California judge weighs new trial for Scott Peterson

A California judge said Wednesday that she anticipates a two-week hearing early next year before she decides if Scott Peterson deserves a new trial in the 2002 death of his pregnant wife.

That’s more than a year after the California Supreme Court ordered Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo to consider if juror misconduct was so significant that it denied him a fair trial.

Massullo is expected to hear testimony from juror Richelle Nice, who is at the center of the dispute and has denied that she was influenced by her own background of domestic abuse. Nice is identified in court papers as Juror 7. But she co-authored a book about the case with six other jurors.

That hearing would get to “the meat and potatoes of what the juror’s information is,” Deputy Stanislaus County District Attorney Dave Harris said.

Laci Peterson, 27, was eight months pregnant with their unborn son, Connor, when she was killed.

Massullo must decide if Nice committed “prejudicial misconduct” by failing to disclose that she had sought a restraining order in 2000 for fear that her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend could harm Nice’s own unborn child.

Peterson’s attorneys revealed in a June court filing that Nice also failed to disclose that her boyfriend beat her in 2001 while she was pregnant with another child.

As a [prospective] juror, Nice had answered “no” when she was asked if she had ever been involved in a lawsuit or been a crime victim.

Nice said in a court filing that she didn’t think the restraining order was a lawsuit, nor did she “feel ‘victimized’ the way the law might define that term.”

Massullo said she had wanted to schedule the evidentiary hearing for October, and she might still try to do it in early November. But she said delays in gathering evidence and sworn witness testimony, partly because of the coronavirus pandemic, make it more likely she will schedule the hearing for two weeks in late January or early February, after the winter holidays.

She expects to set the dates during a Sept. 22 hearing after considering several legal filings in the meantime.

Peterson, 48, participated in Wednesday’s hearing through a telephone link from San Quentin State Prison, home of California’s death row. The state Supreme Court separately overturned Peterson’s death sentence last year over unrelated faulty juror selection, and prosecutors said they won’t again seek to have him executed.

If Peterson gets a new trial, his attorney has said he will present new evidence bolstering the defense theory that Laci Peterson was killed when she stumbled upon a nearby burglary.

Investigators said that on Christmas Eve 2002, Peterson dumped the bodies from his fishing boat into San Francisco Bay, where they surfaced months later.

The state’s high court last year said that there was considerable circumstantial evidence incriminating Peterson in the slayings.

Source: The Associated Press, Staff, August 25, 2021

Scott Peterson's Sister-in-Law Claims New Evidence Will Prove His Innocence

Is there new evidence that could set Scott Peterson free? His sister-in-law thinks so — and tells the Today show that the commonly accepted timeline of the Laci Peterson murder case is wrong.

Scott was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in the 2002 death of Laci and their unborn son, Conner. He was sentenced to death in 2005. He remained on death row until 2020, when his death was overturned, meaning that he would face a new penalty phase trial.

In October, the California Supreme Court ruled that a lower court should take a second look at his case to determine whether his guilty verdict should be overturned and whether Scott, now 49, should face a new trial.

In her interview with Today, Janey Peterson says that Laci was not killed on Christmas Eve 2002, but was killed later.

"There's evidence that was completely ignored that shows Laci was alive after [Scott] left for the day," Janey, who is married to Scott's brother, told the show. "But also, there was no evidence that he had anything to do with what happened to Laci."

Laci was eight months pregnant when she disappeared from her Modesto home on Christmas Eve in 2002. Her body was found in April 2003 in San Francisco Bay.

Scott claimed that Laci was killed by an unknown assailant as she walked the couple's dog after he left to go on a solo fishing trip on Christmas Eve morning.

But as the case moved forward, jurors heard about Scott's dark secrets, including a months-long affair with a woman named Amber Frey, who was unaware that Scott was married when she started dating him.

Frey later worked with prosecutors, taping damning phone calls with Scott.

During trial, she testified for several days about her relationship with Scott, her realization that he was still married and that Laci had vanished.

Frey first called police in Modesto in late December 2002 to disclose the affair.

Frey's testimony proved crucial in the court proceedings. Scott was convicted by a Redwood City jury in 2004.

But in Wednesday's interview, Janey says that being an adulterer does not mean that her brother is a killer. "I don't think you can take that leap," she tells the morning news show.

Scott will attend court virtually from California's San Quentin State Prison on Wednesday as part of his legal team's fight for a new trial.

The defense team argues that his previous trial was flawed, in part because one of the jurors lied about being a victim of domestic abuse in order to get selected on the case.

Janey is attending law school so that she can assist her brother-in-law's defense team if he is granted a new trial. She told Today that she believes the killer is still at large.

"We don't have justice," she said. "This crime is not solved."

Source: msn.com, Steve Helling, August 25, 2021

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