Olathe ? Prosecutors in the case of a suburban Kansas City man charged with kidnapping and slaying an 18-year-old woman were criticized Friday for their handling of evidence.

Johnson County District Judge Peter Ruddick told District Attorney Phill Kline and his deputy, Stephen Maxwell, that they need to do better at making sure defendant Edwin R. Hall’s attorneys are receiving evidence in the case.

Hall’s lawyers filed papers under seal last month accusing prosecutors of withholding evidence that could help Hall, 27, of Olathe.

The evidence includes FBI documents about another man that a Grandview, Mo., police employee identified as a possible suspect.

Hall is accused of abducting Kelsey Smith from the parking lot of a Target store in Overland Park.

Ruddick on Friday told prosecutors that even technical missteps could seriously affect the case’s outcome.

“Now come on, you guys. You have a responsibility here, not only to your case but to the state of Kansas,” Ruddick said. “And I want you to start living up to it.”

Ruddick also said that a brief that prosecutors filed in the case was “full of sarcasm but not substance.”

Kline spokesman Brian Burgess said after the hearing that prosecutors “take the responsibility to turn over evidence very seriously.”

Burgess said prosecutors turned over documents to defense attorneys after realizing they had not received them.

The Smith slaying drew national attention in June after a grainy surveillance video from the Target store was released, showing Smith being confronted and pushed into her car.

Four days after the June 2 kidnapping, Smith’s body was found in a park in Missouri about 20 miles away from where she was taken.

Hall faces charges of kidnapping, rape and capital murder. His trial has been set for Sept. 16. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

The FBI documents that Hall’s lawyers were seeking include information about another man who was considered a possible suspect.

Witnesses reported seeing him drive a car similar to Smith’s on the night she went missing.

Overland Park police Detective Candace Bridges told Ruddick on Friday that some of the documents the FBI gave police were inadvertently not scanned.

Bridges said that is why prosecutors did not have the documents to give defense lawyers initially.

Other evidence that defense lawyers allege prosecutors withheld includes the raw security video from Target, as well as other surveillance tape evidence that Hall’s lawyers say could place him at a nearby mall just after Smith disappeared.

Defense lawyer Paul Cramm contended in a motion that the video released publicly of Smith being pushed into her car was spliced from various camera angles.

Cramm maintains that the raw video that police viewed right after the abduction showed no man and no suspicious activity.

At the next hearing, which is scheduled for April 9, the judge has asked to see the Target video and hear from detectives who viewed it first.