Redwood City — Convicted murderer Scott Peterson’s attempt to prove someone else killed his wife, Laci, and their unborn son failed overwhelmingly Wednesday when a judge denied all but one request to retest DNA samples from old pieces of evidence.
Although his new defense lawyers from the Los Angeles Innocence Project will be allowed to retest a piece of duct tape stuck to Laci’s pants when her body was found washed up along San Francisco Bay in 2003, they won’t be able to retest a stained mattress from a burned-out van found two miles from her Modesto home. They hoped it would show Laci was kidnapped and killed that morning of Christmas Eve in 2002, then thrown into San Francisco Bay to frame her husband, who said he was fishing there the day she disappeared.
The judge also denied the defense request to retest a length of plastic twine found wrapped about the neck of the baby, which washed up separately from his mother after an April storm churned up the bay. The defense had hoped the twine would show DNA from other suspects to prove the theory — originally made and rejected by jurors during the original trial in 2004 — that the baby was born after Laci disappeared and the assailants threw mother and son separately into the bay.
Like the original trial 20 years ago, national news media, including a crew from Dateline NBC, attended Wednesday’s hearing – a testament to the endless fascination with the case of the handsome Modesto fertilizer salesman accused of killing his substitute teacher wife while he made plans for a future with his mistress from Fresno.
Peterson, watching the hearing over a Zoom link from Mule Creek State Prison in Amador County, looked down and appeared to take notes as he heard the series of rulings against him. Several members of his family in the courtroom appeared dejected and declined to speak to the press.
“It’s not over,” Peterson’s defense lawyer Paula Mitchell said after the ruling. “It’s far from over.”
Another hearing is scheduled for July 1 to go over details about the duct tape to be retested, and the defense team is still hoping to gain access to evidence from eyewitnesses who said they saw Laci walking her dog the morning she disappeared.
In her ruling from the bench Wednesday afternoon, San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Elizabeth M. Hill said that any suggestion the baby was actually born before Laci’s death amounted to “nothing but rumor and third-party hearsay.” Autopsy evidence from the original trial was clear, she said, that Laci’s womb had protected the baby for months at the bottom of the bay until the top of her uterus gave way during the storm.
In denying the defense request to retest the stained mattress, Judge Hill said the mattress fabric had been tested for DNA as recently as 2019 and the results came back negative for blood or any female DNA.
The defense failed to show that new DNA testing would be more “discriminating or probative,” she said.
The judge also said the defense failed to present any evidence that the burned-out orange van found on Christmas morning was connected to Laci’s murder, or a robbery across the street from her home that happened in the days surrounding Laci’s disappearance.
The defense lawyers’ singular victory — that they will be able to retest the duct tape from Laci’s pants — would have to show evidence that someone other than Peterson used it during her murder in order for Peterson to have any chance at a new trial.
Hill’s rulings came after defense and prosecution lawyers had battled in court over whether there was some other explanation for the murders.
“The case cries out for further investigation,” Mitchell, Peterson’s defense lawyer, told the judge during her arguments.
“This is an entirely circ*mstantial case in which no murder weapon was found, no time or date was established, no cause or manner of death was established,” Mitchell said. “DNA could have changed the outcome” of the trial, she said.
Dave Harris, a Stanislaus County deputy district attorney who helped prosecute Peterson in 2004, argued that the circ*mstantial evidence was enough to convince jurors that Peterson killed his wife.
“The people know the truth,” Harris said during his presentation. “They know he’s guilty of murdering his wife and unborn son.”
Like he did in a 337-page brief, however, Harris again recounted what he called “overwhelming” evidence against Peterson, including that Peterson told his mistress he had “lost” his wife before she actually disappeared and he would be spending his first holidays without her.
Peterson’s defense team, Harris said, has never explained why Peterson was doing internet searches in early December studying the currents and depths of the bay, even before he bought the fishing boat he told no one about. The defense never explained, he said, what happened to all the extra cement he purchased, if it was not for making several anchors to weigh down his wife’s body. Harris also recalled a wiretapped phone call when Peterson’s mother encouraged him to fly to Washington where there had been a Laci sighting.
When he hung up, Harris said, “you can hear the defendant laughing at his mother who thinks he’s going to go to Washington and search for his missing wife.”
