California lawmakers Wednesday criticized a corrections department policy of destroying parole agents' field notes a year after ex-convicts were released from supervision.

The policy caused an uproar after a convicted sex molester was arrested in February and charged with the death of a 17-year-old San Diego County girl. Officials initially said his records were not available.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has since ordered the department to keep the field files of sex offenders indefinitely.

"I think it's hard to explain why we would destroy any records related to a sex offender, especially in an incidence like this where you have somebody who had done something so awful," Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, R-San Diego, said during a hearing by the Assembly's Accountability and Administrative Review Committee.

The parolee, John Albert Gardner III, has pleaded not guilty to raping and murdering Chelsea King of Poway and assaulting another woman in the same park north of San Diego.

Gardner was released from supervision in 2008. He had served five years in prison and three years parole for molesting a 13-year-old girl in 2000.