D.A. to Review Charges in Santa Ana Gang Raid : Law: Another Operation Roundup defendant has a jail alibi. Activists ask if Latinos were unfairly targeted.

SANTA ANA — Orange County prosecutors announced Friday that they will take a second look at charges against more than 100 suspects arrested in a massive gang sweep after it was discovered that two more people may have been wrongly jailed.

After previously acknowledging they may have wrongly charged a man who already was jailed in Texas, the district attorney’s office conceded Friday that another man with an ironclad alibi may have been mistakenly charged. This time, the defendant was locked in a California prison on the day he is accused of selling drugs on a Santa Ana street.

And a supervising prosecutor revealed Friday that his office is trying to determine whether yet another man was wrongly charged during last month’s Operation Roundup, the Santa Ana gang sweep that brought Gov. Pete Wilson to town for a much-publicized news conference.

Friday’s revelations came two days after Orange County prosecutors, in a stunning move, admitted they were duped by a bogus confession from a disturbed man who said he set the devastating Laguna Beach fires. The district attorney dropped felony charges Wednesday against Jose Soto Martinez, 26, after learning that he was jailed in Mexico when the Laguna Beach firestorm broke out last year.

Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Maurice Evans said prosecutors will review all Operation Roundup indictments.

Evans defended his deputies as doing the best they can in difficult circumstances and noted that prosecutors have acted quickly when presented with evidence in four separate cases that they may be pursuing the wrong suspects.

“This has not been a pleasant week for a person in my position, but it comes with the territory,” Evans said. “Our office always strives to do the right thing and we will continue to do the right thing.”

On Wednesday, prosecutors agreed to release a 20-year-old Santa Ana man who was arrested Sept. 8 during Operation Roundup after the Orange County public defender’s office provided information that Luis Fernando Lopez was jailed in Texas on a theft charge on the day investigators allege he sold cocaine to an informant.

Prosecutors said they were awaiting documentation from Texas before deciding whether to dismiss charges against Lopez, who was held at County Jail for nearly a month on two felony drug charges.

On Friday, two more cases from Operation Roundup--which targeted Santa Ana’s West 3rd Street neighborhood--came under scrutiny.

Prosecutors dismissed drug charges Friday against 26-year-old Gustavo Martinez after the public defender’s office presented information that the defendant was sitting in the California state prison at Avenol on unrelated charges on April 15, the same day he was supposedly videotaped peddling narcotics to an undercover informant.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mel Jensen also revealed that his office is investigating whether an error was made in a fourth case involving Jose Aguilar, who was released from jail shortly after his arrest during Operation Roundup.

Charges are pending against Aguilar, but Jensen said his office independently raised questions about whether Aguilar could have committed the drug crimes. Jensen declined to elaborate on the case or to say what has caused prosecutors to question the validity of the arrest.

But some defense attorneys and community activists said the four cases raise questions about whether Latino defendants were unfairly targeted for prosecution.

“It’s really wholesale justice,” supervising Deputy Public Defender Jeff Lund said of the Operation Roundup cases. “The way these cases are being pushed through, there are bound to be mistakes and situations where people are convicted unjustly.”

Art Montez, a locally based leader with the League of United Latin American Citizens, said he was not surprised that all four incidents involved Latino defendants.

He contended that Latinos in Orange County are being unfairly targeted as criminals, and accused law enforcement officials of seeking a scapegoat in the midst of the hotly contested campaign for Proposition 187, which seeks to strip illegal immigrants of benefits.

“You just don’t see this happening with rich, white people,” Montez said. “One wonders how many other individuals wind up in jail cells and wrongly convicted.”

Meanwhile, defense attorneys say it is an unhappy irony that only defendants who have such an airtight alibi as being in jail can overturn such charges.

Lund said he believes its clear from the police video that his client, Gustavo Martinez, was not the man taped selling drugs on the street. The attorney said he later learned that his client had an even better defense: He was in state prison when the sales occurred.

Lund said his client was in County Jail on an unrelated offense last month when he was indicted in Operation Roundup and said his client did not spend any extra time in custody because of the wrong charges.

“It makes you wonder how many other people might be wrongly convicted if someone hadn’t stood up for these guys,” he said.

Despite the best intentions of police, Public Defender Ronald Y. Butler said, greater care must always be taken when investigations result in dozens of defendants being taken into custody.

“I think what happens in a fairly large operation, you are bound to have mistakes and misidentifications,” Butler said. “This has been a unique week. I’m looking forward to next week.”

Butler said he is also concerned that Operation Roundup targeted a mainly Latino neighborhood and relied on an informant whose credibility has come under fire.

“By keying in on a certain gang, of course they are keying in on a certain population, and it could smack of discriminatory prosecution,” he said.

During Operation Roundup investigators used FBI informant Henry Gomez, who has a long criminal history and admitted to the Orange County Grand Jury that he stole $115 from law enforcement officials while posing as a drug buyer.

As part of the probe, agents asked Gomez to point out drug dealers from unrelated booking photos, gang books and other sources to make the arrests.

Santa Ana Police Lt. Bill Tegeler said the undercover informant worked well during the operation precisely because he is a convicted criminal.

“This person was able to infiltrate the gangs,” he said. “Anytime you use an informant like this, you choose someone like this because he has committed crimes in the past and that’s how he knows to infiltrate these groups.”

Tegeler said his department’s main goal was to clean up a troubled part of town where gang members and drug dealers ruled the streets. “We certainly do not want to prosecute someone who did nothing wrong,” he said.

Evans said police and prosecutors do their best to learn about the people they arrest.

“Unfortunately, we don’t also learn the entire background of an individual until they have been charged,” he said. ‘