FILE: Judge David Carter shares a laugh with children from the Childtime Daycare Center in Brea while taking a lunchtime walk near the old County Courthose in Santa Ana in 1998.

“Let’s break the law,” the judge told me more than 20 years ago as we jaywalked across Broadway, toward a gaggle of kids climbing atop the cannon at the Old County Courthouse in Santa Ana.

A 7-year-old named Jordyn Drake spotted his dark blue suit, Semper Fi stride and nuclear-sunshine smile. “Are you a judge?” she asked.

It was 1998, and David O. Carter had just been nominated to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton. “I am,” he said, that smile softening his otherwise forbiddingly pugnacious face

She gasped. All the kids soon encircled him. “Is it fun being a judge?” they asked. “Did you ever have to put somebody in jail? ” “How many? How many?”

Carter, affectionately known in Orange County legal circles as “King David” — slayer of Goliath and unifier of warring tribes — catapulted onto the national stage again this week, inspiring fresh rounds of gasps and breathless questions. The case Carter ruled on was small, as far as these things go: Were the emails of former Chapman University Law School dean John Eastman, architect of a stunning plan to keep President Donald Trump in office, protected by attorney-client privilege, as Eastman claimed? Or might some of those missives be part of a corrupt attempt to overthrow the election, thus losing their protected status?

The shot of Donald Trump and John Eastman on Eastman’s GiveSendGo Christian fundraising site. He has asked for $200,000 for his “legal defense fund.”

Remember, Eastman’s theory was that the vice president has the unilateral power to reject, or at least forestall the counting of, electoral votes — something that, if true, could mean one-party rule forever (since the sitting vice president could just toss out electoral votes making him/her a loser). Carter concluded that a few of the Eastman emails were protected by attorney-client privilege, but the overwhelming majority were not, and must be handed over to the Jan. 6 committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

It was “more likely than not” that federal crimes were committed in trying to obstruct the congressional count of electoral college votes, Carter wrote, and that’s what made so many jaws drop from coast to coast.

“Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history,” Carter wrote. “Their campaign was not confined to the ivory tower – it was a coup in search of a legal theory. The plan spurred violent attacks on the seat of our nation’s government, led to the deaths of several law enforcement officers, and deepened public distrust in our political process.”

Carter fully understood that his task was simply to settle a dispute over emails. “At most, this case is a warning about the dangers of ‘legal theories’ gone wrong, the powerful abusing public platforms, and desperation to win at all costs,” Carter wrote. “If Dr. Eastman and President Trump’s plan had worked, it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution. If the country does not commit to investigating and pursuing accountability for those responsible, the Court fears January 6 will repeat itself.”

It means, as Philip Bump wrote in the Washington Post, “A crime was likely committed by the sitting president to retain power,” and many hope it prompts the U.S. Department of Justice to pursue criminal action against Trump.

FILE: Lt. David Carter, second from left, stands with some of his Marines of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines in 1968. Carter was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his valor.

So, who exactly is U.S. District Judge David O. Carter?

‘Indiana Jones’

He’s a decorated Marine who served with a platoon dubbed The Walking Dead in Vietnam, earning the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. As an Orange County Superior Court judge, he duct-taped the mouths of unruly defendants and personally inspected drug users’ arms for track marks. He growled about feeding defendants to the wolves in state prison while giving them second chances and using his own money to pay for removing gang tattoos. Friends and colleagues call him fiercely independent, exhaustively hard-working, exceptionally creative, as well as a character, a card and a man not to be messed with. His wife once said that living with him is like living with an Indiana Jones character.

Carter grew up in Portland, Oregon, Oakland and Fremont, attending eight schools in six years. His father left the family when Carter was 6 months old; he was raised by his mother and his maternal grandparents. His stepfather drove a long-haul truck and sold hearing aids and typewriters. He won a scholarship to UCLA and joined the Marines after graduation. He landed in Vietnam on Christmas Eve 1967 — 25 years old, cocky and soon to be humbled.

Carter’s platoon was embroiled in one of the war’s pivotal battles, a bloody faceoff known as the Siege of Khe Sanh. On April 16, 1968, Carter and his men scaled Hill 689 to help another Marine company pinned down by intense enemy fire.  As they got close, a storm of mortars and bullets rained down. Carter’s men fell all around him. He was hit in the face, in the arms. As he jumped into an enemy bunker, he was hit in the hip. Of the 66 men in Carter’s platoon, eight survived.

