WRONG MAN JAILED 2 MONTHS, SUIT SAYS

A Sacramento man who spent two months in jail on suspicion of dealing drugs
and skipping bail, is suing the city and county, saying police knew they
had the wrong man within hours of his arrest.

Though the charges eventually were dropped, Nicanor Carlos, 34, said the
ordeal a year ago led to his financial ruin -- he lost two jobs, his home
and his car while incarcerated, as his wife struggled to support their two
young children.

Police and sheriff's officials declined to comment on the specifics of the
case, citing the pending litigation.

Carlos, who speaks only Spanish, filed a lawsuit last week in U.S. District
Court. Named defendants include Sheriff Glen Craig, Police Chief Arturo
Venegas Jr. and the arresting officer, sheriff's Detective Carlos Ponce, a
member of the Crank Rock Impact Project (CRIP), a multiagency narcotics
task force. The suit does not specify a damage
amount.

Carlos, his civil attorney said, was the victim of mistaken identity that
was quickly discovered by police, who then failed to rectify the error.

Carlos, who had no criminal record, insists that his only crime was losing
a Department of Motor Vehicles-issued identification card in 1995 that fell
into the hands of Juan Torrez Sandoval. Torrez used it to obtain a driver's
license under the name Nicanor Carlos, which was documented by Ponce in a
police report.

"Within an hour, police were aware that my client was not a drug dealer ...
yet they kept him in jail," said Stewart Katz, the attorney who prepared
the civil suit. "What happened to him doesn't make sense."

Katz filed liability claims on behalf of Carlos against the city and county
of Sacramento last year. Both claims were rejected, opening the way for the
lawsuit.

Thomas B. Baber, a liability claims administrator for the city, wrote to
Katz, "Any liability ... arising out of this arrest would rest with Torrez,
who had fraudulently obtained a driver's license in Mr. Carlos' name."

Carlos, who never met Torrez, knows about him now. "The other guy (Torrez)
was a real heavy, so the full weight of the law fell on me," Carlos said.

After Carlos' arrest, his wife took out a $4,500 loan to hire attorney Kyle
R. Knapp, who waged a long battle to free him.

"This is one of the most frustrating cases I've ever come across," Knapp
said of his difficulty in getting the charges against Carlos dropped. "They
arrested my guy for someone whose booking photo was different. That should
have said to them, "Hey, we have a problem.'"

The bizarre series of events began on Jan. 23, 1997, when CRIP officers
raided a south Sacramento home and found about $7,000 in cash, a pound of
methamphetamine and Juan Torrez inside.

Torrez possessed a driver's license under the name Nicanor Carlos, police
reports said. Torrez told the arresting officers his real name was Juan
Torrez Sandoval and that the license was bogus, according to reports and
the lawsuit.

Still, Torrez was booked into the county jail as Nicanor Carlos on
suspicion of drug trafficking and conspiracy. His bail was set at $50,000
- -- which he quickly posted, then disappeared.

When Torrez failed to appear for a later court hearing, a judge issued a
$250,000 warrant for his arrest. It identified the fugitive as Nicanor
Carlos.

In early February, police raided the 14th Avenue home of the real Carlos,
who was at work at the time. "Everything was upside down, as if a twister
had gone through the house," Carlos said, recalling what he saw upon his
return home.

Told by witnesses that police had ransacked the house, he and his wife,
Laura, went to the south Sacramento police station, seeking an explanation.
No one there could explain why their home had been searched, the couple
said.

But on the morning of Feb. 10, Ponce arrested Carlos at his day job as a
laborer at Concrete Pipe & Products Inc.

Four days after he arrested Carlos, Ponce wrote that, "Identification
problems had arisen during the course of the investigation." Both Torrez
and Carlos had the same driver's license number.In fact, on Feb. 10, Ponce
had compared photos of both men and concluded that the man arrested on Jan.
23 "is not the same individual that I arrested earlier today," documents
show.

Ponce, who hadn't taken part in Torrez's arrest, wrote that he learned on
Feb. 14 that the DMV had issued separate ID cards and driver's licenses to
the two men under the same file number. The file was established in 1988,
when "the individual that I arrested," Nicanor Carlos, received a photo ID
from the DMV, Ponce wrote. In 1995, Torrez received a driver's license
under Carlos' name.

Two hours after Carlos' arrest, Ponce wrote: "It appears that Torrez was
booked under the wrong name on Jan. 23. It appears the detectives
misidentified Torrez as Carlos because of the strong physical
similarities."

Fingerprint comparisons confirmed that Torrez and Carlos were two different
men, Ponce wrote. And while witnesses identified a photograph of Torrez as
being that of a drug dealer, they could not identify Carlos' photo, Ponce
wrote.

At Ponce's request, on the night of Feb. 10, the charges against Carlos
were modified from those contained in the warrant to charges that included
conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine, according to police reports.

Police said a man using Carlos' ID card had purchased drug-making chemicals
from a lab-supply firm in the Bay Area. Knapp disputed that claim, noting
that Carlos was working in Sacramento at the time. "His time cards show
this," he said.

Ponce followed up by asking that Carlos' bail be set at $260,000, rather
than $60,000 as called for in the bail schedule, partly because Carlos
"could easily afford" the lower bail.

Bail ultimately was set at $100,000 on Feb. 11. Unable to raise enough
money, Carlos had to stay in jail.

On April 11, the day a preliminary hearing was scheduled in the case,
Assistant District Attorney Robert Saria dismissed charges against Carlos
for lack of evidence.

Meanwhile, Torrez remains a fugitive.

Since his release, Carlos has held several minimum-wage jobs and continues
to struggle financially. "I brought this suit so that what happened to me
won't happen to anybody else," Carlos said.