Suspect switch poses dilemma in child-rape case
MARK SAUER and JIM OKERBLOM
The San Diego Union-Tribune
New evidence that makes it virtually certain a convicted child molester raped the daughter of a Navy man -- a crime for which her father was falsely accused for 2 1/2 years -- presents a dilemma for the District Attorney's Office.
If prosecutors file charges against Albert Carder Jr., they will be acknowledging that the father, Jim Wade, was wrongfully prosecuted.
And that is what the former chief petty officer is alleging in a multimillion-dollar civil suit filed on his behalf by attorney Milton J. Silverman.
Sources have told The San Diego Union-Tribune that a DNA test (known as FLRP screening) shows the probability that Carder raped Alicia Wade in 1989 is a ratio in the "tens of thousands to one."
Despite learning of the test results five weeks ago, the District Attorney's Office has not filed rape charges against Carder in the case and refuses to acknowledge the DNA results.
"I cannot talk about it because it is a pending criminal investigation," said Cathy Stephenson, the deputy district attorney who originally tried to prosecute Jim Wade for his daughter's rape.
"Further DNA testing has been done, but in terms of the results of that testing, I cannot reveal that," Stephenson said in an interview Tuesday.
Stephenson would not acknowledge if charges are pending against Carder. She would say only that "Carder is still a suspect, sure. Nothing has really eliminated him."
But Stephen Jimenez, a Boston-based producer for the public-television program "Nova," said Stephenson was more forthcoming with him in a recent interview.
Jimenez said Stephenson told him the latest DNA test in the case was a virtual match to Carder and that the prosecutor told him "new charges are pending against Carder."
Stephenson could not be reached late yesterday for comment on the interview with Jimenez.
Attorney Silverman decried the fact that rape charges have not been filed against Carder.
"These results have been back for more than a month. It's incredible no action has been brought (against Carder)," Silverman said yesterday.
"I have a substantial question in this case if the District Attorney's Office can be objective," he continued. "They have publicly defended their actions; they have never come out and said Jim Wade is innocent.
"The only explanation I can give is they have completely lost their objectivity."
In an extraordinary condemnation of the prosecution's handling of the Wade case, the 1990-91 San Diego County grand jury demanded to know why substantial evidence against Albert Carder -- besides DNA tests -- was discounted and instead Jim Wade was arrested and charged.
Responding in October, District Attorney Edwin Miller acknowledged that "there were no doubt errors made," but accused the grand jury of "an underlying philosophical bias" in their view of the Wade case.
Silverman said the prosecution of Carder should be turned over to the state Attorney General's Office.
"The possibility of a conflict for the District Attorney (in prosecuting Carder) has been discussed," said Gary W. Schons, a deputy state attorney general assigned to San Diego.
"The prosecution would fall to our office if we agreed with them that there is a conflict of interest," Schons said.
Carder is serving a 24-year term in Tehachapi State Prison for sexually molesting five young girls in two different Navy housing complexes, including the one in Serra Mesa where the Wades lived.
In at least two of the cases, Carder entered through a first-floor window. In another case, Carder abducted a child through the window -- which is what Alicia Wade said happened to her.
But authorities dismissed her version in favor of the mistaken theory that the girl's father was the rapist.
Semen stains overlooked by investigators for two years after the rape in May 1989 were subjected to preliminary DNA testing last year. Those tests proved that Jim Wade could not have raped his daughter and placed Carder within the 5 percent of the population that could have committed the crime.
The more precise FLRP screening compared genetic markers in Carder's blood to that found in the semen evidence and came up with a virtual match, according to sources.
After the District Attorney's Office finally dropped rape charges against Jim Wade in November 1991, a rare true-finding of innocence was made on his behalf by Superior Court Judge Frederic Link. That finding was opposed in court by Stephenson.
After authorities accused him at the time of the rape, Jim Wade was not allowed to visit Alicia for more than two years. He estimates that the case against him cost his family $125,000 in legal fees and other costs, and says it took an inestimable emotional toll.
Contacted this week at his new home in his native Missouri, Wade said that although he wants Carder punished, he would "not be in favor" of having Alicia, now 11, go through a trial.
"I'm not going to subject my little girl to any more harm just to help them clean up their mess," Wade said. "It's a weird position (the District Attorney's Office is in), but it's a self-inflicted wound.
"Frankly, what they did to us hurt us more than what Carder did to Alicia."