PUBLIC INFORMATION — A Sacramento Superior Court Judge is not persuaded that accused sex slave kidnapper Phillip Garrido has a privacy right to keep the public from learning how parole agents supervised him while he allegedly kept a young victim captive in a backyard shed for years.

As reported by Sam Stanton in the Sacramento Bee,

A Sacramento judge issued a tentative ruling Thursday that would
require state corrections officials to turn over certain parole
documents on Phillip Garrido
to The Bee and two other news organizations, and to provide him with
other documents for review of whether they also can be released.

The ruling from Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette stems from a lawsuit seeking access to the documents that was filed in December by The Bee, Channel 3 (KCRA) and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Corrections
officials responded to the tentative ruling by asking for a hearing on
the matter that will be held this afternoon.
The Bee has been seeking parole documents on Garrido since August, when he was arrested and charged in the 1991 kidnap of Jaycee Lee Dugard
when she was 11. Dugard was found alive after 18 years in captivity,
and Garrido and his wife, Nancy, face charges that could send them to
prison for life. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Corrections officials and the state Office of Inspector General, which reviewed how parole agents handled the case, have rejected The Bee's efforts under the Public Records Act to gain access to certain files regarding Garrido. They
have cited laws and policies they contend make those files
confidential, in some cases because of Garrido's right to privacy.

The judge addressed the privacy concern in his tentative ruling: "With
respect to Garrido, even if the Court were to accept the proposition
advanced by OIG that Garrido has a right of privacy in connection with
the conduct of his parole supervision, invasion of that right is
entirely warranted in this case," Marlette wrote. "Parole
officers were monitoring him in what normally would be the private
sphere of his life, and the question at issue in OIG's investigation,
and foremost in the public mind, is how they were performing their
duties."