metaphor Alert,” Dec. 30): If you’re going to use a baseball metaphor so wantonly, at least get it right. In baseball, a 2-0 count means two balls and no strikes.
Your letter to the president either was built on a shaky foundation or—well, I’ll let you come up with another ingenious metaphor—”wrong.”
Peter Perrault
Sunnyvale
