Modesto’s Scott Peterson killed family out of selfishness, prosecutors say in appeal response

Scott Peterson’s yearning to be free from marriage and impending fatherhood prompted him to murder his pregnant wife and their unborn son, and jurors got it right when they sentenced the Modesto man to die more than 10 years ago, state prosecutors said this week in a long-awaited response to Peterson’s death penalty appeal.

“Fueled by the trifecta of selfishness, arrogance and wanderlust, Scott Peterson decided to take matters into his own hands” and killed Laci and Conner Peterson, says the document, signed by California Attorney General Kamala Harris and written by a deputy prosecutor, Donna Provenzano.

“I’m very pleased with her work product and very confident in the outcome,” said Birgit Fladager, who steered a team of prosecutors from Stanislaus County in the Peterson case before winning election as district attorney.

The 519-page document, filed Monday with the California Supreme Court, said Peterson’s parents provided him with “a life of privilege,” handing him a country club membership, jobs, elite schooling and a down payment for the young couple’s Modesto home. “Yet they could not give their son the one thing he secretly wanted most: to be free” of family burdens, Provenzano said in the brief.

Substitute teacher Laci Peterson was eight months pregnant when she went missing on Christmas Eve in 2002. Her husband said he had been fishing in a newly purchased boat in San Francisco Bay and returned to an empty house; the badly decomposed bodies of mother and fetus washed ashore nearly four months later.

Scott Peterson’s 470-page appeal, filed in July 2012, noted that he proclaimed his innocence from the start and blamed massive publicity for swaying jurors in a blockbuster trial spanning most of 2004. He was convicted late that year and arrived on death row in March 2005.

The trial judge, Alfred Delucci, who since has died, was “an experienced and respected jurist” whose “unrelenting dedication” to justice made sure Peterson received a fair trial, Provenzano said. Peterson’s celebrity defense attorney, Mark Geragos, himself approved the selection of “a fair and impartial jury,” she noted.

No juror contacted by The Modesto Bee through the years has second-guessed the verdicts of guilt and the death penalty.

“I can tell you justice was served,” juror Mike Belmessieri told The Bee Wednesday. “We made the right decision. Not a day goes by that I don’t remind myself, and I’m comfortable with it.”

Although it’s been nearly a decade since Peterson entered a cell at San Quentin State Prison, his appeal process has progressed relatively quickly. His family hired an attorney specializing in Supreme Court cases in hope of freeing him soon, a tactic that Laci Peterson’s family has said could backfire if he lands on a fast track to the death chamber.

Fladager, for example, won a death penalty verdict against another man in 1999 – five years before Peterson – and that appeal is in the same stage. Peterson’s camp will make the next move in filing a response; technically, it’s due March 27, but Fladager said delays are routinely requested and granted, especially in high-profile cases.

The Peterson trial moved from Modesto to Redwood City, in the Bay Area’s San Mateo County, to escape ponderous publicity, but his appellate attorneys argue it should have been moved again because prospective jurors were well aware of the high-profile case. Newspapers and cable reporters followed every move, including revelations of Peterson’s affair with Fresno massage therapist Amber Frey, a star prosecution witness.

Provenzano said Delucci effectively “shielded the legal process from the searing gaze of the public and the media,” helping jurors “divine the truth” and “reach just verdicts.”

Jurors needed only to determine who killed Laci Peterson, and prosecutors “presented an abundance of evidence that pointed the finger of guilt squarely at Scott Peterson,” Provenzano said.

At the time, Provenzano was a prosecutor in San Mateo County – sharing office space with Fladager’s team. Fladager’s staff in recent months has cooperated with Provenzano to produce this week’s document.

Fladager was elected district attorney in 2006 and re-elected in 2010 and 2014. Prosecutors continue to take interest in their cases even years later, she said Wednesday.

“If you do a trial and you know the case is coming up on appeal, you pay attention,” she said. “If you try a case and work real hard on it, it matters to you and you track it.”

Peterson jurors “fairly concluded that he, in an unmitigated act of selfishness and arrogance, extinguished two beautiful lives,” Provenzano wrote. “The criminal justice system did not fail Scott Peterson. On the contrary, the process was fair and the verdicts just.”

This story was originally published January 28, 2015 at 7:11 PM with the headline "Modesto’s Scott Peterson killed family out of selfishness, prosecutors say in appeal response."