He is not innocent. But Scott Peterson still deserves a retrial. Here’s why
Scott Peterson should get a new trial.
Not because he’s innocent. I don’t think he is.
Not because bombastic defense attorney Mark Geragos proved the Modesto man’s innocence in his blockbuster 2004 trial. Geragos most certainly didn’t.
Not because juror Richelle Nice did everything right when she was picked to help decide whether Peterson killed his very pregnant wife, Laci, and their unborn son, Conner. Nice made plenty of mistakes.
Not because Peterson’s current appellate lawyer Cliff Gardner was more persuasive in Thursday’s retrial hearing than Stanislaus County prosecutor Dave Harris. Gardner wasn’t.
Peterson should get a new trial because his right to a fair one 18 years ago was compromised. It’s that simple.
Reaching this conclusion, please believe me, is anything but easy.
Then a reporter for The Modesto Bee, Laci’s hometown newspaper, I covered that trial and saw nearly everything jurors did, as well as many things they didn’t. Just after jurors deemed Scott worthy of the death penalty, I talked with several in their homes in San Mateo County. Since, I have sat knee-to-knee in extended interviews with Laci’s mother, Sharon Rocha, various witnesses, some members of Scott’s family, and Nice.
When Scott’s appellate team began arguing in 2017 that Nice had torpedoed the 2004 trial, I was the one she chose to share her side of the story; we had kept in touch. “I did not lie to get on this trial to fry Scott. I did not,” she told me.
To this day, Nice and I continue to exchange messages through social media, including during Thursday’s retrial hearing as we both watched remotely. She said she had considered attending in person as a member of the public, but decided not to because her presence might cause pain to Laci’s family.
Nice feels Scott’s team is twisting her words. She is mortified at the thought that he could get a new trial because of what she did.
I take her at her word.
Yes, she made mistakes when filling out a 23-page pretrial questionnaire given to prospective jurors. But I believe her when she says they were innocent mistakes. Let’s get real — who knows that a request for a restraining order technically is a type of lawsuit?
The juror known to us trial reporters as “Strawberry Shortcake” (we weren’t told real names until later) wasn’t lying when she wrote that she had not been a crime victim, even though her boyfriend’s ex slashed his tires, kicked down their door and threatened her when she was pregnant three years before.
Nice had a rough life there in East Palo Alto, a relative ghetto compared to nearby rich Palo Alto. When violence is always just around the corner, getting called out is not a big deal; it’s a part of life.
Neither do I believe that she furtively plotted to punish a man by lying to get on his jury, as some sort of Machiavellian way to avenge the wrongs done to her.
The best proof was her reaction when the judge back then went to excuse her from service because she would not have an income beyond two weeks in a trial expected to take several months: She got up to leave.
Stealth juror?
A “stealth juror,” as Scott’s camp has called her, would not have done that. If she was bent on making Peterson pay, she might have stalled. She might have asked to stay. But she did the opposite — she started to walk out.
None other than Geragos fought to keep her in the running. The judge balked, Nice sat back down, and ultimately Geragos prevailed when she was seated as an alternate juror, and later as a real juror when another was dismissed.
Geragos must have seen a free spirit in Nice, with her hair dyed bright pink and several tattoos at a time when they were not mainstream. Defense lawyers look for independent thinkers who aren’t afraid to stand up to others, because just one against 11 can hang a jury and prevent a conviction.
He was wrong, of course. Having seen all the evidence, Nice became convinced that Scott Peterson really had killed his wife and dumped her body in San Francisco Bay on Christmas Eve 2002 near where the remains of mother and unborn son washed up four months after.
All the other jurors agreed, and he arrived on death row in March 2005.
The California Supreme Court overturned his death sentence because the trial judge, Al Delucchi — who died of cancer in 2008 — made pretrial mistakes when he excused some other prospective jurors. Stanislaus District Attorney Birgit Fladager, who had led the team prosecuting Peterson, opted not to try reinstating the death sentence to avoid the pain that Laci’s family would inevitably relive.
That took Scott off death row, but he remains behind bars while the current question of juror misconduct plays out. A new judge will rule sometime after final written briefs are filed on Sept. 16.
At this point you should be wondering how I can state that Nice is sincere while also concluding that Peterson deserves a new trial. Isn’t that a contradiction?
It comes down to justice
The thing is, Nice’s intent doesn’t really matter.
My opinion obviously doesn’t matter.
That Fladager and Harris performed brilliantly doesn’t matter.
The feelings of Laci’s family matter to those who sympathize with victims’ survivors. But their pain has no bearing on whether Peterson’s constitutionally guaranteed rights were upheld when jurors were chosen.
So important is that process that a judge’s missteps already have resulted in his death sentence being tossed.
In the eyes of justice, details matter.
And 18 years ago, Geragos deserved to know Nice’s story before he chose her to sit in judgment of his infamous client.
As crazy as this sounds, it’s not about whether Scott is truly innocent or guilty. It’s about whether his trial was corrupted — perhaps through no one’s fault — before the first witness was called.
As painful as it would be for all involved, the fairest thing in this case is a do-over.
This story was originally published August 11, 2022 at 6:28 PM.
