SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The California Supreme Court on Monday upheld the conviction but overturned the 2005 death sentence for Scott Peterson in the slaying of his pregnant wife, and said prosecutors may try again for the same sentence if they wish in the case that attracted worldwide attention.
Laci Peterson, 27, was eight months pregnant with their unborn son, Connor, when she was killed. Investigators said that on Christmas Eve 2002, Peterson dumped their bodies from his fishing boat into San Francisco Bay, where they surfaced months later.
“Peterson contends his trial was flawed for multiple reasons, beginning with the unusual amount of pretrial publicity that surrounded the case.," the court said. “We reject Peterson’s claim that he received an unfair trial as to guilt and thus affirm his convictions for murder.”
But the justices said the trial judge “made a series of clear and significant errors in jury selection that, under long-standing United States Supreme Court precedent, undermined Peterson’s right to an impartial jury at the penalty phase.”
It agreed with his argument that potential jurors were improperly dismissed from the jury pool after saying they personally disagreed with the death penalty but would be willing to follow the law and impose it.
“While a court may dismiss a prospective juror as unqualified to sit on a capital case if the juror’s views on capital punishment would substantially impair his or her ability to follow the law, a juror may not be dismissed merely because he or she has expressed opposition to the death penalty as a general matter,” the justices said in a unanimous decision.
They rejected Peterson's argument that he couldn’t get a fair trial because of the widespread publicity that followed, although the proceedings were moved nearly 90 miles (145 kilometers) away from his Central Valley home of Modesto to San Mateo County, south of San Francisco.
Stanislaus County District Attorney Birgit Fladager did not immediately say if she would again seek the death penalty.
Peterson, who is now 47, was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of his wife and the second-degree murder of their unborn son.
“We are grateful for the California Supreme Court’s unanimous recognition that if the state wishes to put someone to death, it must proceed to trial only with a fairly selected jury,” Cliff Gardner, Peterson’s appellate attorney, said in an email.
His well-known trial attorney, Mark Geragos, said he objected at the time to what he said was “clear error” in jury selection.
Geragos said he does not expect prosecutors to retry the penalty phase. "Frankly, I think the only reason that they sought the death penalty was to get a guilt-prone jury panel,” he said.
California has not executed anyone since 2006 because of legal challenges to the way it would carry out the death penalty, and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has a moratorium on executions for as long as he is governor.
That moratorium helped lead other California prosecutors to negotiate a plea deal in the more recent high-profile Golden State Killer case. Former police officer Joseph DeAngelo was sentenced to multiple life terms on Friday in exchange for his guilty pleas to 13 murders and 13 rape-related charges.
After Peterson's death, investigators chased nearly 10,000 tips and considered parolees and convicted sex offenders as possible suspects.
Scott Peterson was eventually arrested after Amber Frey, a massage therapist living in Fresno, told police that they had begun dating a month before his wife’s death, but that he had told her his wife was dead.
He also had contended on appeal that the trial court erred in deciding whether jurors and the defense were properly allowed to test whether Peterson’s new boat would likely have capsized if he dumped the weighted bodies over the side.
Peterson can still argue that he was unfairly convicted, using evidence that was not considered at his trial, and if that fails can try again in federal court.
“While we are disappointed that such a biased jury selection process results in a reversal of only the death sentence, we look forward to the Court’s review of the new forensic and eyewitness evidence of innocence,” Gardner wrote.
Geragos said he expects Peterson will eventually be exonerated. “We’re halfway there,” he said.
Source: The Associated Press, Don Thompson, August 24, 2020
Scott Peterson’s Death Sentence Is Overturned
The California Supreme Court upheld Mr. Peterson’s 2004 conviction for killing his wife, Laci Peterson, but it said the judge’s mistakes had denied him an impartial jury during sentencing.
The California Supreme Court on Monday overturned the death penalty for Scott Peterson, who was found guilty in 2004 of killing his pregnant wife, Laci, in a notorious case that became fodder for the tabloids and cable news and spawned at least one made-for-TV movie.
The court upheld Mr. Peterson’s conviction, but it said that the trial judge had made mistakes that hindered his right to an impartial jury during sentencing.
“We reject Peterson’s claim that he received an unfair trial as to guilt and thus affirm his convictions for murder,” the court said. “But before the trial began, the trial court made a series of clear and significant errors in jury selection.”
The court said prosecutors could again seek the death penalty for Mr. Peterson at a new hearing.
Prospective jurors whose views on capital punishment would impair their ability to follow the law could be dismissed as unqualified, the court said. But jurors could not be dismissed simply for having expressed opposition to the death penalty.
“Here, the trial court erroneously dismissed many prospective jurors because of written questionnaire responses expressing opposition to the death penalty, even though the jurors gave no indication that their views would prevent them from following the law — and, indeed, specifically attested in their questionnaire responses that they would have no such difficulty,” the court said. “Under United States Supreme Court precedent, these errors require us to reverse the death sentence in this case.”
