Among the most difficult tasks while covering Scott Peterson's 2004 double-murder trial: staying on top of literally thousands of facts flying around at all times. Monitoring TV and newspapers was a daunting chore. I'm sure we missed hundreds of reports. Just keeping track of everything presented in the courtroom was hard enough.
The Bee had only one permanent courtroom pass, like everyone else, but two full-time reporters covering the trial -- me and John Cote'. So, we would take turns. Sometimes I would get up early to try snagging a daily pass in the public lottery held on a sidewalk 90 minutes before a session.
An overflow audio room a block and a half away for reporters without passes proved to be a poor substitute for the courtroom, where we could see jurors studying Scott Peterson or Sharon Rocha or chuckling among themselves at various witness statements. We needed to see Judge Alfred Delucchi's face as he grew impatient when prosecutors Rick Distaso and Dave Harris seemed to drag their feet on sharing evidence with Peterson's team.
Seeing it live, we felt, allowed us to better inform you.
A year after the trial, Harris coolly insisted that they never panicked, that they had everything in control from start to finish. Yes, the prosecution achieved its goal in the end, but John and I and all the reporters watching from a few feet away knew that things had started rather badly for the government.
John and I could see that jurors were impressed with Peterson's celebrity attorney, Mark Geragos, virtually from the start, when he exposed a police blunder over comments about meringue on Martha Stewart's TV show. It was no surprise to us when a juror, dismissed three weeks into the trial, said Peterson was headed toward acquittal. We knew from off-the-record, private conversations that people seeking justice for Laci were seething at the prosecution's performance -- and demanding more.
It's probably not fair to give all credit for the prosecution's impressive rebound to Birgit Fladager, a soft-voiced but unflinching chief deputy district attorney who suddenly began attending court every day a month into the trial. But that seemed to signal a turn in the trial's tenor, at least to those watching from inside. We saw jurors warm to her as she stood up to Geragos.
I never saw Peterson, always dressed in a conservative suit, interact with attorneys seeking his execution.
He often smiled and seemed to joke with bailiffs as he entered the courtroom from a private hallway, usually glancing and nodding to members of his family seated behind him. But as soon as he took his seat, he generally kept his gaze straight ahead, toward the judge, witness stand and jurors. He often whispered to his lawyers as witnesses took the stand.
Reporters in every media accurately recounted Peterson's utter lack of emotion at the trial's three critical moments: when jurors found him guilty in November 2004, pronounced the death sentence a month later and as the judge affirmed the sentence three months after that. It's true that Peterson wore the same face throughout most of the trial, but there was one unforgettable departure.
In September 2004, he dabbed his eyes, nose and mouth with a tissue while a medical examiner discussed wall-length slides of Conner Peterson's tiny body. I closely watched for more than an hour as Conner's father hunched forward, his head close to the table in front of him as he visibly appeared to gulp, gulp, gulp.
I had not seen anything close to that uncommon display before, and I never saw it again. But I wouldn't have seen it at all if I'd been relegated that day to the listening room.
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