Doug Pensinger / Getty Images file

Foxnews.com reporter Jana Winter returns to the court house after a midday recess to face Arapahoe County District Judge William Sylvester regarding evidence in the case of Aurora theater shooting suspect James Holmes at the Arapahoe County Justice Center on April 1, 2013 in Centennial, Colorado.

A journalist who could face jail time if she refuses to reveal the source of a report detailing the contents of a notebook Colorado massacre suspect James Holmes sent his psychiatrist won a temporary reprieve on Monday.

Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr., who is presiding over the Aurora movie theater shooting case, ruled that he will not make Fox News reporter Jana Winter testify until he decides if the notebook will be allowed as evidence in the first place.

The move reflects the argument made by Winter's defense attorneys that the testimony is not yet "ripe" for ruling.

"The notebook may or may not be introduced, and its contents may or may not be of significance. Given these uncertainties, the record is inadequate," Samour wrote in his order Monday. 

The judge said at a ruling last week that the New York-based journalist could face six months in jail if she refused to testify, according to the Denver Post. Though Winter must still attend a hearing Wednesday, there will be no final decision on whether she will be legally obligated to testify until a later date.

Winter angered prosecutors last July when she reported for FoxNews.com that two law enforcement sources revealed to her Holmes had sent a University of Colorado at Denver psychiatrist a notebook "full of details about how he was going to kill people."

Prosecutors maintained that leaking such information was in violation of a court gag order limiting pretrial publicity.

In December, 14 law enforcement agents testified regarding the leak, and all denied speaking to the media about the notebook or knowing anyone who could have.

Lawyers for Holmes, who is accused of killing 12 and injuring 58 during a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” in Auroa, Colo., argued the notebook cannot be submitted as evidence because it is protected by doctor-patient privilege.

But if Holmes decides to use mental-health as a defense, the notebook will likely become significant evidence. In late March, Holmes defense team offered to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. Prosecutors, however, rejected that move as a publicity stunt, and are seeking the death penalty.

In a March affidavit obtained by NBC News, Winter said being forced to testify would ruin her career as a reporter and make it impossible to do her job as an investigative journalist. 

Her reputation in the field will be “irreparably tarnished,” she wrote.

"The documents and testimony Holmes seeks would violate my promises to my sources that I would keep their identities a secret. Futhermore, having to travel to Colorado to reveal my confidential sources for the article will cause me severe, irreparable hardship in a number of ways," Winter wrote to the court.

Along with her career, Winter said her life could be in danger if forced to appear in court.

She said she has been the subject of Internet threats from Holmes supporters, and even found a website containing personal photos of her family with “a scary degree of detail about our personal lives.”

“I cannot even begin to think about what might happen if I actually travel to Colorado at a time and place where these kinds of people will know where I am," Winter wrote.

Nevertheless, Winter will be in court on Wednesday.

Members of the media have come to Winter’s defense in voicing outrage over the prospects of making her testify. Colorado shield law does protect journalists from having to reveal sources, but there are circumstances under which reporters could be compelled to reveal their sources or face contempt of court charges.

"Courts have the right to enforce the confidentiality of investigations and that may in some cases require punishing leakers," National Press Club President Angela Greiling Keane said in a statement. "But attempting to get that information by subpoenaing reporters in order to learn their anonymous sources goes too far.”

Pool / Reuters file

Accused Aurora theater shooting suspect James Holmes listens at his arraignment in Centennial, Colorado in this file photo taken March 12, 2013.

A University of Colorado at Denver psychiatrist treating movie-theater massacre defendant James Holmes warned police of "homicidal statements" Holmes made one month before the Aurora, Colo., attack, according to a search warrant unsealed Thursday.

Dr. Lynn Fenton reported to University of Denver Police in June that Holmes posed a threat to the public through violent comments he made to her, according to the newly released court documents.

She also advised police that Holmes had stopped seeing her but had begun threatening her via text messages.

Holmes is accused of killing 12 and injuring 70 in a gruesome attack on a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. on July 20.

According to the document, University of Denver Police alerted Aurora, Colo. authorities of the received threat shortly after the attack.

The search warrant also reveals that on July 12, shortly before the shooting, Holmes sent Fenton a notebook that contained burned $20 bills.

The documents were released late Thursday after a judge ruled the arrest and search warrant affidavits could be unsealed following a request from various media organizations. 

District Judge Carlos Samour said the information had largely already been made public during court proceedings. But both prosecuting and defense attorneys objected.  

Holmes attorney's said they worried the release could hurt their client's chances at a fair trial. Prosecutors expressed concerns about the privacy of victims and witnesses.

Samour took over the case earlier this week after previous Judge William Sylvester stepped down, unable to commit the time necessary to preside over a death penalty case.  

On Monday, prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty, despite the defense's offer to have Holmes plead guilty and serve a life sentence. 

