Bill Lockyer
Posted on 04/23/2003 5:54:23 AM PDT by runningbear
Paper seeks details in Peterson case
Posted on Wed, Apr. 23, 2003
Paper seeks details in Peterson case
COURT ASKED TO UNSEAL SEARCH WARRANTS, NOW CALLED PUBLIC RECORDS
By Roxanne Stites
Mercury News
With prosecutors silent on why they believe Scott Peterson allegedly killed his pregnant wife, Laci, an effort is under way to open court records that would start to reveal some details about a homicide investigation that has captivated the country.
The Modesto Bee newspaper asked a state appeals court Tuesday to pave the way for a Stanislaus County Superior Court judge to unseal eight search warrants in the case, which prosecutors are fighting to keep sealed.
The newspaper is wrangling with the courts to release documents that would reveal why police searched Peterson's home, office, storage locker, vehicles and phone records.
``They are court records, not records that belong to the police or the sheriff or any law enforcement agency,'' said the Bee's attorney Charity Kenyon, citing California law that states that a warrant must be returned to the court 10 days after it is issued. At that point, the warrant becomes a public record.
A Stanislaus County Superior Court judge sealed the documents last month at the request of Modesto police, but the Bee challenged the ruling, in part, because the court improperly sealed the warrants without holding a required hearing.
The court acknowledged the error, and decided to keep the warrants sealed 90 more days unless police made an arrest in the case.
The district attorney immediately appealed the ruling to a state appeals court, which stayed the order and any disclosure of records until it has time to review the matter.
Peterson was arrested Friday on homicide charges, and the Bee wants the case sent back to superior court, which ruled the warrants would be sealed until an arrest.
Kenyon said a decision could be made as early as this week, unraveling some of the first details into the case. Peterson, 30, is charged with killing his wife, who was eight months pregnant, and the couple's unborn son. Prosecutors are considering whether to pursue the death penalty.
The district attorney's office didn't return phone calls.
Terry Francke, general counsel for the non-profit California First Amendment Coalition, said the battle is not surprising.
Tons of news sources to view
DA: Case Could Take Two Years
POSTED: 9:04 a.m. PDT April 22, 2003
UPDATED: 11:42 a.m. PDT April 22, 2003
MODESTO, Calif. -- While Scott Peterson strolled in a fenced-in exercise yard above the Stanislaus County Jail Tuesday morning, family, friends and prosecutors were settling in for a legal and emotional drama that could take two years to unfold.
Peterson appeared to be shackled as he made his way around the yard and was under the jail guards' watchful eyes. Officials said he would be given 90 minutes twice a week to stretch his legs on the top of the roof.
Meanwhile, District Attorney Jim Brazelton said he'd be happy if the case got to trial anytime in the next two years. He added that investigators have assembled a large amount of evidence against Peterson.
"There are two kinds of evidence -- real evidence and circumstantial evidence," Brazelton said. "Normally you have a combination of the two -- we have a combination of the two. Circumstantial evidence by the way is every bit as good as direct evidence in a court of law."
Appearing on Larry King Live Monday night, Nancy Grace -- a former prosecutor and Court TV commentator -- said sources had told her that Peterson had been calling his former mistress Amber Frey up until 10 days before his arrest and that those "calls were being monitor by police."
Scott Peterson's Family Promise Hunt For Real Killer
"Whatever he told her, the police have," Grace said.
Earlier in the day, Peterson pleaded innocent to capital charges that he murdered his wife and unborn son in a case that could bring the death penalty.
"I am not guilty," Peterson said during a brief, but emotional, arraignment in Stanislaus County Superior Court.
Peterson, 30, was held without bail on charges that he acted "intentionally, deliberately and with premeditation" in killing Laci Peterson, 27, and Conner Peterson, the couple's unborn child.
EXCERPTED:
Some insights of Califa Lawmakers trying to do away with the death penalty
Lawmakers Debate Future Of Death Row
Lawmakers Debate Future Of Death Row
POSTED: 2:47 p.m. PDT April 22, 2003
UPDATED: 2:48 p.m. PDT April 22, 2003
SACRAMENTO -- California should consider halting executions while it takes "an in-depth look" at whether it administers the death penalty fairly, former Illinois Gov. George Ryan told state lawmakers Tuesday.
Repeated failures in Illinois' system prompted Ryan to commute the sentences of all his state's 167 condemned inmates before he left office this year.
The public seems to favor the death penalty, "but they want a system that's fair, just and accurate," Ryan told the Senate Select Committee on the California Correctional System. "If you're poor and minority, you haven't got a prayer."
California's Death Row is disproportionately black, poor, mentally ill or borderline retarded, said opponents, lawmakers and legal experts. About 60 percent of death sentences upheld by California courts are later overturned by federal appeals.
California's criminal justice system has some of the same shortfalls as Illinois' system, testified attorney Robert Sanger, who authored a report comparing California's death penalty system with the 85 recommendations of the Illinois Commission appointed by Ryan in January 2000.
