Stanislaus County District Attorney Birgit Fladager said that their position on Scott Peterson's murder case is that he is not eligible to be on death row and is only right to set the formal sentencing.
According to a Modesto Bee report, Fladager made the statement during a hearing for Peterson in San Mateo Superior Court on Friday, June 18.
Prosecutors also said that Scott Peterson should be sentenced so that the family of his wife, Laci Peterson, could make victim impact statements, and the defendant could be taken off death row.
Last year, the California Supreme Court had overturned Peterson's death sentence in the 2002 murders of his wife Laci and their unborn son Conner.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Dave Harris initially said that the office would retry the penalty phase. However, Fladager filed a notice in late May saying that she will no longer be pursuing the death penalty.
Scott Peterson would be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole based on his 2004 murder conviction.
Early this month, California prosecutors said they would not be seeking a death penalty against Scott Peterson even if he is granted a new trial based on juror misconduct, according to ABC News.
But Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo noted that even that declaration would not be enough to completely take a death sentence off the table.
Massullo said that laws change, as well as district attorneys. She noted that she wanted to make sure that everything they do is right.
Massullo is reviewing when to resentence Peterson to life without parole after Fladager said in a court filing that she would not seek to retry the case's death penalty portion after the state Supreme Court overturned it.
The judge is also considering if Scott Peterson should get an entirely new trial due to juror misconduct.
Pat Harris, one of Peterson's defense attorneys, said that prosecutors could seek the death penalty if they retry the entire case as a new trial would send it right back to square one.
The judge's consideration is based on a juror's failure to disclose that she had sought a restraining order against her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend in 2000.
The juror reportedly committed "prejudicial misconduct" by failing to disclose that she had been involved in prior legal proceedings. The juror earlier said that she sought a restraining order as she feared for her unborn child.
Massullo has yet to decide if that amounted to juror misconduct and whether it was prejudicial that a new trial is warranted.
Scott Peterson's Murder Case
Laci Peterson was 8 months pregnant with their unborn child when she was reported missing on Dec. 24, 2002. Scott Peterson caught the attention of investigators as he seemed to be lacking concern over his wife's disappearance. He had also refused to take a polygraph test, according to a Biography report.
Amber Frey, a massage therapist, came forward and admitted that she started dating Peterson two months earlier. She said that she was not aware that Peterson was married. Frey contacted the police on Dec. 30, 2002 after connecting Peterson to the missing woman in the headlines.
Four months after Laci Peterson went missing, locals found two decomposed bodies washed ashore in the San Francisco Bay.
On Apr. 18, 2003, Scott Peterson was arrested, and the bodies that the authorities found were identified as Laci and Conner.
When he was arrested in La Jolla, California, Peterson was sporting a dyed-blond hairdo and goatee. He was also driving a car with around $15,000 in cash, with his brother's ID card and several cellphones.
Source: Latin Post, Staff, June 19, 2021
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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