Colorado Dept. of Corrections / AP

Police said Thomas Guolee's name surfaced during an investigation into the death of Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements.

DENVER -- Two more men connected to a violent white supremacist gang are being sought in connection with the slaying of Colorado's prisons chief, and authorities are warning officers that they are armed and dangerous.

The search comes about two weeks after prison gang member Evan Ebel — a suspect in the death of Department of Corrections chief Tom Clements on March 19 and of Nathan Leon, a pizza deliveryman, two days earlier — was killed in a shootout with Texas deputies.

While it's not clear whether the gang, the 211 Crew, is linked to the killing, the warning bulletin issued late Wednesday by the El Paso County Sheriff's Department is the first official word that other gang members may be involved.

James Lohr, 47, and Thomas Guolee, 31, aren't being called suspects in Clements' death, but their names have surfaced during the investigation, El Paso County sheriff's Lt. Jeff Kramer said. He wouldn't elaborate.

Kramer said the two are known associates of the 211 gang.

Ebel is the only suspect that investigators have named in Clements' death, but they haven't given a motive. They have said they're looking into his connection to the gang he joined while in prison, and whether that was connected to the attack.

Colo. Dept. Of Corrections / AP, file

Evan Spencer Ebel led Texas authorities on a 100 mph car chase that ended in a shootout on March 21. He has been linked to the slaying of Colorado's state prison chief.

"Investigators are looking at a lot of different possibilities. We are not stepping out and saying it's a hit or it's not a hit. We're looking at all possible motives," Kramer said Wednesday.

Investigators have said the gun Ebel used in the Texas shootout was also used to kill Clements when the prisons chief answered the front door of his home.

Sheriff's investigators said they don't know the whereabouts of Lohr and Guolee or if they are together, but Kramer said it's possible one or both of them could be headed to Nevada or Texas.

Both are wanted on warrants unrelated to Clements' death, and authorities believe they are armed and dangerous.

Guolee is a parolee who served time for intimidating a witness and giving a pawnbroker false information, among other charges, court records show. Lohr was being sought on warrants out of Las Animas County for a bail violation and a violation of a protection order, according to court records.

The 211 gang is one of the most vicious white supremacist groups operating in U.S. prisons, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups. It was founded in 1995 to protect white prisoners from attacks and operates only in Colorado, according to the center.

Ebel joined the 211 Crew after he entered prison in 2005 for a string of assault and menacing charges that combined for an eight-year sentence. He was supposed to spend an extra four years in prison for punching a prison officer in the face in 2006, but a clerical error led that sentence to be recorded as one to be served simultaneously with his previous sentences.

He was released on parole Jan. 28.

Related:

Clerical error set Colo. slaying suspect free

Link suggested between prosecutor's slaying and racist gang

Gun linked to Colo. slaying leads to woman's arrest

DENVER - An intruder who forced his way into the mountain home of a Colorado deputy district attorney was shot dead by either the prosecutor or her police officer husband, authorities said on Tuesday.

The shooting, shortly before midnight Monday, comes two weeks after Colorado's prisons director was slain as he answered the front door to his home, and two days after the district attorney of Kaufman County in Texas was found shot to death with his wife.

An assistant prosecutor in the Kaufman County district attorney's office was shot to death on January 31, and authorities have said both Texas murders and the March 19 slaying of Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements appeared to be targeted killings rather than random acts of violence.

In light of the three previous cases, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation is leading the probe into the latest shooting, which occurred in Hot Sulphur Springs, about 95 miles northwest of Denver.

"There are no apparent ties to recent shootings; however, investigators continue to pursue all possible leads and background information on this (dead) person," the bureau said in a written statement.

Authorities did not immediately release the names of the deputy prosecutor and her husband in connection with Monday night's shooting.

The deputy district attorney made a 911 emergency call and reported that a man was at her door "behaving very erratically," police said.

The prosecutor then told dispatchers that the stranger forced his way into her home. An altercation ensued inside and shots were fired, leaving the unidentified man dead, police said.

A spokeswoman for one of the agencies investigating the incident told Reuters that the prosecutor and her husband, himself a sheriff's deputy, both fired at the intruder, but it is too early in the probe to know who fired the fatal shot.

The Colorado prosecutor and her husband both suffered minor injuries and have been placed on paid leave pending the results of the investigation.

Related: For prosecutors across country, threat of violence 'comes with the job'

Clements, the state's prisons chief, was shot to death on March 19 when he answered the front door of his home near Monument, Colorado, about 45 miles south of Denver.

Authorities have matched the handgun used in Clements' slaying to the weapon used by a recent Colorado parolee, 28-year-old Evan Spencer Ebel, in a gun battle with police following a high-speed chase through Decatur, Texas, last month.

