In a rare move, Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals excluded the death penalty as a punishment option. The ruling comes after the judge held weeks of hearings centered on whether the Orange County Sheriff’s Department could be trusted to turn over all records in the case. “Truth is not the product of any political debate.”The judge’s ruling is extraordinary in the case of a mass murderer. The district attorney’s office has maintained that any misconduct by county prosecutors was unintentional and that the scandal has been overblown. Sanders has argued that every case involving a jailhouse informant in Orange County over the last 30 years should be re-examined.

Source: Huffington Post August 18, 2017 17:14 UTC