The case against Joseph James DeAngelo, the 74-year-old former police officer who is accused of being the prolific serial killer responsible for terrorizing communities across California in the 1970s and ’80s, moved forward Thursday even as the prosecution continues to decide whether or not to accept his guilty plea in exchange for life in prison. 

During the pre-trial hearing, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Steve White ruled in favor of the prosecution’s request that additional cheek swabs be collected for use as evidence. 

But in the packed Sacramento, Calf., courtroom, DeAngelo’s defense team again charged that resources were unfairly allocated in favor of the prosecution, and called for clarification on how the team of district attorneys will decide on matters going forward. 

Nearly two years since his arrest — and 40 years since the beginning of crime spree for which he is accused — DeAngelo has been charged on 26 counts, including kidnapping and 13 counts of murder. The statute of limitations has already expired on the dozens of rape cases in which he is accused.

DeAngelo was initially arraigned on only two murder charges for crimes in Sacramento County, but district attorneys from the five other counties where he is also accused of crimes joined the case and will seek the death penalty if DeAngelo is convicted. California does not currently perform executions after Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered a moratorium in March of last year, but capital punishment convictions were not affected. Executions could resume if future governors overturn the Newsom’s decision.

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His Sacramento public defenders — who have offered a guilty plea in exchange for a life sentence — argued that they do not yet know which of the district attorneys on the prosecution team they need to make a deal with, and that there are gaps in discovery being shared with them.  

“It has become very confusing to us what this joint prosecution means,” attorney Alice Michael said. “We want to settle the case, and we have made that very clear,” she added, explaining that the defense has no idea how to proceed with the team of DAs. “Can one county settle theirs? Or do they all have to jointly agree to be settled? We have no idea how it works.”

The complaints echoed arguments made at previous pre-trial hearings and in a court motion filed seeking to settle the case against DeAngelo.

In that motion, public defenders Joseph Cress and Michael wrote that DeAngelo’s January not guilty plea was entered “over counsel’s objections and against defendant’s desires” as the result of an early attempt to “simply read and review the crushing” amount of evidence that will be used in the case.

“This particular case is exceedingly complex due to the number of charged crimes and the diverse locations of the charged crimes,” they wrote. “We would like to reach a resolution of the case that avoids a trial, satisfies all parties and provides a more immediate resolution of the case.”

At the hearing on Thursday, which lasted roughly an hour, White called on the teams to meet to find a resolution to the issue, but acknowledged that there was a clear imbalance to the resources, saying that “this is a significant concern.”  

“There are multiple prosecuting counties — quite legitimately — with interest in this case, because they are the counties within which the crimes had been committed. They are appropriately and responsibly putting resources into the case,” he said. “The responsibility for defending this case falls — it appears to be, as I understand it — exclusively on the Sacramento public defender, with no augmented resources from the other counties. It should not be that way. It is not right, it is not appropriate.”

Still, he ruled that the prosecution was entitled to collect more swabs from DeAngelo, to be used across the five counties. Four new kits, each with two cheek swab samples, will be taken. 

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DeAngelo, who was arrested in April 2018 after his DNA — which was obtained by authorities from a swab on his car door handle — matched the DNA taken from victim Charlene Smith, a Ventura County resident who was murdered and raped. It is unprecedented both in scope and in the prosecution’s use of data first gathered on a genealogy website. 

Most commonly called the Golden State Killer, the crimes he is accused of were associated with many names during a decade-long spree in the late ’70s. He was the East Area Rapist, possibly the Cordova Cat Killer, the Original Night Stalker, and the Visalia Ransacker, and is believed to have committed dozens of murders and more than 50 rapes, in six different counties. 

The wide span of the crimes and the evidence collected along with them, the prosecution argued, was the reason behind their team-approach.

The district attorneys said during the hearing that they are still in discussions with one another about how to best proceed, but argued that until there is a decision, they are pursuing a full scope of evidence and will continue to seek the death penalty.

“It is our burden to prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt,” Ventura County’s Chief Deputy District Attorney Cheryl Temple said, explaining the need for additional DNA. “Because we seek to have the best evidence possible to present in the most efficient and streamlined form, that is part of the probable cause that justifies the additional swabs.”

Gabrielle Canon is a California Reporter for the USA Today Network. You can reach her at gcanon@gannett.com or on Twitter @GabrielleCanon.