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.
LOL.
NOW I see you're already here.
I just pinged you, Jackie and Runningbear on the other thread.
Want a big laugh? Read this tripe!
This reads like a self-serving twit,
trying to use FR to peddle his "book"
in the loosest term of the word "book."
Exactly.
Just checked out his forum.
He uses FR to post NOTHING but his own stuff (crap, IMO).
How would this Asshole like to bury his daughter without arms to hold her murdered baby???
This enrages me to the point that I don't care if I offend and get banned.
.38sw wrote:
"because the official date and time of Laci's death is the day her body washed up on shore, April 14th -- ???? Even though it was apparent by the state of decomposition that she'd been dead for quite some time? Puhleeeze."
The point is, if the date of Laci's death in the Coroner's report is pro forma, then why should I take the Coroner's classification of Laci's death as homicide as anything but equally pro forma, when the medical examiners who autopsied Laci could not assign any cause of death?
The Coroner's classification of Laci's death as homicide was not based on medical evidence.
JNS
Pro forma? You make absolutely no sense. No sense at all. Are you saying that a coroner has no authority to determine the manner of death? There have been murder cases brought to trial with convictions with no cause of death proven, but with a determination that the manner of death was homicide. If a corpse is too decomposed to determine whether or not death was caused by strangulation, poison, or suffocation, an ME or a coroner can still determine that a homicide occurred.
From Contra Costa County's coroner's website:
"The Coroner’s primary duty is to determine the cause, manner and mode of death as a result of homicide, suicide, accidental or unexplained deaths. The determination of death is reached through examination of evidence, scene investigation, review of medical records, witness and doctor interviews as well as autopsies and/or Coroner Inquests."
A coroner makes determinations that are legally defensible, and are used in court. But it seems that that doesn't matter to you.
Did you read the transcripts?
The cause of death was homicide: by ruling out natural cause, suicide and accident.
The the ME was not able to determine MANNER of death.
In the absence of a corpse, how are we to know that a murder has occurred? There could be a witness to a murder and the victim is missing, and a trail of supporting forensic evidence, for example.
But in this case the body gives no evidence that the cause of death was homicide, so we must to go other evidence ... and that evidence is lacking, as I pointed out. No eyewitnesses, no evidence of a murder weapon having existed much less one that links the victim to a suspect, no crime scene, no known time or place of death, no forensic evidence that isn't compatible with common transference.
It's counter-intuitive that Scott Peterson -- who was so clumsy in his lies that even the clueless Amber Frey figured it out -- committed an otherwise perfect crime.
JNS
Velveeta wrote:
"[Quoting me] 'No ME could possibly conclude the cause of death as homicide because they were unable to determine a cause of death.'
"The cause of death was homicide: by ruling out natural cause, suicide and accident. The ME was not able to determine MANNER of death."
That's playing with words. The medical examiners who performed the autopsies could not offer an opinion to a medical certainty on how or why or what week Laci Peterson and her baby died.
JNS
Your entire article is FOS to anyone who has been paying the slightest bit of attention to this trial.
And that would not include you. Because if you had, you'd know that you don't need a body, a cause of death, or a motive to convict.
"If you don't have the facts, argue the law. If you don't have the law, argue the facts. If you don't have the law or the facts, impugn the fairness of the process."
Thanks, JP.
*sigh* If this is an example of your ability to think and reason, then I won't be buying any of your books.
onyx wrote:
You are totally self-serving. IMO, you use FR for self promotion purposes only. No murder? A body weighted down?
You deal is simplicities. Your arguments transcend logic and the law. I won't wish you luck in your attempt to peddle your "book."
Okay, this is both a personal smear and completely irrelevant to proving your case.
You have all the qualifications to have been on the prosecution team in the trial of Scott Peterson.
JNS
I thought I said don't quote me.
;O)
Just one example, but there are many:
Person X is missing and reported as such by her husband. The husband has replaced carpeting in the bedroom, but the blood stain is still illuminated with luminol. The area of the blood stain to the volume of blood loss can be calculated to determine that anyone losing that volume of blood would be dead.
Could NOT resist.
I liked it too much.
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