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Judge won’t seal grand jury transcripts in Seal Beach salon shooting rampage case
This police photo released on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011 by the Seal Beach Police Department shows Scott Dekraai from Huntington Beach.
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AP/Seal Beach Police Department
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The Santa Ana judge in the Seal Beach mass shooting trial said he plans to seal only a few pages of grand jury transcripts.
Accused killer Scott DeKraai’s two public defenders are worried that unsealing the transcripts plus exhibits will make it harder to seat an unbiased jury. The judge agreed to keep 29 pages of the transcripts under wraps — but that’s all. He won’t seal the rest, although he did give the public defenders about three weeks to appeal his decision.
An attorney for the Orange County Register argued against sealing the transcripts. She noted that everything was out in the open in the Enron case, and still a Texas court assembled a jury and carried out a trial.
The judge joked that he still can’t figure out what the Enron case was about, but that when someone kills eight stylists and customers in a beauty salon, “people know what this case is about.”
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DeKraai’s next court date is in August; his trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 12, a year and a week after the shootings.
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