Former Attorney Says Defense Is 'Strong'Kirk McAllister Is Protecting Key Witnesses

Former Attorney Says Defense Is 'Strong'
Kirk McAllister Is Protecting Key Witnesses

MODESTO, Calif. -- Scott Peterson's former attorney says he has some powerful evidence that will help defend Peterson against charges that he murdered his wife, Laci, and his unborn son.

Scott Peterson's original attorney, Kirk McAllister (pictured left) said his office has uncovered evidence that will exonerate Peterson -- evidence that will be turned over to his new attorney. Defense sources say the new attorney will be Mark Garagos, NBC11's Karen Brown reported.

When asked why, he said, "because we investigated it instead of calling press conferences like the police did."

The key to Peterson's defense will be the testimony of witnesses uncovered by McAllister, witnesses he says need to be protected, Brown reported.

"I'm protecting witnesses, because I have concerns for them if I go public," he said.

According to defense sources, Los Angeles attorney Mark Garagos -- who has represented high-profile clients like Winona Ryder -- will take over the case Friday morning.

The current public defender says getting Garagos will only strengthen Peterson's defense.

"I think he's going to do a great job," said Kent Faulkner, the deputy public defender. "He's got the resources. He's got the knowledge. He's got the connections. I think it'll change the landscape of the way the case is tried."

Meanwhile, the District Attorney's office issued a statement saying, "We treat all cases as the case needs to be treated. Who the defense attorney is, is not going to change what we do."

In the meantime, Laci Peterson's family is busy preparing for the memorial that will take place Sunday at the First Baptist Church in Modesto.

Scott Peterson has not made an official request to attend that memorial, but the sheriff here says if that request is made, he'll deny it, Brown reported. Sign-up For Breaking News E-mail Alerts Copyright 2003 by NBC11.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast,

Stanislaus County Public Defender Tim Bazar said he expects Los Angeles attorney Mark Geragos to step in today to defend Scott Peterson, who is charged with murdering his wife and unborn son.

Peterson, 30, is charged with two counts of murder in the deaths of his wife, Laci, and their unborn son, Conner.

Superior Court Judge Nancy Ashley appointed the public defender to the case last week. A hearing scheduled for 8:30 a.m. today before Judge Al Girolami is designated for substitution of counsel.

If Geragos steps in, the public defender's office would turn over the case completely

"It's just not appropriate for a county agency to take a secondary role," Bazar said. "We wouldn't be in a position to actually control the course of the case."

Bazar said his office has canceled one contract extended to a potential expert, and ceased efforts to retain other experts and investigators.

"I don't think it'd be prudent to spend county money on a case where it appears we would be off the case in a matter of hours," Bazar said.

Geragos said Wednesday on the CNN program "Larry King Live" that he would make a decision on the case Thursday. But Geragos did not return calls Thursday.

In Modesto on Tuesday, Geragos met with Peterson and representatives of the public defender's office.

About 3,000 people are ex-pected to attend a Sunday afternoon memorial service for Laci Peterson, the Modesto woman whose remains were found last month along the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay.

That turnout would be more than double the estimated 1,200 people who nearly a year ago paid their respects to Chandra Levy, a Modesto woman whose disappearance, like Peterson's, gripped the nation.

The 24-year-old Levy was the subject of a major search and intense media coverage after she disappeared in 2001 in Washington, D.C., where she had just completed a federal internship. Her remains were found almost 13 months later in a District of Columbia park.

The body of Peterson's unborn son, Conner, washed ashore about a mile from his mother's body. Scott Peterson, 30, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder in the slayings of his wife and son. He faces the death penalty.

The memorial service is set to take place on what would have been Laci Peterson's 28th birthday.

Family and friends are slated to speak at the memorial service, which will include a video tribute, choir performance and other music.

"There will be songs that were some of Laci's favorites and ones that had a lot of meaning to the family," Petersen said.

The memorial service is set to start at 3 p.m. at First Baptist Church, and is expected to last an hour.

