Posted on 11/30/2004 10:26:51 AM PST by J. Neil Schulman
CONVICTED BY SUSPICION -- WHY SCOTT PETERSON MAY BE INNOCENT
by J. Neil Schulman, guest contributor.[November 30, 2004]
[HollywoodInvestigator.com] Scott Peterson may or may not have murdered his wife, Laci, and their unborn child. But the Redwood City, California trial that has just convicted Peterson of murdering Laci with premeditation was a kangaroo court in which none of the elements necessary to achieve a murder conviction were offered, much less proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
The first element that needs to be proved in any murder trial is that a murder has occurred. There was never a determination by any California medical examiner that the cause of Laci Peterson’s death was homicide. No medical examiner was able to determine the cause of Laci Peterson's death, nor even prove to a medical certainty in what week beyond her disappearance on Christmas Eve that she died.
A thorough examination of the residence where Scott and Laci Peterson lived together, by teams of detectives and forensic experts, uncovered no evidence whatsoever that a crime had occurred there.
No crime scene was ever found.
No forensic evidence was found in the Petersons’ motor vehicles lending any foundation to the suspicion that she had ever been transported in one of them -- alive or dead -- to the place where, months later, her body was found.
No weapon was ever produced with any evidence that it had been used to cause Laci Peterson’s death.
No witness was produced who had seen or heard Scott Peterson argue with Laci near the time of her disappearance, much less any witness who had seen Scott Peterson fight with his wife or kill her.
The only forensic evidence produced in court that even presumptively linked Scott Peterson with the death of his wife was a strand of hair that DNA analysis showed to be Laci's, in a pliers found in Scott Peterson’s fishing boat. A police detective interviewed a witness who had seen Laci in the boat warehouse where Scott stored that boat. Even in the absence of this witness statement to a police detective, the rules of forensic transference indicate that transference of trace evidence between a husband and wife who lived together is common, and not indicative of foul play.
No witness ever saw Laci in that fishing boat, nor did any witness ever testify to seeing Scott Peterson bringing a corpse-sized parcel onto his fishing boat. Thus, the fishing boat never should have been allowed into evidence, nor should prosecution speculation into his dumping her body using that boat have been permitted.
Nor was any evidence offered in court showing that Scott Peterson had engaged in any overt activities in planning of a murder. He was not observed buying, or even shopping for, weapons or poison. Police detectives found no records in his computer logs that he was spending time researching methods of murder. No evidence was offered that he ever considered hiring someone to kill her.
No evidence was offered in court indicating that Scott Peterson had any reasonable motive for murdering his wife, such as monetary gain, or to protect great marital assets that he’d lose as an adulterer in a divorce in California, a no-fault community-property state, or because Scott had some basis to believe he had been cuckolded.
So in a case without an ME’s finding of homicide or a known time of death;
without a single witness to a crime having occurred;
without a crime scene;
without a murder weapon;
without any indisputable forensic evidence linking the defendant husband to his wife’s death;
without an obvious motive;
without the prosecution presenting conclusive direct or circumstantial evidence overcoming every single exculpatory scenario by which Laci Peterson might have otherwise come to her death;
in summation, without the prosecution demonstrating that Scott Peterson and only Scott Peterson had the means and opportunity to murder his wife and transport her alive or dead to the San Francisco Bay in which her body was found ... how is it possible that Scott Peterson has just been convicted of a premeditated murder with special circumstances warranting the death penalty?
It comes down to this: Scott Peterson was having an adulterous affair at the time of his wife’s disappearance, and Scott Peterson is a cad and a bounder.
Scott Peterson repeatedly lied to everyone around him – including his new mistress – to further the pursuit of this affair. This pattern of lying was established by audio tapes of his phone conversations with his mistress that were played in court. But these tapes were played before the jury without any foundation for their playing being offered, since their playing spoke to no element required for conviction in the crime with which he was charged. And these tapes -- which were more prejudicial than probitive -- destroyed Scott Peterson's credibility to appear as a potential witness in his own defense. They served only to make the jury hate Scott Peterson.
Scott Peterson found himself at the center of a media circus, and his attempts to change his appearance and escape being followed can equally be interpreted as either avoidance of the media who were stalking him or avoidance of police who were tracking him.
The bodies of Laci Peterson and her unborn child were discovered in close proximity to the location where Scott Peterson said he had been fishing at the time of her disappearance. But those bodies were found after months of all-media publicity in which Peterson’s alibi was broadcast and published, and if Laci had been murdered by some third party, the murderer would have easily had both means and motive to dump her body at that location to convict Scott and end pursuit of themselves for that murder.
In any case where more than one explanation of a fact can be offered, the judge’s charge instructs the jury that the explanation suggesting innocence is the one they are legally required to adopt in their deliberations.
Scott Peterson was convicted at trial of murder possibly leading to a death sentence in which the trial judge allowed prosecutors to speculate in front of a jury on how Scott Peterson might have murdered his wife. Anyone who’s watched a single episode of Perry Mason or Law & Order knows the judge is charged with forbidding such speculation unless there is a foundation of facts in evidence.
No such foundation was presented indicating a method of murder in the murder trial of Scott Peterson.
In other words, Scott Peterson looked and acted guilty, and in the age of 24-hour -a-day TV news networks that have to fill up those hours with ratings-producing subjects, Scott Peterson’s trial and conviction was the perfect storm of Guilty by Suspicion.
Scott Peterson may very well have been convicted of a murder that he committed. If so, he was convicted in a case that under our system of justice – in which the presumption of innocence may only rightfully be overcome by evidence that is convincing beyond a reasonable doubt – never should have been allowed into court, much less handed over to a jury.
