On Friday, OC Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals said he's contemplating executing what he calls the "nuclear option" in the Scott Dekraii Seal Beach mass murder case: Dropping the death penalty as a punishment option. The once-unthinkable scenario is yet the latest development in a case that has rocked Orange County law enforcement from the jails to the OCDA to the Sheriff's department thanks to the so-called snitch scandal, where OC Public Defender Scott Sanders uncovered decades of illegal use of jailhouse informants in order to win convictions. Goethals has already kicked out the OCDA from the case, and he's now planning to hold evidentiary hearings next month and force OC sheriff's officials to testify under oath about what they know about the use of jailhouse informants and whether they knew of any destroyed records. What will happen next?
KCRW