Investigators have named Ebel, a member of a white supremacist prison gang, as a suspect in the killing of Clements and in the death of pizza delivery man Nathan Leon, 27, who was found dead in suburban Denver two days earlier.

Ebel was killed in the shootout with Texas police. A search of his car turned up a pizza deliverer's shirt, visor, pizza box and heat bag.

Colo. Dept. Of Corrections / AP, file

This undated photo released by the Colorado Department of Corrections shows paroled inmate Evan Spencer Ebel.

A clerical error made by the Colorado court system allowed the man believed to have killed the state's prisons chief to be released almost four years early.

Court officials acknowledged in a statement Monday the error that allowed Evan Spencer Ebel to be released January 28.

In 2008, Ebel pleaded guilty to assaulting a prison guard while serving time for breaking into a car, having an illegal gun and carjacking a man. His four-year sentence was supposed to have been served consecutively after the the eight-year sentence he had been serving.

But a court clerk entered the sentence as concurrent to the one he was serving, which led Ebel's January release.

He is suspected of killing Tom Clements, executive director of the state Department of Corrections, on March 19. Clements was shot dead apparently after answering the doorbell at his home outside Colorado Springs.

Ebel is also suspected in the March 17 killing of a Domino’s pizza delivery man outside Denver. Authorities have speculated that Ebel used the man's uniform to get Clements to come to the door.

A Domino's uniform was found in the car Ebel was driving when he was killed in a shootout with deputies in Texas on March 21.

Prosecutors said Monday that they will seek the death penalty for James Holmes, the man accused of gunning down 12 people and wounding 70 at a Batman movie last summer in Colorado.

George Brauchler, the district attorney for Arapahoe County, said he made the decision after speaking with more than 800 victims and family members.

“It’s my determination and my intention that in this case, for James Eagan Holmes, justice is death,” he said at a hearing.

Brauchler had already rejected an offer from the defense to let Holmes plead guilty and serve a life sentence.

Judge William Sylvester of the Colorado circuit court entered a plea of not guilty for Holmes last month after his lawyers said they were not ready to plead. The judge left the door open for lawyers to mount an insanity defense.

Sylvester on Monday set Holmes’ trial for Feb. 3, 2014, and said it would last about four months. He handed the case to a new judge, Carlos Samour. The trial had originally been scheduled to begin in August.

“This is not an ordinary case. We ask the judge not to rush,” one of Holmes’ lawyers, Tamara Brady, said, answering prosecution claims that the defense has tried to delay the legal process. “This is the most important matter the court will ever hear.”

The two sides in the case fought in public last week. After the defense made its offer, Brauchler said in a filing that Holmes’ lawyers were only trying to generate sympathy for their client.

The only conclusion, the prosecutor wrote, “is that the defendant knows he is guilty, the defense attorneys know he is guilty and that both of them know that he was not criminally insane.”

Brauchler wrote an Op-Ed in The Denver Post over the weekend defending the death penalty. Colorado legislators have considered banning it. He did not name Holmes but wrote of capital punishment as an important tool of justice.

“Repealing the death penalty would result in acts similar to those in Newtown, Conn., or the acts of Tim McVeigh being punished no differently than a single murder of one gang member by another,” the prosecutor wrote. “Each murder after the first would be a freebie.”

Injection is the method for capital punishment in Colorado. The state has executed only one inmate since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in the United States in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. That execution was in 1997.

R.J. Sangosti / Pool

Aurora theater shooting suspect James Holmes listens at his arraignment March 12.

Holmes’ lawyers have said that jailers determined he was a danger to himself and needed a mental evaluation, and that he was held for several days in a psychiatric ward, sometimes in restraints.

He surrendered to police within minutes of the July 12 shooting rampage at a midnight screening of the movie “The Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora, Colo., a suburb of Denver.

At his first court appearance, Holmes had stark, red-orange hair and wore a blank stare. He has since appeared more stable and natural-looking. He showed up in court last month with a bushy beard.

The hearing Monday was set to begin at 11 a.m. EDT. Legal observers have pointed out that the two sides could still reach a plea deal later, even as prosecutors seek to put Holmes to death.

NBC News producer John Boxley, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Mon Apr 1, 2013 8:17 AM EDT

Colorado Bureau of Investigation via AP

Stevie Marie Vigil, 22, of Commerce City, Colo., was arrested on March 27, accused of illegally transferring the gun authorities say was used to kill Colorado's prison chief.

Police arrested a Colorado woman suspected of illegally transferring a handgun used by a white supremacist and linked to the shooting of Colorado’s top prison official, authorities said.

Stevie Marie Vigil, 22, was arrested on Wednesday, the Colorado Bureau of Investigations said in a statement. Investigators say that she is suspected of illegally transferring the firearm to ex-convict Evan Ebel, 28, after purchasing it from an Englewood, Colo., firearms dealer. 

