Longtime Modesto defense attorney and onetime defendant Frank Carson dies at 66
Modesto defense attorney Frank Carson died Wednesday, close to 14 months after he was acquitted in a long-running murder case.
Carson, 66, had a medical emergency during dialysis treatment last Friday and was on life support until Wednesday evening, attorney Gary Gwilliam said on behalf of the family. The cause of death awaits an autopsy, he said.
Gwilliam represented Carson in his recent lawsuit against Stanislaus County and other parties stemming from the murder case. A jury last year acquitted him and two other defendants in the death of Korey Kauffman, who went missing in 2012.
Gwilliam, based in Oakland, said by phone Thursday that the case will become a wrongful-death action because the prosecution damaged Carson’s health.
“His case will not die with him,” Gwilliam said. “We will still get justice for his family.”
District Attorney Birgit Fladager, one of the defendants in the lawsuit, could not be reached for comment immediately.
Three decades of legal defense
Carson was among the best-known attorneys providing criminal defense in Stanislaus Superior Court over the past three decades.
For a few years, he was a defendant himself, charged with several other people in Kauffman’s death. The victim was 26 when he disappeared. His body was found in a remote part of Mariposa County in 2013.
The prosecution claimed that Carson was angry at Kauffman for trying to steal irrigation pipes from his Turlock-area property, so he asked associates to send a violent message to him.
Carson’s lawsuit argued that local officials violated his civil rights in the prosecution. The filing followed a December 2019 claim where Carson said he incurred more than $3 million in legal costs. He also cited health problems following his 17 months in county jail.
“He suffers from high blood pressure, went into kidney failure and now has to be on dialysis, and suffers from chronic pain and sciatica due to the conditions of being in jail,” the claim said.
Carson said he was targeted by Stanislaus Country prosecutors who resented his success in getting clients acquitted over the years. He ran unsuccessfully against Fladager in 2014.
Colleague recalls ‘a great interrogator’
Frank Clifford Carson was born June 29, 1954, in Modesto. He attended Lincoln Law School in Sacramento and was admitted in 1988 to the State Bar. He worked for the Stanislaus County Public Defender’s Office before opening a private practice in 1996.
Martha Carlton Magana, a friend and fellow defense attorney in Modesto, said Carson served his clients well.
“He really was a great interrogator and brilliant at closing arguments,” she said. “He was persistent and took the hard cases, and he stuck with it.”
Magana cited the 2014 acquittal of Modesto bail bondsman Aleo John Pontillo. He was accused of holding clients against their will at the Yosemite Boulevard business to force payments from them.
Modesto defense attorney Robert Forkner shared an office with Carson from 1999 to 2004 and has encountered him often at the 11th Street courthouse.
“Frank was a very smart, very intelligent lawyer,” Forkner said. “He was a really good man. He cared about his clients. He fought for his clients.”
Forkner cited Carson’s defense of Carmen Sabatino against charges that he abused his role as mayor of Modesto in 2003. The charges included failing to report loans and having city employees handle his personal business. The case ended in a mistrial, but Sabatino lost his re-election bid. He died on Jan. 1 of this year.
Forkner also noted that Carson eschewed computers in favor of researching cases in law books and writing his briefs by hand.
Carson, others were arrested in 2015
Carson was arrested in August 2015 along with seven other people, including his wife Georgia DeFilippo and stepdaughter Christina DeFilippo, on various charges related to Kauffman’s death.
Those arrested included three former California Highway Patrol officers – Walter Wells, Scott McFarlane and Eduardo Quintanar. They were accused of helping to cover up the murder by passing information to the other defendants.
Only Carson and brothers Baljit Athwal and Daljit Atwal ultimately went to trial on murder charges. It lasted more than a year before their June 2019 acquittal.
Only one person, Robert Lee Woody, has been convicted in Kauffman’s death. Woody had been charged with murder before the other eight were arrested. He agreed to plead no contest to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to seven years and four months in prison.
In addition to the county and Fladager, Carson sued the cities of Modesto and Ceres, Chief Deputy District Attorney Marlisa Ferreira, who prosecuted the case, and law enforcement officers from all of the jurisdictions.
Wells and McFarlane filed a similar federal lawsuit claiming that local officials violated their civil rights.
Gwilliam said the family hopes to hold a memorial service for Carson at some point. COVID-19 rules on large gatherings have complicated such services in recent months.
This story was originally published August 13, 2020 at 2:48 PM.
