A judge could bar attorneys from talking to the press about the criminal case of a farmworker accused of killing seven people in back-to-back shootings at two Northern California mushroom farms last month, according to media reports Friday.
San Mateo County Judge Elizabeth K. Lee on Friday granted a request from defense attorneys to restrict remote access to court records, the Bay Area News Group reported. Lee is also considering imposing a gag order on attorneys that would prevent them from speaking to reporters.
Press descended upon Half Moon Bay after the back-to-back Jan. 23 shootings, which authorities have said arose from workplace disputes. The violence was California’s third mass shooting in eight days last month and followed the killing of 11 people in the Los Angeles area amid Lunar New Year celebrations.
Chunli Zhao, 66, is charged with seven counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.
Zhao has not yet entered a plea but admitted to the shootings during a jailhouse media interview. He has not responded to a request from The Associated Press through an online jail messaging system.
Lee on Friday heard the defense attorneys' motion to limit access to the case — proceedings which Zhao sobbed through part of, prompting the judge to call for a recess, the Bay Area News Group reported.
Jonathan McDougall, Zhao's defense attorney, called District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe's comments to the press “incredibly egregious” and asked Lee to bar the lawyers from speaking to media because the remarks could taint a jury, according to the news group.
McDougall also said that the "aggressiveness” of the press, citing his client's interviews with media, means Lee should limit what the attorneys can say to reporters.
“Mr. Wagstaffe has confirmed information to the press from a law enforcement investigation, a disclosure of factual information,” McDougall said. “This is all information that had not even been disclosed to the bench yet and is now being articulated by Mr. Wagstaffe to the press.”
Prosecutor Josh Stauffer objected to the characterizations of Wagstaffe's statements. Lee has asked both sides to draft a gag order, the Bay Area News Group reported.
Wagstaffe has made few public comments about the case besides confirming what media outlets had already written. For example, he confirmed the Bay Area News Group's previous reporting that the shooting rampage at one of the farms occurred after Zhao's supervisor there demanded he pay a $100 repair bill for his forklift after he was involved in a crash with a co-worker’s bulldozer.
McDougall and Wagstaffe did not immediately respond Friday to the AP's requests for comment.
