Defense: Peterson despicable, but not guilty

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REDWOOD CITY — Jurors must not convict Scott Peterson of murdering his pregnant wife and unborn son just because he’s despicable, his attorney said repeatedly this morning in a lively closing argument.

"All they (prosecutors) want you to do is be influenced by sentiment," Los Angeles attorney Mark Geragos told jurors. "If you hate him, you can engage in conjecture" and perhaps find him guilty.

Geragos never has tried to disprove the affair Peterson was having when Laci Peterson, nearly eight months pregnant, disappeared on Christmas Eve 2002. Police wiretap recordings and televised interviews captured many of his lies.

But the law prevents jurors from letting bias or sympathies blind them to lack of evidence, Geragos said, insisting that Laci Peterson was alive when her husband left to fish alone in San Francisco Bay.

He could face execution if convicted.

"If you do what you’re sworn to do," Geragos told jurors, "and don’t engage in speculation, passion or prejudice … you have only one conclusion — that is that Scott Peterson is not guilty."

Bay Area defense attorney Daniel Horowitz called the performance "one of the finest closing arguments that you will ever see. … I think we’ve seen a complete turnaround from yesterday’s prosecution closing argument."

Prosecutor Rick Distaso’s presentation Monday was heavy on the defendant’s odd behavior, which, Distaso said, indicated guilt. Geragos asked jurors to see through that strategy.

He began this morning’s court session by walking to his client and asking jurors, "Do you all hate him?"

He said Distaso’s argument the day before amounted to 12 minutes of authorities’ theory followed by "four hours of ‘This guy’s the biggest jerk that ever walked the face of the Earth, the biggest liar on the face of the Earth, and you should hate him, hate him, hate him.’

"‘Don’t bother with five months of evidence,’" Geragos continued, mimicking prosecutors. "‘Don’t bother with the fact that the evidence shows clearly he didn’t do this. Just hate him, because if you hate him, you’ll convict him.’"

Geragos said prosecutors began the trial June 1 with the notion that Peterson killed his wife to be with Fresno massage therapist Amber Frey, but switched course and now hope to persuade jurors that he wanted to be a "jet-set" bachelor running from parenthood.

Police bumbled from the beginning because within one hour of the missing-woman report, Geragos contended, they had concluded that Scott Peterson was the culprit. That blinded them to signs of his innocence, and that his wife was alive the morning of Dec. 24, 2002:

Scott Peterson asked his sister-in-law to come over for pizza the night detectives think he killed his wife.

Authorities found no trace of evidence indicating she was murdered in the home.

He paid her health insurance premium the day before she vanished.

Police evidence photos showed a curling iron out in bathroom, though their housekeeper testified she put items away the day before.

Someone used a computer in the home on Dec. 24, 2002, to search for a fleece scarf and a sunflower-motif umbrella stand. It’s reasonable that Laci Peterson, who wore scarves and had a sunflower tattooed on her ankle, surfed the Internet that morning, Geragos said.

Someone printed from the Internet a recipe for crème brûlée that morning.

A neighbor, whose bedroom is about 15 feet from the Peterson’s Covena Avenue home, heard nothing unusual that night.