As first revealed in this article by the Sacramento Bee’s Sam Stanton and Darrell Smith, prosecutors met on Friday (January 17th) with the defense team for the accused Golden State Killer, Joseph James DeAngelo. At the meeting, prosecutors informed the defense that they planned on asking the judge at Wednesday’s scheduled hearing to set a date for preliminary hearings in the case.
The preliminary hearing phase is the next step for DeAngelo in the court system. During the preliminary hearings, the prosecution will make its case for why DeAngelo should be indicted for 26 crimes and he should stand trial.
Stanton and Smith’s article also describes a subsequent request by the defense team for a delay, quoting the defense’s paperwork as stating “If forced to set a preliminary hearing date at this time, the defense will be unable to provide competent and effective representation for Mr. DeAngelo.”
Sacramento Superior Court Judge Steve White responded on Tuesday, the day before the scheduled hearing. He informed both parties that they could present their arguments regarding a date for the preliminary hearings at the scheduled hearing on Wednesday, January 22nd.
At 1:35 PM PST on Wednesday, January 22nd, 2020, Joseph James DeAngelo appeared in Sacramento County Superior Court before Judge Steve White. This makes the third judge DeAngelo has appeared before (the previous two were Judge Michael Sweet and Judge Michael G. Bowman).
This was the public’s first glimpse of DeAngelo since August 2019. DeAngelo has grown noticeably thinner since his first court appearance in 2018. A recent article by LA Times writer Paige St. John estimated his weight to be 135 lbs. He was listed at 205 lbs. in April 2018 at his booking.
Sonseeahray Tonsall with Fox40 was first to post updates and photographs from today’s court hearing. At 2:00 PM she summarized the first few minutes of the hearing in a tweet: “Prosecutors going after accused #eastarearapist DeAngelo tell judge it’s not the victims’/investigators’ fault DeAngelo chose to go on a prolific crime spree generating lots of docs & evidence in multiple counties, creating a lot of material for them to review.”
Tonsall went on to report that the defense requested that the preliminary hearings begin at the end of the year and quoted Judge White as calling that request “unreasonable.”
After further discussion, the preliminary hearings were set to begin on May 12th, 2020. The prosecution will begin calling witnesses and presenting its case with the goal of testing the sufficiency of the evidence. This will be a lengthy series of hearings with the majority of the evidence being presented and testimony from over 100 witnesses. If the case against DeAngelo is deemed to have merit, the court will begin scheduling his actual trial.
Also newsworthy was today’s story by CBS13 detailing efforts to obtain the police reports written by Joseph DeAngelo while he was a police officer. Since the identification and arrest, it’s been alleged that DeAngelo committed crimes as the “East Area Rapist” while working as an Auburn police officer from 1976 to 1979. Parsing through this substantial amount of paperwork will create an approximate timeline of DeAngelo’s whereabouts during these years.
So, just to clarify, is the trial starting in May, or is that just another hearing?
It will be quite a bit more substantial than the hearings we’ve had thus far. It will be a lengthy set of court dates where actual evidence and witness testimony will be presented. If the court determines that the case against DeAngelo is sound, the process of scheduling the actual trial will begin.
Deangelo’s inmate locator record on sacsheriff.com says his next court date is 3/4/20, and his court is Department 61. Do you know anything about that?
Hmmm. Due process of the law, I guess? The creep is guilty we all know that, the judge knows it, his attorney knows it. So why waste the courts time and Calif. tax payers money ( a LOT of money) on this piece of garbage ???