Scott Peterson won’t get a new murder trial, original prosecutor in Modesto predicts
Update: Scott Peterson’s murder convictions stand. Judge rejects juror misconduct claim
Original story:
Birgit Fladager, who 18 years ago led the prosecution team that convicted Scott Peterson of killing his pregnant wife, is “very optimistic” that he won’t get a new trial.
Everything hinges, Fladager said, on whether a woman secretly hid her desire to punish him, leading to her selection as a juror in 2004.
“The only thing that matters is if (juror Richelle Nice) lied to get on the jury because she was biased against him. That’s the question,” Fladager told me in a recent exit interview of sorts. She is retiring after 16 years as district attorney of Stanislaus County — a post she was elected to a couple of years after the blockbuster trial.
I covered that trial as a reporter for The Modesto Bee, the hometown newspaper of Laci Peterson. She was eight months pregnant withher and Scott’s first child, whom they had decided to name Conner, when she disappeared at Christmastime 2002, setting off a massive, unsuccessful search attracting attention across the United States and beyond.
Nice messaged me Monday afternoon asking if I’m on pins and needles like she is, waiting for the judge’s retrial decision. We’ve kept in touch over the years, and our 2018 on-camera interview has been quoted countless times by media agencies because she bluntly told me, “I did not lie to get on this trial to fry Scott.”
Judge Anne-Christine Massullo announced Friday that she will issue the retrial decision that so many have awaited no later than Thursday, Dec. 22. That could be the eve of the 20th anniversary of Laci’s death; authorities believe her husband killed her in their Modesto home the morning of Christmas Eve 2002 or the night before.
Was she a stealth juror?
Scott Peterson’s camp says Nice lied on a pretrial questionnaire given to prospective jurors, concealing the danger she must have felt she was in four years earlier when Nice herself was pregnant and threatened by the ex-girlfriend of Nice’s boyfriend at the time. Nice told me — and the court, in a tense March hearing — that she had been truthful, and prosecutors attributed any mistakes to lack of sophistication with the law.
I believe her.
Fladager, whose successor will be sworn in Jan. 3, believes her, too.
For a year and a half, prosecutors were the ones on pins and needles, she told me in so many words, because they didn’t know how Nice would answer when put on the stand in the March hearing. She had hired an attorney who negotiated immunity for Nice before he would let her testify — a sign that she might admit she had been less than truthful on the pretrial questionnaire.
But no. With the immunity deal, she was just being cautious.
The trial had deeply affected Nice. After, she had exchanged cards and letters with Scott in his cell. She suffered a nervous breakdown. Since his appeal focused attention on her, she has been wracked by the thought of Laci’s family losing whatever peace might have come with justice, if the trial were reversed on her account, Nice told me. She hired her lawyer and refused to speak with anyone — not just reporters, but prosecutors, too.
So Fladager’s team had no idea what Nice would say on the stand.
Sticking to her guns
It was a huge relief, Fladager told me, when Nice repeated just what she had told me almost five years ago — that she went into the 2004 trial with no preconceived notion, listened to evidence over several months and ultimately came to the same conclusion as other jurors: guilty.
I won’t betray Nice’s confidence by sharing specifics of the things we’ve talked about the last few years. In general, however, I can say she has never wavered in her conviction that Scott Peterson absolutely got a fair trial. In often-colorful language, Nice has made it clear that she doesn’t appreciate how his lawyers have twisted her words. And ruined her life, she said, again.
Nice has been mad at me, too, because four months ago I wrote that Scott Peterson should get a new trial.
I’ve explained why. “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,” I wrote in August.
I did that not because I think he’s innocent, but because the rights of the accused must be protected if we expect the justice system to work right. The California Supreme Court overturned Peterson’s death sentence precisely because of other errors in jury selection, after all, and he was resentenced to life in prison pending the outcome of the Nice question.
In our recent interview, Fladager said Peterson’s defense camp had every opportunity to finesse out of Nice any predisposition she might have harbored. That happens in voir dire, where lawyers and the judge pepper prospective jurors with questions before seating them.
Scott Peterson’s lawyer: “Oops”
No doubt Mark Geragos, Peterson’s swaggering attorney whose client list included Michael Jackson, Gary Condit and Wynona Ryder, took a look at Nice’s brightly dyed hair, multiple tattoos and family history — her brother was in prison — and saw a free spirit. Geragos must have seen someone with an independent streak, who could be sympathetic to the accused and would have little trouble standing up to fellow jurors who might think differently.
Fladager’s jury consultant also saw that, and wanted her team to disqualify Nice, Fladager said. But then-prosecutor Dave Harris, who retired last year as Fladager’s chief deputy, saw something different. In voir dire, he asked Nice if she found that people judged her based on her appearance, and she quickly agreed.
“We talked about it and figured she’s somebody that people misjudge and underestimate,” Fladager said. “If anyone is going to look at Scott and judge him not based on his (law-abiding, clean-cut) appearance, she would be one who would see through it.”
Fair enough.
But what will the judge decide — by Thursday, if not before?
“It’s all speculation, and I’m superstitious,” Fladager said, knocking on her wooden desk, “but we think the hearing went very well for us. Richelle did a great job. She was very honest and forthright and truthful. That’s the question for the judge. That is the only question.”
This story was originally published December 20, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
