By Sam Stanton, Sacramento Bee

Phillip Garrido’s competence to stand trial in the Jaycee Lee Dugard kidnapping will not be decided until a hearing in early March, an El Dorado Superior Court judge decided Thursday, and more mental health experts may be appointed to examine him before then.

Judge Douglas Phimister also said he would allow arguments in early December by a lawyer for The Bee and other media groups seeking to have dozens of documents in the case unsealed, including Garrido’s psychiatric records and transcripts of Dugard’s secret testimony to a grand jury in September about her 18 years of captivity.

Garrido and his wife, Nancy, are accused of kidnapping Dugard in 1991 when she was 11 and holding her captive. As the case has proceeded over the past year, the judge has sealed about 29 documents and held a number of closed hearings, including two sessions that took place out of public view Thursday.

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