Position Paper - Scott Peterson Murder Case PDF

Preview

Summary

Position paper for the Scott Peterson murder case and trial....

Description

1

Position Paper: Scott Peterson

CJ 2350: Laws of Evidence

2

Scott Peterson was accused of killing his wife of five years, Laci Peterson, and unborn child, Conner, on Christmas Eve of 2002. The most popular argument for Scott Petersons guilt is that he had both the time and the motive to murder his wife, although many people believe that the circumstantial evidence provided should have never been enough to convict him to the death penalty. So what, then, are the consequences of circumstantial evidence on the potential innocence of Scott Peterson? Before diving into the guilty v. not guilty argument, I think it’s important to tell the story of what happened (according to Scott Peterson) on the morning of December 24th - The day started around 7am. Laci woke up and had breakfast, and Scott gets up around 8am. By 8:45, Scott recalls Laci talking about her plans for the day, which included walking the dog and going to the store for Christmas Eve dinner ingredients. At around 9:45am, they were watching Martha Stewart talk about making a lemon meringue cookie. Then, he says Laci was mopping the floor as he was packing up his truck to go golfing. However, he decided that it was too cold that day to golf, so he decided to take his new boat fishing and leaves the house to go to his warehouse about nine minutes away. This warehouse is where he holds his boat, as well as a little office with a computer. On the way there, he checks his voicemail at 10:08 (backed by police record), and listens to a voicemail from his boss. Once he arrived at the warehouse, he uses his computer from 10:30am to 10:56am (also backed by police record). He sends an email to his boss, and looks up instructions on how to build a tool that he had gotten in the mail. It is here in his story that he has a 20 minute gap where he is unaccounted for. However, when police later searched his warehouse they did discover the tool he searched up instructions for, fully assembled. He then went to the marina, is seen by other people as he is fishing, and leaves around 3:15. He calls Laci twice on the way back to his warehouse, neither time getting an answer, and then eventually

3

arrives home. He immediately notices the presence of Laci’s car, but not Laci - however, he assumes that she was picked up by her mother. He listens to the voicemails on their home phone and discovers that she wasn’t home to receive his from earlier, as well as a voicemail from her father - which is what indicates to him that she is not with her family. He calls her family, and him and her family are looking around for her, and eventually Laci’s father calls 911 to report her missing. Circumstantial Evidence is “evidence that proves a fact by inference. A jury can accept circumstantial evidence as true without accepting the fact the evidence seeks to provide.” (Donley p. 86) Now, the prosecution had lots of circumstantial evidence against Scott - but what they seemed to rely the most on was the time Scott had to kill his wife, as well as the motive he had. They believe that Laci was killed earlier in the morning (in that 20 minute time stamp hole that Scott had in his recall of the morning Laci was reported missing), and that in that time, he took her body to the San Francisco Bay (specifically Brooks Island) to dump her. To cover some of the circumstantial evidence the prosecution brought up, in an article by CNN written in December of 2007, “Laci Peterson Case: Prosecutor points to circumstantial evidence”, “The prosecutor pointed to signs that Laci Peterson never left the home alive Dec. 24, saying ‘A cooking segment on meringues that Peterson claimed his wife was watching when he left her Christmas Eve morning actually aired Dec. 23.’” The prosecution then went on to talk about Amber Frey, the woman Scott had been having an affair with for approximately 5 weeks at the time of Laci’s disappearence. Some of the circumstantial evidence regarding this relationship potentially being Scott’s motive is, “Peterson blew off a Christmas party he was to attend with his wife to go to Frey’s holiday formal. Distaso [Deputy District Attorney] showed a photo of a very pregnant Laci Peterson in a red suit sitting alone in a corner at the party and then juxtaposed

4

that image with photos of Peterson and Frey mugging in front of a Christmas tree.” and that “Peterson told Frey he didn’t want any children and was considering getting a vasectomy. While his wife was seven months pregnant, he told Frey that her daughter ‘will be enough for me.’” All of this in the eyes of the jury seemed like pretty damning evidence against Scott. He’s a bad husband who clearly did not care about his wife, and according to news media across the country, also did not show enough emotion to the degree that the public expects out of someone whose wife is missing. I think it’s this, the media’s coverage of Scott, that really makes people question the outcome of this case. The media immediately wanted to incriminate Scott and stopped at nothing to portray him the the absolute worst light imaginable. And to start with why I believe that Scott should not have been indicted on the charges he was, I’d like to talk about the jury selection for this case. The judge wanted to make sure there was no one on the jury who was against the death penalty, however, instead of asking them if being against the death penalty would affect their ability to apply the law of the state of California to the case, he just booted them off the jury. This makes for an extremely specific type of juror, possibly all of them the vengeful type who may not be willing to see to each side of the story. The jury also was not sequestered (the isolation of a jury during deliberations to prevent them from being exposed to any external information related to the case [Donley p. 62]), which is insane considering the coverage this case was receiving across the country (like it’s not one of the most infamous cases today if it hadn’t been super talked about back when it was actually happening). In fact, the jury even admitted after the fact that they had all gone home and researched the case when they found out which case they would be working with. So now we are left with a specific type of juror, who has consumed all of what the media had to say about Scott, and is definitely bias.

5

During the trial, after prosecution tried saying that the Martha Stewart lemon meringue episode wasn’t even on TV the morning of December 24th, defense brought out that episode of Martha Stewart making lemon meringue cookies, the morning Scott said Laci was watching it immediately proving what prosecution had said to be wrong. They then went on a whole streak of striking everything prosecution had said down, including saying that someone was in the Peterson home at 8:40am looking at a red scarf and a sunflower umbrella. Up until this point, prosecution had been claiming that she was already dead at this time of the morning. This left prosecution with nothing. And lastly, to be one of the strongest points to Scotts potential innocence, is the eight other missing pregnant women in or around the Modesto area in 2002. Notably, Evelyn Hernandez, “who went missing on May 1, 2002 and also later washed up in San Francisco Bay.” (ABC News, 2006). That, to me, just screams M.O.. In conclusion, the circumstantial evidence provided by prosecution should have never been enough to indict Scott Peterson because the jury, as well as the public, had been so tampered with by the media’s portrayal of Scott that they could not possibly come to an unbias conclusion. The circumstantial evidence from the prosecution was no stronger than the circumstantial evidence provided by defense. While Scott was a terrible person, and an even worse husband, and to be honest - incredibly stupid, that is not what makes a murderer and he should not have been convicted to death over circumstantial evidence.

6

Citations ABC news. (n.d.). Retrieved February 06, 2021, from https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=125146&page=1 Case facts. (n.d.). Retrieved February 06, 2021, from https://www.scottpetersonappeal.org/case-facts.html Donley, R. M. (2018). Criminal evidence. Upper Saddle River: Pearson. doi:02/06/2021 Laci Peterson case: PROSECUTOR points to circumstantial evidence. (n.d.). Retrieved February 07, 2021, from http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/12/11/court.archive.peterson2/ The murder OF Laci Peterson full Episodes, video & more. (n.d.). Retrieved February 06, 2021, from https://www.aetv.com/shows/the-murder-of-laci-peterson...