March 12th, 2020 Hearing in Sacramento

Watch the entire hearing. Video posted by KCRA Channel 3 (an NBC affiliate in Sacramento, CA).

On Thursday, March 12th, 2020, the defense team for Joseph James DeAngelo, Jr. fought to prevent the prosecution from obtaining more DNA samples from their client. The District Attorney requested more samples last month, but the defense was successful in blocking the motion until it could be debated in court.

The DA wanted each county with interest in prosecuting DeAngelo to have their own samples on file. It’s assumed that this will not only help with testimony scheduled to be delivered at the preliminary hearings by expert witnesses, but it could aid the counties in any additional tests and investigations into the Golden State Killer crimes series.

The judge ended up ruling that the counties which did not have a DNA sample of DeAngelo on file could obtain it from his person.

As KCRA reports in an article by Hope Miller, another hearing will take place on April 27th, 2020 (Note: it appears that this has been moved to April 22nd) to discuss the constitutionality of trying DeAngelo in Sacramento for alleged crimes that occurred in other counties. In a recent court filing, the defense lays out a forty-page argument against the prosecution’s rationale for combining the charges into a Sacramento-based trial. This hasn’t been discussed in court at-length in two years of status conferences, so it’ll be interesting to hear how the prosecution responds and how the judge rules.

Paige St. John, a reporter at the LA Times, was the first to report on a footnote on one of the pages of the same motion filed by the defense. The footnote indicates that DeAngelo may be willing to plead guilty to an unspecified number of charges in order to get the death penalty taken off the table. News outlets have been reporting that victims have received a letter from the defense with an offer to make their feelings about a guilty plea known to a third-party intermediary. It’s not yet known how, when, or if the details of a plea bargain may be worked out.

The preliminary hearings in this case are still scheduled to begin on May 12th, 2020. The preliminary hearings will consist of close to 200 witnesses testifying over a period of several weeks. The judge will determine if the evidence presented is sufficient to warrant the commencement of a full trial on the 13 murders and 13 kidnapping/robberies that DeAngelo has been charged with.