JURY ACQUITS CARNEY NOT GUILTY ON 4 MOLESTING COUNTS.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Staff Writer

LOS ANGELES - After deliberating more than four days, a jury on Thursday acquitted former Palmdale City Councilman Kevin Carney of four child-molestation charges, but deadlocked on a dozen remaining charges.

The former sheriff's sergeant did not change expression when he was found not guilty of molesting two of the four girls who had made accusations against him. Later he hugged his attorneys and then his wife, children and brother.

When jurors told the standing-room-only courtroom they were deadlocked 11-1 in favor of acquittal on 12 counts of molestation, Carney's wife mouthed ``Thank you'' and his brother gave a thumbs-up sign.

``My feeling is that nobody won here today. There are no winners,'' Carney said, standing with his family and attorney Milton Grimes in a 12th-floor hallway of the Los Angeles Criminal Courts Building.

``It's been a very long year. I want to thank the 11 people on that jury who believed in me and saw these charges for what they were. I said from the beginning I was innocent.''

Prosecutors said they will talk with jurors, re-examine the evidence and announce at a Nov. 30 hearing whether they will seek to retry Carney on the 12 charges, which stem from accusations made by a teen-age daughter of a friend of Carney's.

After the jury was excused, Carney's attorney made a motion to dismiss those charges, but Judge James Chalfant refused.

``There were four witnesses who testified to acts of molestation against him. That is a pure credibility question. I don't see how I could possibly dismiss the case,'' Chalfant said.

Carney could have been sentenced to life in prison if found guilty of all the charges.

Outside the court, jurors said the four girls' stories differed too much between what they said during the trial and what they had told detectives in taped interviews.

``A lot of the things they said when they were first interviewed and when they were on the stand, the story was totally different,'' juror Emilio Hernandez said.

Of Carney, jury foreman Andre Khachatourians said: ``He had very consistent testimony. The girls had inconsistent testimony.''

Asked his plans after the trial, Carney said he couldn't comment because he could still face a second prosecution.

In addition, Carney faces a civil lawsuit filed last week by one of the girls and her mother. The suit also names the Antelope Valley Union High School District and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Carney, a former high school trustee, was relieved of duty from the Lancaster sheriff's station following his arrest Oct. 29, 1999. He has since retired from the Sheriff's Department, for which he once supervised the child abuse unit at the Lancaster station.

Carney posted bail and was elected to a four-year term on the Palmdale City Council on Nov. 2, 1999. He was arrested again Jan. 6, after charges were filed regarding the other three girls.

From jail, Carney resigned his City Council post, saying the time he needed to devote to clearing his name would prevent him from properly serving his constituents.

Carney has been free since he met bail again in May, after his bail was reduced to $500,000.

At the trial that started Oct. 3, a 15-year-old girl testified the molestation started when she was about 6 years old and ended after she told her mother Oct. 28 of an encounter with Carney.

After picking her up from school, the girl said, Carney drove her to an old almond orchard where he plied her with tequila-laced Pepsi and coerced her into having sex with him.

Two younger girls first raised their allegations against Carney in 1997, but prosecutors had then declined to file charges. Each girl said she was fondled in an upstairs room of Carney's house as they played with small water turtles that he kept in an aquarium.

The fourth girl, a friend of the 15-year-old, said Carney molested her after she crawled into his sleeping bag on a 1994 camping trip at Yosemite National Park.

Prosecutors did not stop to talk to reporters outside court.

But spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said the District Attorney's Office has successfully retried cases after 11-1 deadlocks.

``The trial attorneys will be looking over the case. They will talk to the jurors and look over the evidence and discuss it with their supervisors and a decision will be made at a later time,'' Gibbons said.

A version of this story appears in Main News.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

(color in AV edition only) Former Palmdale Councilman Kevin Carney receives a hug from his wife, Kathleen, after a jury found him not guilty of four child molestation charges Thursday in Los Angeles.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer