Update: Portions of the affidavits will be released. As near as we can tell, they’ve lobbed off most everything but the Southern California and murder-related entries from the arrest/search warrants and will release it that way — nothing from the East Area Rapist phase. A likely reason is that those victims are publicly known. Nothing related to the findings in his home will be released at this point. We’ll let you know when the docs are available to the public.
Ali Wolf at Fox40 says that the media lawyer consider this a victory. CBS13 is reporting that the next court date in Sac is July 12th.
We’ve heard that the bulk of what will be released involves probable cause statements. We’ve viewed various PC statements that were drafted in various other phases of the investigation, and they typically include a comprehensive rundown of evidence in a case — the public will most likely find them informative and they may provide a solid template for news outlets.
Today at 1:30 PM PST, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Sweet will begin to hear closing arguments regarding how much of the arrest warrant / search warrant affidavits to release. Also included in the discussion may be the search warrant returns, which would explain what was found in Joseph DeAngelo’s house when it was searched by Law Enforcement in the days following his arrest on April 24th, 2018.
This motion first came before the court on May 14th, 2018. At that time, the defense informed the judge that they hadn’t had time to review the documents. A continuance was granted.
It again came before the court on Tuesday, May 30th. DeAngelo himself was present, and after about an hour of hearing arguments from the media coalition who filed the motion and from the defense (argued by public defender David Lynch in this instance), Judge Sweet decided to review the documents in detail behind closed doors. He issues a continuance for Thursday, May 31st, at which time more arguments would be heard.
In a lengthy session on Thursday afternoon, at which DeAngelo was not in attendance, more arguments were heard on how much to redact from the search/arrest warrants before public release. Anything related to victims/potential witnesses has already been taken out, we’ve been told, and there were some agreements reached on what could be left in. We’ve also been told that the arrest warrant itself has been the most heavily redacted so far, but with sessions resuming today, anything could change.
Judge Sweet will hear final arguments on the matter today, and has indicated that a decision regarding the release (and how much to put out) will be reached today. Whether the documents themselves will be released today, or whether it will take time to ensure that the redactions are carried out properly and the documents will be released later on, is unknown at this point. With arguments continuing, there’s still the possibility that nothing will be released at all, particularly if the redactions are so heavy that they become “unintelligible,” as the judge put it.
We’ll keep you updated on anything that breaks.