FILE: Marine Lt. David Carter pauses at Khe Sanh, Vietnam in 1968. Only eight men in his platoon survived the historic battle there.

He was a deputy district attorney from 1972 to 1981, prosecuting more than 25 murder cases and becoming a veteran of the county’s special homicide prosecuting panel. In 1981, he was appointed as a Municipal Court judge, advancing to Superior Court in 1982, serving as supervising judge of the criminal panel for a decade. He raged when the Santa Ana Police Department manufactured its own crack cocaine so undercover officers could then sell it and make arrests — branding it “outrageous police conduct” that “shocks the conscience of this court.” After Orange County’s bankruptcy, he ruled that secret grand jury transcripts detailing the District Attorney’s aborted investigation of Merrill Lynch must be made public, over the objections of both the D.A. and Merrill Lynch.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein urged Clinton nominate Carter to a federal judgeship, and Carter easily won confirmation in 1998. Since then, he has handled the Mexican Mafia trials involving more than 40 alleged members on charges of murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to murder, extortion and more. He oversaw the Anna Nicole Smith case, where she battled over the estate of her billionaire husband, J. Howard Marshall, with his children. Carter refereed the battle between MGA Entertainment and Mattel over the Bratz dolls, dismissed a birther lawsuit challenging President Barack Obama’s election saying the power to remove a sitting president belongs to Congress, not the judiciary, and perhaps most famously, has been in the tents and trenches, commanding local governments in Southern California to find real solutions to homelessness. Higher courts have disagreed with some of his decisions, but his earnestness and unconventionality are now the stuff of legend.

Unwilling to make juries sit through tedious sidebars and delays, Carter has hauled attorneys into the courtroom on weekends, holidays, early mornings and late evenings to deal with motions and other details of complex litigation. When attorneys sued to stop the county from seizing and destroying homeless people’s stuff on the Santa Ana River Trail, Carter ordered everyone to join him early the next morning for an excursion.

U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter, right, visited homeless people living along the Santa Ana River Trail in Anaheim in 2018.  (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

“I’m not sure what just happened,” attorney Brooke Weitzman recalled telling her colleagues. “But I’m sure we have to be in the riverbed at 6 a.m. because the judge is going to tell us what’s trash and what’s not.”

Affection

Carter inspires as much affection as awe.

“He is such an incredible human being,” said attorney Wylie Aitken. “He’s infamous for his hard hard work ethic. He’s not only the hardest working federal judge in the system, he turns all of us lawyers into the hardest working lawyers in the system as well. He’s a Marine who brought that Semper Fi attitude to the bench — he sits down and gets things done. He has an incredible commitment to the rule of law and the legal system, but with equal amount of empathy. Who else would take on cases other judges would run away from? If anyone is going to volunteer to walk through the gates of hell, it’s David Carter.”

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law and former dean of UC Irvine’s law school, is also an admirer. “David Carter is a terrific judge,” he said. “He is a courageous judge who calls them as he sees them and truly tries to do justice. His decisions on the homelessness issue were brilliant and courageous, though the L.A. one was overruled by the 9th Circuit. His decision (Monday) was carefully reasoned and thorough.”

FILE: Judge David Carter, right, and attorney Robert O’Brien, left, visit with Afghanistan’s then-Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabit in Kabul in 2008. Carter traveled to Afghanistan to help the nation establish an effective justice system.

Carter has traveled the world inspecting judicial systems and giving advice on how to improve them, said Thomas Campbell, professor at Chapman’s Fowler School of Law. Carter also helped out with a Chapman program that brought undergraduate law students here from Afghanistan — mostly women — to earn master’s degrees that would empower them to return to Afghanistan, practice and make a difference. Carter’s forays into the culverts to reach homeless people have made their way into Campbell’s lesson plans. “He’s a character and a half,” Campbell said. “Imaginative, energetic, compassionate, caring.”

In addition to playing an integral role in the county’s justice system for some 50 years, Carter has long been a force in helping local nonprofits, such as Project Youth, an organization helping underprivileged kids receive mentoring, education, and work experience, said Daniel S. Robinson, 2022 president of the Orange County Bar Association.

“He works nonstop, both in and out of the courtroom. He’s like the Energizer bunny – he keeps going and going,” Robinson said. “Our whole community is greater for it.”

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