Interestingly the search history isn't from the time of the crime (1979!), but rather from the time of his arrest (2018). The judge's reasoning was probably similar to the reasoning used to exclude prior bad acts. If this was the reasoning, it would have no relevance to the type of search history that I assume is much more commonly used in trials: that the defendant searched for instructions or materials related to the crime.
Or he could just use DuckDuckGo and not worry about random people trawling through his search history at all.
This seems to be a pattern not limited to murder cases. Not sure I like every divorce case and lawsuit being able to trawl through people's most private data (and have it entered into evidence).