Streets near the large church generally are closed for Sunday services, but there will be more closures this week, and they will be longer, police said.

The city will have 17 officers on duty around the church Sunday, Lt. Gary Watts said. Four will be working overtime, and another four will be reserves.

The extra police were required because several scheduled officers already are assigned to other events on the Cinco de Mayo weekend, he said. The city will absorb the approximately $1,200 extra cost, Watts said.

Even with private lawyer, public can still pay for murder defense

Fri May 2, 5:43 PM ET Add Crimes and Trials - Court TV to My Yahoo!

By Harriet Ryan, Court TV

MODESTO, Calif. (Court TV) — When Scott Peterson (news - web sites)'s family hired Mark Geragos as his lawyer, they set him apart from nearly all other capital murder defendants.

Because death penalty defenses can run into the millions and few facing such charges are wealthy, virtually everyone charged with capital crimes is declared indigent and represented by a public defender or a court-appointed lawyer.

In California, high-profile defendants, such as David Westerfield and Erik and Lyle Menendez, are sometimes able to hire private lawyers initially, but if they run out of money before the case is resolved, as both Westerfield and the Menendez brothers did, state law often requires taxpayers to pick up the private lawyer's bill, albeit at a substantial government discount.

It is unclear how Peterson, a fertilizer salesman before his arrest for the double-murder of his wife and unborn son, and his parents and six siblings plan to pay Geragos and a coterie of co-counsel, private investigators, and paralegals who will work the case. Peterson said during his April 21 arraignment that he could not afford a lawyer, and a judge assigned him the Stanislaus County public defender.

But Geragos, a Los Angeles-based lawyer who represented Congressman Gary Condit and actress Winona Ryder, has done extensive television commentary on the case. He visited Peterson in jail before announcing publicly that he was considering representing him. His decision was made official at a hearing Friday morning.

For a typical murder case in Modesto, the public defender's office would represent any defendant, like Peterson, who said he was indigent. Normally, the court reviews the defendant's finanical records and property holdings to make sure he cannot pay. Peterson was carrying $10,000 in cash at the time of his arrest and owns a home, but murder trials and especially capital cases, which can run into the millions, often exceed the resources of even someone who is comfortably middle class.

If a conflict arose with the public defender's office — for example, in Peterson's case, the office is also representing men who allegedly burglarized a neighbor's home around the time of Laci Peterson's murder — the indigent defendant could choose from two private firms in the city who are paid a flat monthly rate by the county to handle those cases.

But taxpayers are not off the hook just because Peterson went outside the public defense system and hired Geragos. Certainly, if he or his family raised enough money, they could pay the entire cost of the trial. Attorney fees in capital cases are estimated at between $500,000 and $1 million, with other trial costs, such as forensic testing, expert testimony and investigators, often doubling the price tag.

But if Peterson and his family can only pay a portion, the county must kick in the rest. In some cases, relatives agree to pony up the private attorney's fees, but other costs, from mental examinations to DNA testing, are billed to the county's indigent defense fund.

In the cases of Westerfield and Menendez, however, citizens ultimately assumed both the private legal fees and other trial costs. Under a 1977 California Supreme Court decision, defendants who have built a relationship of "trust and confidence" over time with a privately retained lawyer can keep that attorney at the public's expense even if they can no longer afford the bills.

"The decision [in the 1977 case] basically said you've got an ongoing, well-established relationship with a lawyer and under the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, it makes no sense to disrupt that relationship," said Elisabeth Semel, a clinical professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.

In the case of Westerfield, who was convicted of killing 7-year-old Danielle van Dam last year, he retained lawyers Steven Feldman and Robert Boyce before he was even arrested, and then deeded his home to the attorneys who promptly put it on the market for $489,000. But before the case went to trial, and with the house still unsold, the lawyers told a judge they had exhausted Westerfield's money preparing his defense and asked to change their status from retained counsel to appointed counsel paid with public funds. A judge initially refused to keep them on, but an appellate court reversed that decision, citing the lawyers' relationship with Westerfield and their knowledge of the case.

