A search warrant at the heart of the criminal case against Stockton school board member AngelAnn Flores was made public Friday, three days after a judge ordered it unsealed.
The document, which authorized the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office to search Flores’ home, electronic devices and online accounts, as well as Stockton Unified School District offices, has been at the center of more than a year of dispute, leading to the arrest of a court staffer and larger questions about press freedom.
Flores is currently facing felony charges of embezzlement and making a false insurance claim.
Until this week, most of the claims laid out in the search warrant affidavit — in which detectives make their case for searching a specific person or place to a judge — had never been made public.
On Monday, Stocktonia published an examination of the affidavit’s sweeping narrative of possible misconduct and financial crimes, finding significant questions about evidence provided to support it. The criminal case ultimately filed against Flores showed almost no sign of the sweeping corruption investigators had described in the affidavit.
On Tuesday, a judge in that case ordered the search warrant unsealed following requests by both Flores’ lawyer and the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office.
The unsealed document court staff provided Friday is near-identical to a copy released to reporters just after the search in November 2023. But there was a key difference: The names of witnesses whom investigators cited in the affidavit were redacted from the copy released Friday. Witness names were included in the November 2023 copy.
The judge requested no redaction in his unsealing order. A court spokesperson did not immediately respond to an inquiry about why the names were obscured.
The unredacted affidavit identifies Stockton Unified’s former interim superintendent Traci Miller as the primary witness the affidavit cited to support claims of misconduct on the school board.
Despite redactions of witness names, the newly released copy of the warrant preserves titles and anecdotes included in the affidavit that still point clearly to their identities.
Stocktonia investigation: Search warrant affidavit for AngelAnn Flores speculated on far-reaching misconduct. Her charges turned out to be much narrower.
Generally documents unsealed by judges aren’t redacted unless the judge specifically orders it, according to David Loy, a lawyer for the First Amendment Coalition. Furthermore, even though the court took three days to release the search warrant, there’s no law providing for a delay in releasing court documents after they’re unsealed, Loy said.
“Once the judge says it’s unsealed, it’s unsealed,” he said.
A court spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a question about the reason for the delay.
Here’s how Stocktonia is covering the story of school board member’s arrest, search warrant.