For instance, California meets just one of the 19 recommendations designed to keep false confessions and incomplete or misleading testimony from leading to improper convictions and sentences. Death penalty qualifiers are so broad that virtually any murder can bring a death sentence if the prosecutor is so inclined, Sanger said.
Snip it.
EXCERPTED:
The Case for Scott
Why a Conviction Isn’t Guaranteed in Murders of Laci Peterson, Unborn Child
By Bryan Robinson
April 23 — Scott Peterson has admitted cheating on his pregnant wife, and he placed himself near the area where the remains of Laci Peterson and their unborn child were found, but that doesn't make the prosecution's murder case foolproof.
Peterson, 30, has pleaded not guilty to capital murder charges in the slayings. Laci was almost eight months pregnant on Christmas Eve, when Peterson reported her missing from their Modesto, Calif., home and told police he had been fishing at the Berkeley Marina the day she disappeared.
Last week, Laci's decomposing body and the remains of her unborn son washed ashore along a San Francisco-area beach, just three miles from the Berkeley Marina, helping to spark her husband's arrest.
Police grabbed Peterson in San Diego, 30 miles from the Mexican border. He had grown a goatee and dyed all his dark hair blond, and was carrying his brother's ID and $10,000 in cash. Authorities said they arrested him before receiving DNA confirmation on the bodies because they feared he would try to flee.
While prosecutors have not revealed the evidence that implicates Peterson, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said prosecutors had enough evidence for a "slam dunk" conviction.
Legal experts, however, say that despite the damning circumstantial evidence against Peterson — the affair, his placement near the discovery of the bodies and an alleged attempted flight — the prosecution's case may be more like a long-range jump shot that's far from certain to land in the basket.
"From my experience, you need the evidence that connects Laci Peterson [and her death] to Scott Peterson, and I don't think prosecutors have that evidence," said California-based defense attorney Brian Oxman.
Authorities have said they are conducting tests on a tarp that washed ashore following the bodies' recovery to see if there is a link to the case. There has also been speculation about traces of cement apparently found on the boat Scott used the day Laci disappeared and containers of cement police removed from the Peterson home during the investigation.
"If there were traces of cement found on the body, normally that would have been enough to arrest Scott right away," Oxman said. "But they didn't do that, and that tells me that they didn't have the physical evidence that warranted the arrest. … I think they arrested Peterson more because they thought he was a flight risk, not because of any evidence.
"It is so unfortunate for government officials to say things like 'We have a slam dunk' or that 'We're going to get him,' " Oxman continued. "Those kind of statements inflame the public and poison the jury pool. It violates ethics and the defendant's rights."
Peterson Is His Own Worst Enemy
Peterson's arrest and the slam-dunk claim did seem to incite the public in Modesto. When he arrived at the Stanislaus County jail on Friday, hundreds of people were outside, calling Peterson a "baby killer" and "murderer." Arguably, the media frenzy surrounding the case and Peterson's actions following Laci's disappearance turned the public against him.
ECERPTED:
PENAL CODE SECTION 187-199
187. (a) Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought.
(b) This section shall not apply to any person who commits an act that results in the death of a fetus if any of the following apply:
(1) The act complied with the Therapeutic Abortion Act, Article 2 (commencing with Section 123400) of Chapter 2 of Part 2 of Division 106 of the Health and Safety Code.
(2) The act was committed by a holder of a physician's and surgeon' s certificate, as defined in the Business and Professions Code, in a case where, to a medical certainty, the result of childbirth would be death of the mother of the fetus or where her death from childbirth, although not medically certain, would be substantially certain or more likely than not.
(3) The act was solicited, aided, abetted, or consented to by the mother of the fetus.
(c) Subdivision (b) shall not be construed to prohibit the prosecution of any person under any other provision of law.
188. Such malice may be express or implied. It is express when there is manifested a deliberate intention unlawfully to take away the life of a fellow creature. It is implied, when no considerable provocation appears, or when the circumstances attending the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart.
When it is shown that the killing resulted from the intentional doing of an act with express or implied malice as defined above, no other mental state need be shown to establish the mental state of malice aforethought. Neither an awareness of the obligation to act within the general body of laws regulating society nor acting despite such awareness is included within the definition of malice.
Excerpted:
Wedding bells are ringing for Lockyer, lawyer
Bill Lockyer
The two have been involved for more than a year, and their child is due to be born in the late summer, Barankin said.
"They have been in a relationship for quite some time," he said.
Snip it...
(Excerpt) Read more at bayarea.com ...
Ah, if only every abortionist could get that kind of response when they leave for work in the morning.
Oh...you know my ex-husband?
Amber Frey talking to Scott? Weird. I thought she was thru with him. Altho, I thought I heard last night that they used to take walks in the Sierra. What a mess.
"Chairman Mao" Lockyer.. what can one say? He wasn't shooting blanks, I reckun. He should have practiced better weapon control.
This is because the weights have sunk to the bottom.
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