In the Menendez case, the brothers, charged with murdering their parents, hired Leslie Abramson to represent them during their first trial, which ended in a hung jury. For the retrial, they could no longer afford Abramson, but since she had represented the brothers for years and knew the case thoroughly, a judge appointed her at taxpayer's expense.

The final bill for these cases is not known because financial records are confidential. Courts consider a defense team's spending to be a road map to its strategy and therefore seal the records until all appeals are completed.

Although some taxpayers might bristle at the idea of financing these defenses, California courts have repeatedly upheld the process. Sometimes, as in the Menendez case, legal experts note that funding a private attorney who has a comprehensive knowledge of the case is cheaper in the long run than asking a public defender's office to spend time familiarizing themselves with a new and complex case. The extra financial and staff costs, including the costs of having to divert lawyers from other cases, can be enormous.

If Peterson ran short of money before completing his case and wanted to continue with Geragos as his attorney, he would have to convince a judge that the pair had built "trust and confidence" and that replacing the lawyer would be detrimental to his defense.

He would also have to convince Geragos to work for far less money than he is accustomed. Private defense lawyers in Stanislaus County capital cases earn $100 per hour. For extraordinary cases, the rate can climb to $125. Geragos, according to other Los Angeles criminal defense lawyers, charges regular clients $500 per hour.

"One hundred dollars an hour wouldn't even cover the overhead in his office," said one colleague, who asked not to be identified.

Donald Lundy, executive officer of Stanislaus County's Superior Court, said he had not talked to Geragos about the rates, but said they were firm.

"We're not known for big time payment of fees for these guys," he said.

Scott Peterson Gets High-Profile Lawyer

1 hour, 44 minutes ago Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!

By JIM WASSERMAN, Associated Press Writer

MODESTO, Calif. - A lawyer who has represented celebrities and served as a television commentator during coverage of the Laci Peterson (news - web sites) homicide investigation said Friday he will defend her accused husband.

Mark Geragos of Los Angeles said he had been hired by Scott Peterson (news - web sites)'s family. He will replace two public defenders assigned to Peterson during arraignment April 21, when Peterson said he couldn't afford a lawyer.

Peterson, a 30-year-old fertilizer salesman, has pleaded innocent to two counts of murder in the deaths of his 27-year-old wife and their unborn son.

Their bodies washed ashore last month in San Francisco Bay near where Scott Peterson said he was fishing Christmas Eve, the day he last saw his wife.

"Scott looks forward to finding out who did this," said Geragos, who plans to review 30,000 pages of police reports by a May 19 pretrial hearing. He said he will probably seek bail for Peterson, who has been held in a solitary jail cell since his arrest April 18.

Geragos has handled high-profile cases in the past. Most recently, he represented Hollywood actress Winona Ryder on shoplifting charges. He also defended Susan McDougal, the former partner in the Whitewater land deal with President Clinton (news - web sites) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites).

Last year, he represented former Rep. Gary Condit (news, bio, voting record) after he was romantically linked to Washington, D.C., intern Chandra Levy, who grew up in Modesto and disappeared in Washington in 2001.

Geragos has been a fixture on cable TV shows since Laci Peterson vanished, venturing far enough to say that police had enough to arrest Peterson and saying that he needed a good lawyer. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty.

During a short hearing Friday, Geragos said he would waive a bail hearing that had been scheduled for Tuesday.

Judge Aldo Girolami also granted his request that Peterson not have to appear in court in a red jail jump suit, bound in handcuffs, shackles and waist chains — an image that has appeared on television and in tabloid newspapers.

"Poster-sized pictures of him labeled as a monster is not conducive to a fair trial," Geragos said.

Thousands are expected at a memorial service Sunday for Laci Peterson, on the day that would have marked her 28th birthday. Authorities have denied Scott Peterson's request to attend.

Audio/video clip

Mark Geragos

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.