SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ Lawyers for accused Golden State Killer suspect Joseph James DeAngelo have renewed their objections to prosecutors taking more DNA evidence from him, and are demanding an explanation about which prosecutor can decide whether the death penalty should be dropped from the case.
In a motion filed in Sacramento Superior Court in advance of a scheduled Thursday hearing for DeAngelo, his public defenders complain that an array of prosecutors from five other counties have no jurisdiction in Sacramento. They say the decision for six counties to jointly try DeAngelo in a Sacramento courtroom threatens their client's right to a fair trial on 13 murder counts and 13 other felony charges for crimes committed in the 1970s and 1980s the length of California.
DeAngelo now faces a May 12 preliminary hearing and the possibility of being sentenced to death, but his defense attorneys have been arguing that the case can be resolved through a plea agreement that would take the death penalty off the table.
They contend they are ethically bound to seek an end to the case without the death penalty being imposed, but do not know whether Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert has the authority to make the decision on her own.
"Does Anne Marie Schubert have control to an extent she can negotiate the entire case on a result less than death, or must she bring all District Attorneys on board?" DeAngelo's lawyers wrote. "If a District Attorney from a foreign county decides that seeking death under the circumstances here will not serve justice, do they have authority to do that?
"If defense counsel convinces the Sacramento District Attorney that Mr. DeAngelo's age, the governor's moratorium on the death penalty, and the cost to Sacramento taxpayers for this exorbitant prosecution compel a decision to resolve the case for life imprisonment, can one of the other jurisdictions withdraw and continue their own prosecution seeking death?"
Schubert's office has not commented on the defense strategy of seeking a plea deal, and prosecutors are pressing forward with plans for the preliminary hearing to obtain testimony from aged and ailing witnesses and victims.
But DeAngelo's public defenders say their office is outgunned by the array of legal resources being used to prosecute DeAngelo, who is 74 and being held in the Sacramento County Main Jail in isolation.
"The procedure used by prosecutors to avail themselves of the combined resources of the counties assembled here has denied defendant his right to appointment of counsel in each county which is prosecuting this action," his Sacramento lawyers wrote, arguing that public defenders in Sacramento are unfairly "contending with six separate prosecutors' offices" in a case that is to be jointly prosecuted in a Sacramento courtroom.
The arguments come as prosecutors are seeking a court order allowing them to take five more swabs from DeAngelo's mouth to collect DNA for analysis of decades-old crime scenes in Contra Costa, Ventura, Orange and Santa Barbara counties.
The defense contends DeAngelo already has provided two DNA samples since his arrest in April 2018 at his Citrus Heights home, and now argues that prosecutors have not explained why they need more or why they need five samples for four counties.
"They now want to collect more swabs, for analyses that do not involve charges in Sacramento County ...," DeAngelo's attorneys argued. "To allow the prosecutors from different counties to just keep coming back is arbitrary, capricious, unduly harassing, and therefore unreasonable."
DNA has been the crux of the prosecution case, with investigators using data from a genealogical website to pinpoint an individual whose DNA was close to that left behind at the crime scenes.
From there, officials built out a "family tree" of relatives of that individual, eventually coming across DeAngelo, a former police officer who lived in some areas where the crimes _ alternately attributed to the "Visalia Ransacker," the "East Area Rapist" in Sacramento and the "Original Night Stalker" in Southern California _ occurred.
Investigators later obtained DNA samples from his truck handle and his garbage, and say those samples and others taken after his arrest match crime scenes from the serial killer and rapist cases.