The jury that convicted Scott Peterson was a lynch mob inflamed by prejudicial testimony and their conviction of Scott Peterson qualifies as a hate crime. The verdict needs to be overturned on appeal. The judge brought out of retirement to preside over the case needs to be retired again. The prosecution needs to be brought up on civil rights charges to make sure this behavior is punished.
May God have mercy on Scott Peterson’s soul if he is, in fact, a psychopath who spent Christmas Eve murdering his pregnant wife so he could avoid the inconvenience of a divorce.
And may God have equal mercy on the prosecutors, judge, and jurors who have taken away Scott Peterson’s life – whether through a sentence of life imprisonment or death by lethal injection – if they have allowed their disgust for a deeply flawed man to whip them into a passion in which suspicion in the absence of any proof was sufficient to convict him.
Copyright © 2004 by J. Neil Schulman. All rights reserved.
J. Neil Schulman's book, The Frame of the Century?, presents as strong a case for a suspect other than O.J. Simpson in the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson as was presented to convict Scott Peterson in the murder of Laci Peterson. Our sister publication, the Weekly Universe, has previously reported on Schulman's 'Vulcan Mind Meld with God' and his discovery of an eye drop that cures cataracts.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Whether baring of one's teeth, is seen as a smile, a smirk, a grimance or a show of hostility, is also in the mind of the beholder, and governed by known facts and/or pre-concieved notions about the person baring their teeth.
For what little it is worth, I personally thank she was a very lovely young lady, with a genuine smile, that came straight from her heart.
Neither your opinion or my opinion or anyone elses opinion of how she looked, has one iota of bearing upon Scott's guilt or innocence.
If I were on the jury now charged with deciding whether Scott lives or dies, I believe I would vote for life without parole. That way, if new evidence ever surfaces that shows his innocence, he will be alive to benefit from it, and if not, he will have a long time to think about what he did.
I too believe that the prosecution and the police work on this case, was shamefully incompentent and buffoonesque, like the OJ case, the Koby Briant case and the Bonet Ramsey case, to name a few. How do these people ever get out of Law school, much less pass a state bar exam.
Both families in this case has been very close for a long time. One lost a daughter and a grandbaby, the other has lost a son and a grandbaby-the grandbaby that would have bound both families forever.
I know that what I am about to say will sound very liberalesque, but here goes. Would killing Scott bring any sort of comfort or closure to the family of Lacy, or just more pain and misery to all the innocent people in both families?
Sh*t, I don't know. Go ahead folks-flame away.
This was years ago, but if I recall, it was the little old lady and a couple three from his truck. It was "fresh" - about a week old when the grand jury was empaneled and very emotional. Our prosecutor was an elected official, in the deep, deep south. Need I say more?
This trials message to all those adulterers out there who don't care about their wives:
You better hope to hell she doesn't suddenly show up missing and/or dead!!!! You will definitely go down for it if she does. Better to divorce than to continue to be a cheatin', lyin' schmuck!
Oh BS!
And before someone says, "You can prosecute murder even without a body for the ME to examine" -- then why wasn't Peterson charged before Laci's body was found?
But there was a body -- two of them. And the ME wasn't able to conclude the cause of death was homicide.
Unless there was other compelling evidence eliminating the other possibilities, there should have been no charge.
This case doesn't even have enough hard direct or cirsumstantial evidence for a civil case which needs only to show a preponderance of evidence.
"Are we a bit paranoid?"
I don't know... are we? You wrote in your post that maybe a "lawyer" could correct you and I inferred from that statement that you don't think I am an attorney.
You would make a great juror to kick off a jury. Your verbal contortions are way off. Lawyers look for people capable of understanding critical and unemotional thinking. And you demonstrate the opposite. You are, however, a defense attorney's dream juror. All wrapped up in emotion and believing you have knowledge from "reading a lot."
Have you listened to jury instructions in a capital case? Do you have the written instructions given to this jury or any jury about what "reasonable doubt" is? YES, their doubt, if reasonable, MUST fit the evidence. The burden of proof is on the government but the burden of reasonableness is on the jury. You can't just sit in a jury room and say, "well, I have doubt." The doubt has to be explained and be in sync with the evidence.
What I did notice in your original description of the story is that you carefully omitted the number of deaths, you repeatedly refer to the deceased driver as a little old lady (why?) and now you need to offer up that this occurred in the deep, deep south.
I sense some real prejudices in your descriptions.
Oh BS
(I couldn't say it better....)
Ah, ad hominem. Then you admit you can't support your contentions with logic?
From the Contra Costa Times, June 7, 2003:
The coroner lists Peterson's manner of death as homicide. Death certificates for the 27-year-old and the son with whom she was eight months pregnant were made public late Friday.
Well said.
Once again--you omitted the word 'reasonable' to describe other possibilities. Why didn't you include the alien abduction theory in your article?
If you accurately state you are (something you have yet to do), then you may well be the one I was looking for. Unfortunately, you aren't automatically right, simply because you have a sheepskin and made a statement.
"If I were on the jury now charged with deciding whether Scott lives or dies, I believe I would vote for life without parole. That way, if new evidence ever surfaces that shows his innocence, he will be alive to benefit from it, and if not, he will have a long time to think about what he did."
I believe this would be the right approach. Killing Scott won't bring Laci or Conner back. Killing Scott will probably create even more pain for these families.
Well, I truly scratching hard here. As I recall, the average age in the pickem up was about 17. The little old lady was a retired (much loved) school teacher around 70 and it was in mid-Mississippi. I'll bow to your evaluation of whether any of my description was the result of accuracy or prejudice.
Gee..he missed one..LOL
Don't worry..there are 600 waiting on death row in Cal and they execute at the rate of one a year.
You obviously have not read the transcripts.
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