The consultation produced different responses among affected individuals. The prosecution’s eventual decision to accept a plea in exchange for removing the death penalty was not unanimously welcomed, and some victims’ family members have said publicly that they would have preferred to see DeAngelo face the death penalty regardless of the time a trial would have required.
## The Guilty Plea in Court
June 29, 2020 was the date of Joseph DeAngelo’s guilty plea. The proceeding took place in a Sacramento courtroom, with the COVID-19 pandemic requiring modifications to the standard courtroom arrangement. DeAngelo arrived in a wheelchair.
The plea covered twenty-six counts: thirteen counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances, and thirteen counts of kidnapping with the intent to commit robbery. In addition to the formal counts, DeAngelo admitted responsibility for hundreds of additional uncharged crimes — the specific number acknowledged in press coverage of the plea was described as 161 additional uncharged crimes involving sixty-one additional victims.
The plea required DeAngelo to admit each count. He did so, answering the court’s questions in a process that took considerable time given the number of counts and the factual bases required for each admission.
The six district attorneys who had coordinated the prosecution appeared at the hearing. The victims and families who had been consulted were in attendance in various capacities, with the pandemic limiting the capacity of the courtroom.
The formal legal language of the plea record specifies counts and admissions in terms that differ from some of the public reporting. The kidnapping counts are kidnapping-to-commit-robbery, not rape — a distinction that matters in the legal record even if the crimes involved multiple forms of harm. The admissions of uncharged crimes are not separate convictions; they are statements of fact admitted by the defendant as part of the plea agreement. The formal charges resulted in convictions; the admissions are factual acknowledgments that are part of the plea agreement’s record.