Convicted killer Scott Peterson on Friday waived his right to what would have been a speedy death penalty retrial later this month, a move that allows him to wait out a decision on whether his case will be retried altogether.
Peterson, 48, gained international infamy in the early 2000s after he was suspected and then found guilty in the brutal 2002 slaying of his wife, Laci, and the couple’s unborn son, Conner. Peterson was convicted of the murders in 2004, sentenced to death, and has spent the intervening years on death row at San Quentin State Prison.
But the Modesto man’s case was pushed back into the spotlight this year, after a pair of California Supreme Court decisions opened windows for the defense.
In August, the state’s high court
overturned Peterson’s death sentence because the trial judge dismissed jurors who opposed capital punishment without asking them whether they could put their views aside. Then the court ordered a re-examination of the convictions themselves last month, due to the actions of a potentially tainted juror.
At a hearing on Oct. 23, Stanislaus County prosecutors said they would again seek the death penalty.
Peterson, appearing by Zoom at a Friday morning hearing in San Mateo County Superior Court, told Judge Anne-Christine Massullo that he wished to waive his right to a speedy penalty trial, which otherwise would have begun Nov. 29.
Pat Harris, Peterson’s attorney, told The Chronicle in an earlier interview that the penalty trial probably would be put on hold until a San Mateo County judge rules in the separate track of the case, and determines whether Peterson was denied the right to trial by an impartial jury.
The trial had been transferred to San Mateo County after pretrial surveys in Stanislaus County found most potential jurors believed Peterson was guilty.
Massullo set the next status conference in the case for Jan. 21.
, Megan Cassidy, November 6, 2020
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
