LOS ANGELES — A California judge on Thursday removed local prosecutors from the case against a former tugboat worker who killed eight people in a 2011 rampage at a hair salon, citing discovery violations and accusations of misconduct.
But Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals declined to remove the death penalty as a punishment option for Scott Dekraai, who pleaded guilty last year to first-degree murder in the shooting spree at Salon Meritage in Seal Beach, according to his written ruling.
In removing the Orange County district attorney’s office, Goethals ruled that the state attorney general’s office should take over the case, but stayed his ruling until March 20 to give that office time to appeal the decision.
Defense lawyers sought to remove Orange County prosecutors and bar them from seeking the death penalty against Dekraai because, they have said, jail informants were improperly used to wring a confession from their client.
Orange County prosecutors concede that they neglected to turn over evidence about the use of jail informants but have characterized those failures as an oversight.
Dekraai had been locked in a bitter child custody battle with ex-wife, Michelle Fournier, 48, when, armed with three guns, he walked into the salon and opened fire. Fournier was killed along with salon owner Randy Fannin, 62, and six others.
Dekraai was arrested blocks from the bloody scene in the heart of Seal Beach, a town 20 miles southeast of Los Angeles known by its residents as “Mayberry-by-the-Sea” for its bucolic, small-town atmosphere.
The salon shooting ranks as the worst mass killing in Orange County’s history, surpassing the seven killed and two wounded in a shooting by janitor Edward Charles Allaway at California State University Fullerton in 1976.