The Trials of Frank Carson · Los Angeles Times

The lawyer and the thief | 1

May 25, 2021·42 min·3 clips

Carson's signature jury speech uses a maggot he found inside a Payday candy bar as a metaphor for tainted evidence — a story he's deployed in over 100 trials.

1. The Trials of Frank Carson, episode 1, 'The Lawyer and the Thief,' introduces the central figure of a Los Angeles Times investigative podcast: Frank Carson, a combative criminal defense attorney in Stanislaus County, California, who was charged with murder alongside his wife and multiple co-defendants in 2015. 2. Christopher Gofford is the reporter and host; the episode relies on extensive personal interviews with Carson, current and former DA personnel, former clients, and family members of the victim Corey Kaufman. 3. The episode's central tension is between two radically different accounts of Carson: an aggressive but principled defense attorney who won through legitimate means, or a 'local mob boss known as Uncle Frank' who crossed the line from outlaw-adjacent lawyer to actual killer. 4. Carson's physical condition frames the episode: at 64, he walks with a cane, his kidneys are failing, his sciatic nerve is inflamed, and he wears a size-48 suit with shiny patches from overuse — which he refuses to replace until he is acquitted. 5. Carson's family moved to Modesto from Texas after World War II; his father built their house piecemeal on a telephone company lineman's salary every two weeks; Carson grew up brawling in the streets and describes that as the reason he has no fear of powerful law enforcement enemies. 6. Carson assumed he would become a prosecutor — 'you're the hero, you got everything on your side' — but the DA's office turned him down; the public defender's office hired him and gave him cases marked DBL, Dead Bang Loser, that no one else wanted. 7. His reputation was cemented by his 2003 defense of Modesto Mayor Carmen Sabatino on charges of stealing public funds and perjury; Carson's cross-examination forced a key state witness to take the fifth, the jury deadlocked, and prosecutors dropped the case. 8. His operating philosophy is explicitly adversarial — he describes figuratively having a 'butcher knife' for prosecutors: if he gets behind them, he will use it, for his client, within ethical rules. 9. Carson is still appearing in other courtrooms while his murder trial runs in Department 2; judges grant his continuance requests without argument because everyone in the courthouse knows the stakes of the trial down the hall, giving him what he calls 'the most well-established, unassailable excuse in the whole courthouse.' 10. His signature jury speech involves a Payday candy bar he bought in Monroe, Louisiana in which he found a maggot — he uses it as a metaphor for tainted evidence and has delivered it in more than 100 trials, as confirmed by his wife Georgia. 11. Former gang member Micah Disney, for whom Carson secured dismissals on charges including carjacking and attempted murder, describes being told flatly he had to plead guilty to a home invasion robbery shooting and take a 10-year deal because Carson could only defend him 'consistent with the truth'; Disney served six years and named his son after Carson. 12. Carson avoids lawyer watering holes and instead haunts swap meets and car auctions across the Central Valley; he owns a rusted double-decker bus with no engine that he bought at auction for $100 and planted in the weeds of a lot in Turlock. 13. Doug Maynor, a Modesto defense attorney who spent more than two decades in the DA's office, describes Carson as occupying 'a whole category all by himself' — confrontational to the point of questioning the manhood, intelligence, and ethics of witnesses, and so effective that losing to him served as a reason for not examining one's own preparation failures. 14. In April 2013, Carson turned his back on Judge Linda McFadden during an argument about her treatment of prosecutors, was fined $200, led her to believe he hadn't paid, then 'brandished the receipt dramatically' in court — he describes it as 'the best $200 I ever spent.' 15. District Attorney Birgit Flattiger had gathered attorneys in her office to document Frank Carson stories, with what Maynor describes as the goal of building a state bar complaint to remove his license; Flattiger denies this but confirms she asked people to document his behavior to protect her staff. 16. Corey Kaufman, the victim, was a 26-year-old meth addict known as 'Corndog' who stole metal from abandoned buildings and empty silos around Turlock; on good days he made $200 at the recycling center; his mother says he just wanted to 'grow up.' 17. Kaufman was last seen at a friend's house on Lander Avenue in Turlock, reportedly planning a solo raid of the fenced lot next door, a property local thieves had long called 'the Antique Store' — which was owned by Frank Carson. 18. The government's charge was that Carson was the puppet master of a murder conspiracy including his wife, stepdaughter, two liquor store brothers, and three California Highway Patrol officers — three CHP officers whose arrest the state commissioner called 'devastating' to his organization. 19. Carson agreed to the on-the-record interview from his living room because he had just been discharged from intensive care after a near-fatal infection and was not confident he would survive to see a verdict; the local press had largely stopped covering the case, which he believed allowed the DA to 'run amok.' 20. The episode ends with defense attorney Hans Jochtensen's summary of the prosecution: Carson had been a thorn in the DA's side for three decades, won too many trials, and they decided the murder charge was how they would finally get him.

As heard by us

A grounded courthouse portrait that turns a failing body and a hard edged defense practice into suspense.

Frank Carson's slow climb up the Modesto courthouse steps sets the tone right away. It gives the piece a worn, immediate feel: a defense lawyer whose body is failing while his reputation still carries weight around Stanislaus County.

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Why you'd press play

You want a defense-lawyer true-crime story anchored by Frank Carson, a combative Modesto attorney with a cane, a black satchel, and a courthouse full of pressure.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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