Mr. Peterson’s lawyer, Mark Geragos, welcomed the decision. “Obviously, if you death-qualify jurors in a case like this, that’s going to give you a jury with a pro-prosecution bent,” he said. Mr. Peterson, 47, has maintained his innocence.
Mr. Geragos added that the justices should have gone further and overturned Mr. Peterson’s conviction. “If you say that jury selection is fundamentally flawed,” he said, “how can you say that the guilty verdict is not fundamentally flawed?”
The case received a high level of attention after Laci Peterson, a 27-year-old substitute teacher, was reported missing on Dec. 24, 2002, from the home she and Mr. Peterson shared in Modesto, Calif. Her body and her fetus were found four months later in San Francisco Bay. The baby, whom the couple had decided to name Conner, was due in February 2003.
During the 2004 trial, the prosecution argued that Mr. Peterson, who ran a fertilizer company in Modesto, killed his wife so he could carry on a relationship with another woman, Amber Frey.
When Ms. Frey, a massage therapist, started dating Mr. Peterson in November, he told her that he was unmarried and had no children, according to prosecutors. But days after Ms. Peterson was reported missing, a friend told Ms. Frey that Mr. Peterson was connected to the disappearance, and Ms. Frey called the police.
Ms. Frey told the police that Mr. Peterson confided in her in early December that he had recently “lost” his wife and that he would be spending the holidays alone, court documents said.
The police were suspicious of Mr. Peterson right away. The remains of Ms. Peterson and her fetus washed ashore in April 2003, close to where Mr. Peterson, then 30, had told the police he had gone fishing the day she went missing. He was arrested later that month.
When Mr. Peterson was sentenced to death by lethal injection in 2005, the judge gave Ms. Peterson’s family members the opportunity to address Mr. Peterson. “You are going to burn in hell for this, you are,” said Ms. Peterson’s father, Dennis Rocha. “Your life is done.”
Executions have declined in California, and in the rest of the United States, in recent years, as public support for the death penalty has waned. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, announced a moratorium on capital punishment, granting a temporary reprieve to the 737 inmates on the state’s death row. The move was largely symbolic as legal challenges had already stalled executions in California, which last carried out an execution in 2006.
Mr. Newsom, who opposes the death penalty, said he imposed the moratorium because of capital punishment's high cost, the potential for wrongful convictions and the racial disparities in how it is applied.
In making his announcement, Mr. Newsom went against the will of the state’s residents, who in 2016 rejected a ballot measure that would have abolished the death penalty.
Source: New York Times, Staff, August 25, 2020
Scott Peterson's death sentence overturned by California Supreme Court
California's Supreme Court on Monday reversed the death sentence handed down to Scott Peterson for the 2002 deaths of his wife Laci and unborn son.
The high court found that the trial itself was fair and the murder convictions stand.
In an automatic appeal, which was first filed with the Supreme Court in 2012, the court found that potential jurors were dismissed erroneously, in part because they expressed general objections to the death penalty on a questionnaire.
"While a court may dismiss a prospective juror as unqualified to sit on a capital case if the juror's views on capital punishment would substantially impair his or her ability to follow the law, a juror may not be dismissed merely because he or she has expressed opposition to the death penalty as a general matter," the opinion states.
Nothing in the questionnaires showed that the dismissed jurors would have been unable to vote for the death penalty if the the circumstances warranted, the justices said.
"The death sentence must be reversed, and the People given another opportunity to seek that penalty before a properly selected jury if they so choose," the opinion said.
The case has been remanded to Stanislaus County Superior Court to handle the sentencing.
Laci, who was 7 months pregnant, disappeared from her Modesto home just before Christmas 2002 and was reported missing by her husband.
In the early days of the monthslong search for Laci, a woman who had been having an affair with Peterson came forward. In April 2003, Laci's body and that of her son washed up in San Francisco Bay. Scott Peterson was arrested shortly thereafter.
In November 2004, a jury found Peterson guilty of 1st-degree murder for Laci's death and 2nd-degree murder for the death of the son, Conner. Peterson, now 47, was sentenced to death on December 13, 2004.
Cliff Gardner, attorney for Peterson, thanked the Supreme Court for its decision.
"We are grateful for the California Supreme Court's unanimous recognition that if the state wishes to put someone to death, it must proceed to trial only with a fairly selected jury. Prosecutors may not rely on a jury specifically organized by the state to return a verdict of death," Gardner said.
"In deciding whether to seek a new death sentence, the question for prosecutors now is whether they can prove Mr. Peterson culpable for this crime to even a single juror seated through a fair jury selection process."
John Goold, spokesperson for the Stanislaus County District Attorney's Office, said, "We are reviewing the decision and will discuss with the victim's family." The district attorney's office has not said whether it will seek the death penalty again.
In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a moratorium on the death penalty. The moratorium is only in effect while Newsom is in office.
California hasn't executed an inmate since 2006.
Source: CNN, Staff, August 25, 2020
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