U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball granted a temporary stay while he considers the agency's request that he reverse his order requiring production of unedited copies of the documents. However, he ordered the FBI to deliver records as it finds them if there is no allegedly confidential material in the papers.

Kimball ruled May 5 that the FBI had failed to make a good-faith effort to locate records requested by the prisoner's brother, Salt Lake City lawyer Jesse Trentadue. At that time, he gave the agency until June 15 to complete another search.

Trentadue is seeking records connected to the investigation of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which he believes hold clues to what happened to his brother.

Kenneth Trentadue, who had served time for bank robbery, was being held on an alleged parole violation in a federal prison in Oklahoma City when guards found him dead Aug. 21, 1995, hanging from a noose made of torn bedsheets. Investigators say he committed suicide.

However, Jesse Trentadue says the FBI mistakenly suspected his brother was part of a gang that robbed banks to fund attacks on the government, and alleges authorities killed him when things got out of hand during an interrogation.

After insisting for a year that it was unable to find the records requested by Trentadue, the FBI acknowledged it had found about 340 documents that could apply to the case. However, agency officials asked Kimball to pare back his order and extend the deadline, saying they need more time to review 6 million pages of information that potentially could fall under a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Trentadue.

In addition, the section chief of the FBI's records division said that most of the located records were duplicates and only 17 documents were responsive to the FOIA request.

The judge issued the extension last week so he can consider both the FBI motion to reverse the order to produce records and a request by Trentadue to find the agency in contempt of court for allegedly misrepresenting its ability to do a computerized search for the documents.

pmanson@sltrib.com