Garrido’s attorney asks for delay in trial

By Sam Stanton, Sacramento Bee

Phillip Garrido’s public defender is seeking a postponement of his scheduled mental competency trial, saying an overwhelming amount of evidence still must be reviewed and that she is still studying whether to ask that the trial be moved out of El Dorado County.

A jury trial is set to begin Feb. 28 to determine whether Garrido, the accused kidnapper of Jaycee Lee Dugard, is mentally competent to stand trial.

But public defender Susan Gellman, in court documents filed Thursday and made public today, indicated that she will ask for a postponement at the next hearing in the case, which is set for Feb. 3.

In the court documents, Gellman said she continues to receive discovery evidence from prosecutors, the latest a package on Jan. 7 that “contained several hundred pages of documents, as well as a video that is almost six hours in length.”

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