"I suspect there is a large volume of information exchanged between the Utah attorney general, Washington County attorney, Roger Hoole and others that we are entitled to," Bradshaw said.

For his part, Belnap insisted he withheld only documents he considered privileged because they were "work projects" that included opinions, legal analyses and other commentary from the attorneys in his office.

Bradshaw said he might be forced to issue multiple subpoenas to gain access to the evidence he is seeking.

"Clearly there is not one answer to the questions raised by all of this," said Beacham, who was going to take the weekend to review the defense request. "It sounds to me (as if) we are going to need some discovery hearings to go over claims of privilege, relevancy, etc."

A scheduled Oct. 22 preliminary hearing could be used now to examine discovery issues, the judge said.

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