A San Joaquin County judge declares that details of the kidnapping and torture of a Tracy boy are so “incendiary” that the public should be denied access. The potential for “moral judgment and possible outrage” could taint a jury pool, San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge Cinda Fox said.
Judge won’t unseal findings in case of shackled Stockton teen
By Cynthia Hubert
chubert@sacbee.com
Published: Tuesday, Jan. 06, 2009 | Page 6B
STOCKTON – A judge in the horrific kidnapping and torture case involving a Tracy teenager denied a request on Monday to unseal investigative documents and allow attorneys and police to talk about the case.
The case of a young man known in court documents only as John K. Doe, who police have said was held captive and ritualistically tortured, has drawn news media coverage around the world.
In denying a motion by members of the media to lift a gag order and make public the results of search warrants, San Joaquin District Judge Cinda Fox said such disclosures would compromise the ability of defendants in the case to get a fair trial.
Some of the information is so incendiary that it “could lead to moral judgment and possible outrage” that may taint a jury pool, the judge said.
Fox said, however, that she may eventually unseal portions of the results of some 14 search warrants executed in the case.
The four defendants, all of whom appeared in court Monday, are Michael Luther Schumacher, his wife, Kelly Layne Lau, Caren Ramirez and Anthony Waiters. They have been charged with various crimes including false imprisonment and child abuse. Specifically, they are accused of kidnapping, starving, torturing and beating the teenager, who police have said was held captive for 18 months in Schumacher’s and Lau’s Tracy home.
According to police records, the youth was emaciated, bruised and filthy when he stumbled into a Tracy health club last month. A chain was padlocked to his ankle. Detectives said he had been beaten with a baseball bat and a belt, denied food and often was chained to a heavy table or a fireplace.
The youth’s relationship with his alleged abusers remains unclear. He fled from Schumacher’s and Lau’s home, and Waiters was their neighbor. He previously lived in Citrus Heights with Ramirez.
The case has drawn headlines across the country and from as far away as Australia and India, the judge noted. In the age of the Internet, the court must be wary of such “unfettered dissemination of information,” she said.
Duffy Carolan, a lawyer for the Bay Area News Group, which includes 23 daily newspapers reaching nearly 2 million readers, told the judge that restrictions on information in the case were too broad.
But Fox said the rights of the defendants to get a fair trial trump the public’s right to know details about the case so early in the process.
“If I’m going to err, I’m going to err on the side of caution,” she said.
The defendants have yet to fully answer in court to the charges against them, and Fox said some of the attorneys have not even seen some of the documents in question.
Ramirez, Lau, Schumacher and Waiters appeared in court Monday in identical red jumpsuits, their hands shackled to their waists and their legs chained. They sat in a jury box and chatted briefly with their lawyers but showed little emotion, with Ramirez staring downward for much of the time.
They are scheduled to be back in court Feb. 2.