Investigators worked with the El Paso County Sheriff’s office and the licensed firearms dealer to track down the gun’s purchaser. While Vigil’s purchase of the gun was legal, her transfer of the gun to Ebel was not, investigators said.

The gun was recovered by police after Ebel was killed in a shootout with Texas deputies that followed a car chase near Decatur. The same gun has been linked to the death of Tom Clements, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections.

Clements was shot dead on March 19 apparently after answering the doorbell at his home outside Colorado Springs.

“Oftentimes referred to as a ‘straw purchase,’ investigators believe Vigil purchased the firearm from a licensed firearms dealer in Englewood, and allegedly transferred the weapon to Evan Ebel, a convicted felon who could not legally possess a firearm,” the CBI said in the statement. “The licensed firearms dealer has been extremely cooperative with investigators, and had no knowledge of Vigil’s alleged actions following her legal purchase of the gun.”

In court records filed March 22, authorities said that shell casing from the same type of ammunition was used in Clements’ slaying. On Monday, the El Paso County Sheriff’s office said that a review of the casings collected in Texas confirmed that the gun was a match.

“The analysis done by ballistics experts has concluded the gun used by Evan Ebel in Texas was the same weapon used in the shooting death of Tom Clements,” the sheriff’s office said in a written statement.

“The confirmation goes well beyond acknowledging the same caliber and brand of ammunition being used, but rather is based on unique, and often microscopic markings left on the casings at both scenes,” the sheriff’s office said.

Ebel is also suspected in the March 17 killing of a Domino’s pizza delivery man, Nathan Leon, outside Denver.

Police have said that Ebel was connected to the 211 Crew, a white supremacist prison gang that is known for its violent behavior. The gang is thought to have as many as 1,000 members, many in Colorado prisons, according to Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The man “drifted into a dark period” after the death of his teenage sister, Ebel’s mother Jody Mangue wrote in an Internet posting. “His life deteriorated after that and he just became numb and lost his direction altogether,” she wrote.

Arrest records for Vigil are sealed. She was placed in the Arapahoe County Jail on Wednesday and bond was set at $25,000, the CBI said. She could face charges for the unlawful purchase of a firearm.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Reported:

• Mother of Colorado shooting-spree suspect says son was a compassionate kid
• Suspect in Colorado killing had a ‘bad, bad streak’: governor
• Colorado governor knew family of man eyed in prison chief slaying

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, a longtime family friend of a prime suspect in the shooting death of the state's prisons chief, said on Sunday that the now-dead suspect always seemed to suffer from a "streak of cruelty and anger."

Colo. Dept. Of Corrections / AP

This undated photo released by the Colorado Department of Corrections shows paroled inmate Evan Spencer Ebel.

Hickenlooper said he and Jack Ebel, the father of white supremacist ex-convict Evan Ebel, had been friends for more than 30 years and that he had spoken to him since the 28-year-old parolee from Denver emerged as a lead suspect in the shooting last Tuesday of Tom Clements, executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections.

"From the beginning, his son just seemed to have this bad streak, a streak of cruelty and anger," Hickenlooper told CNN's "State of the Union."

"They did everything they could," he said. "They worked with Evan again and again but to no avail. He had a bad, bad streak."

Evan Ebel was killed by police on Thursday after a high-speed chase through Decatur, Texas. He is also a suspect in the killing of pizza delivery man Nathan Leon in Denver, police there have said.

Hickenlooper said an investigation is continuing and that "all the signs" in the Clements killing seemed to point to Ebel, whom he confirmed had been connected to a prison-based white supremacist group.

"We can't see clearly what a motive was," he added.

The governor, who said his own personal security had been beefed up recent days, did not rule out the possibility that the Clements killing had been ordered by jailed white supremacist gang leaders targeting public officials from behind bars.

Lieutenant Jeff Kramer, a spokesman for the sheriff's office in El Paso County, Colorado, said on Sunday that Evan Ebel was definitely considered a suspect in the death of Clements, 58, who was shot on Tuesday when he answered the door at his home about 45 miles south of Denver.

Shell casings found at Clements' home were the same brand and caliber of the Hornady 9-mm bullets Ebel fired at Texas police, according to the search warrant filed in Texas for police to search Ebel's Cadillac.

"We're still waiting for the results of some ballistics testing that we're doing up here in Colorado ... to see if the gun used in Texas is the same gun used in the Tom Clements homicide case," Kramer said.

Ebel was a member of a white supremacist prison gang, the 211 Crew, and had been paroled in the Denver area, a law enforcement official said.

Authorities have said they were looking for ties between the death of Clements and the January killing of Mark Hasse, a prosecutor in the Kaufman County District Attorney's Office. Kaufman County is east of Dallas.