No decision on whether bugged calls allowed
No decision on whether bugged calls allowed
By GARTH STAPLEY and JOHN COTÉ
BEE STAFF WRITERS
Last Updated: February 19, 2004, 11:55:36 AM PST
REDWOOD CITY -- Wiretap testimony in Scott Peterson's trial Wednesday focused on nuts and bolts of how phone bugs work, except for one spirited exchange when defense attorney Mark Geragos threatened to call a prosecutor to the witness stand.
Judge Alfred Delucchi, however, twice shot down the idea.
Seeking to have an opposing attorney testify is unusual, legal observers said.
"There is a reluctance, a reticence, to call the actual attorneys in a case," Los Angeles defense attorney Bradley Brunon said. "I would have been real surprised if the judge granted that."
Geragos wanted to ask prosecutor Rick Distaso -- under oath -- about meetings involving officers who monitored Peterson's phone calls, Distaso and Stanislaus County Superior Court Judge Wray Ladine, who approved the bugging.
Geragos already has subpoenaed Ladine because no stenographer was present to record the meetings.
Ruth Jones, a professor at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento and former New York City prosecutor, said investigator Steven Jacobson's testimony regarding the meetings should be sufficient.
Geragos' desire to put Distaso on the stand could be a tactic to keep his opponent off balance, Brunon said.
"There's probably some gamesmanship going on," Brunon said.
"Mark doesn't want to make their job any easier than it is," Jones said. "He's going to make a lot of motions, and he's going to lose many of them. But that's his job, to make motions."
Wednesday, Delucchi called a recess at 11:02 a.m. to listen to some recordings of calls challenged by Geragos. The judge also invited Jacobson, Peterson and his attorneys into his chambers.
They didn't emerge until after lunch, when attorneys on both sides met first with the judge behind closed doors, then privately with each other and again with the judge before he announced at 3:52 p.m. that the session would not reconvene until this morning.
All participants are bound by a court-imposed gag order from revealing what was discussed in the meetings.
Jacobson was the only witness called Wednesday, and he spent most of his time explaining phone bugging.
Peterson's two cell phones were tapped from Jan. 10 through Feb. 4, Jacobson said, and again from April 13 until his arrest April 18. Jacobson said he called off the first tap because it wasn't producing evidence.
Reasons for prosecutors' desire to introduce the wiretap recordings remain unclear. They introduced no such evidence at Peterson's preliminary hearing in October and November.
Geragos takes exception to the taps because agents monitored parts of calls between Peterson and his former attorney Kirk McAllister and with the attorney's private investigator. Such calls by law are confidential.
Jacobson, wearing a western-style blazer and carrying a cowboy hat, said his agents did not record many calls that weren't related to the case.
Peterson made or received more than 3,800 calls during the time the taps were authorized, he said.
Of those, agents detected 69 calls between Peterson and McAllister or the investigator, Jacobson said, but listened to parts of only three......