Judge Declines to Reveal Search Warrant’s Contents : Courts: The ruling says that unsealing the document used in the raid on Citron’s office could damage reputations and interfere with investigation.

An Orange County Superior Court judge Monday agreed to keep secret what the district attorney was looking for in its Dec. 19 raid of the county treasurer’s office, although a state law says search warrant information should be made public no more than 10 days after the search.

Superior Court Judge Theodore Millard said disclosure of search warrant contents “at this early stage” could damage the reputations and privacy of “parties who may never be charged with a crime.” Public disclosure also could “interfere with the ongoing investigation,” Millard said in his decision, which relied on a separate state law governing evidence.

Millard was responding to a Jan. 3 request by the Times, subsequently joined by the Orange County Register, to unseal search warrant affidavits detailing the district attorney’s criminal investigation involving former Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron and other officials.

On Dec. 19, investigators from the district attorney’s office sealed off Citron’s office, carting away a van load of documents of boxes and computers. Investigators also searched the office of the county auditor-controller. The searches appeared to focus on documents that could shed light on Citron’s investments and precisely what cities, schools and special districts with savings in the fund were told about the risks of those investments.

Millard had sealed the search warrants at the request of the district attorney on Dec. 23.

In seeking to have the court papers made public, attorneys for The Times cited the overriding public interest in the district attorney’s investigation of the risky investment practices.

“The public’s very business is being investigated,” the Times attorneys argued in their application to unseal the warrants. “Billions of the public’s dollars have been lost, but the public is not to be given access to one shred of information regarding search warrants for the public documents that may well explain how Orange County came to be bankrupt and who is responsible.”

The attorneys also pointed to state law requiring that after a search warrant has been executed, the documents and records relating to the warrant “shall be open to the public as a judicial record” within 10 days.

But the attorneys from the district attorney’s office pointed to another state law that allows it to refuse to disclose official information if the “necessity for preserving the confidentiality of the information” outweighs the “necessity for disclosure in the interest of justice.”

That law also allows search warrants to remain sealed to protect the identity of a confidential informant, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Cheryl L. Mercer.

Millard held a closed session Friday to consider the district attorney’s arguments against unsealing the search warrant affidavits. In his order maintaining the seal Monday, Millard found that the district attorney’s need to preserve the confidentiality of its investigation outweighed the public’s right to know.