Hillsborough: Records are sealed in the slaying of 5

TAMPA -- Circuit Judge Chet Tharpe sealed about 20 pages of court records Wednesday that detail the evidence against accused killer Dexter Levingston.

Tharpe said the records should stay secret to ensure that Levingston gets a fair trial on five charges of first-degree murder.

Prosecutors said Levingston killed five people last year, including a 12-year-old girl, who lived with him in a home in Seffner. Levingston remains in a state mental hospital, where doctors will care for him until he is competent to stand trial.

Before Wednesday's hearing, Tharpe had sealed the records without giving notice to the St. Petersburg Times and the Tampa Tribune, who had intervened in the case to keep the records open to the public.

Assistant Public Defender John Syke told Tharpe in court Wednesday that the newspapers had no legal right at this point to appear in court to object.

Tribune attorney James Lake and Penelope Bryan, an attorney for the Times, argued that much of the information being sealed already had been released in other forms. When he sealed the records, the judge also did not follow procedures set out by other courts, they argued.

The court ordered another 600 pages of records in the case released.

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