The Trial of Scott Peterson

 Did a man brutally murder his pregnant wife to escape the responsibility of having a family?

The trial of Scott Peterson is unique since it poses a perfect example of how not to act during a criminal trial. The odd behavior of Scott Peterson throughout his murder trial played a colossal effect on the verdict.

The Death of Laci and Connor Peterson

Scott Peterson and Laci Rocha were a happy couple in the eyes of their friends and family. They had been married for 5 years and were expecting a baby boy that was to be named Connor. Laci was a part-time substitute teacher, and Scott worked for Tradecorp U.S.A., a newly founded subsidiary of a European fertilizer company. On the morning of Christmas Eve, 2002, Scott claimed he left home at 5:45am to go on a fishing trip and saw Laci before he left. Scott stated that Laci was watching the television and was getting ready to take the family dog on a walk. Laci was seven and a half months pregnant at the time of her disappearance. Later in the day, a neighbor of the Petersons found their golden retriever named McKenzie running around on the street with a mud-covered leash but no owner.

The neighbor took McKenzie, left her in the Peterson's yard, and noticed nothing suspicious at the time. When Scott returned home from his fishing trip, he noticed Laci was missing, and McKenzie was in the backyard. Scott called his in-laws to ask about Laci. Not knowing where she was, Scott's in-laws filed a missing person report. Laci's personal items, including her car and purse, were still at home. When the police investigated the Peterson home, they found an open phone book with a full page about criminal defense attorneys.

Furthermore, they noticed that Scott seemed unfazed by the fact that his pregnant wife was missing out of the blue. These events led the police to suspect Scott of having involvement in the case, but they focused their immediate attention on finding Laci. After extensive searches by hundreds of law enforcement officials and volunteers on water and land, the inquiry found no hope. At a press conference, detective Al Brocchini said that police did not believe Laci willingly disappeared without contacting her family, adding, "That is completely out of character for her." On April 13, 2003, after over four months since the disappearance of Laci Peterson, On April 13, 2003, a couple walking their dog found the decomposing but well-preserved body of a developing male fetus in the San Francisco Bay. Its umbilical cord was still attached, appearing to have been torn. Although a judge sealed the autopsy results, an anonymous source informed the Associated Press that 1.5 loops of nylon tape were found around the fetus' neck, and there was a significant cut on its body. One day later, some passerby's found the dead body of a pregnant woman one mile from where the baby's body was found. Investigators confirmed via DNA tests that the pregnant woman was Laci Peterson, and the baby boy was her unborn son, Connor. After the bodies were found, a massive break in the case led to the police discovering that Scott Peterson had lied about the state of his marriage and Laci. Scott had been having an affair with a massage therapist named Amber Frey. He convinced Amber that he was a single man whose wife had passed away (this was before the death and disappearance of Laci). According to CBS News, this finding by the police quickly turned Scott's public view to a "playboy sociopath." On April 18, 2003, Scott Peterson was charged and arrested for two counts of first-degree murder. The location where Scott went fishing on the day of Laci and Connor's disappearance was very close to where they found the dead bodies. This, along with Scott's affair with Amber Frey, provided probable cause to arrest Scott Peterson. On the day of his arrest, cops say Peterson led them on a high-speed freeway chase, and when they caught up with him, they found that he had dyed his hair blond and had $15,000 in cash and camping gear in his car.

The Trial of Scott Peterson

On April 21, 2003, Scott Peterson pleaded 'not guilty to two felony counts of murder with premeditation and special circumstances. The trial began on June 1, 2004, and was presided by Judge Nancy Ashley. Peterson's defense team was led by famed attorney Mark Geragos. Whereas the prosecution was led by Rick Distaso. The main case made by the prosecution was to prove that Scott Peterson made cement anchors out of some concrete he purchased before the disappearance of Laci and used those anchors to sink her and Connor's body to the bottom of the San Francisco Bay. When this attempt failed, the bodies drifted onto land and eventually led to their discovery. The prosecution ensured that they portrayed Scott as an unfaithful and immoral man looking for ways to get out of his marriage and the commitments associated with parenthood. They also spoke about the financial difficulties that the Petersons were facing at the time and how Laci had a $250,000 life insurance policy. The defense team focused their case on how the prosecution lacked sufficient direct evidence to convict. They claimed that the fetal remains of Connor were of a full-term infant and suggested that someone kidnapped Laci, held her until she gave birth, and then dumped both bodies in the bay. The prosecution refuted this by calling medical experts to testify that the baby was not full-term and died at the same time as his mother. A single hair was the only piece of forensic evidence that was presented by the prosecution. The hair, matched through DNA comparison to hair from Laci's hairbrush, was stuck to pliers found on Peterson's boat. The prosecution's case relied heavily on Scott's life after the disappearance and death of Laci and Connor. They brought up how Peterson changed his appearance and purchased a vehicle using his mother's name to avoid recognition by the press. They included that Peterson added two pornographic television channels to his cable service, expressed interest in selling the house he had shared with Laci, and traded in her Land Rover for a Dodge pick-up truck only a few days after Laci went missing. They linked all of this to how Scott knew Laci would never return. On November 12, 2004, the jury convicted Peterson of two counts of murder: first-degree murder with special circumstances for killing Laci and second-degree murder for killing the fetus she carried. He was sentenced to death, which was later overturned by the California Supreme Court in 2020. The main reasoning behind the jurors' feelings toward Scott Peterson was how he acted during the trial. Steve Cardosi, a juror of Peterson's trial, recalled, "I still would have liked to see, I don't know is remorse is the right word [...] He lost his wife and his child - it didn't seem to faze him. And while that was going on [...], he is romancing a girlfriend. That doesn't make sense to me. At all." Throughout the trial, Scott Peterson didn't speak or express any emotion. This inadvertently portrayed him in a terrible way to the jury and eventually led to his conviction.