CONVICTED BY SUSPICION -- WHY SCOTT PETERSON MAY
BE INNOCENT
by J. Neil Schulman, guest contributor.
[November 30, 2004]
[HollywoodInvestigator.com]
Scott Peterson may or may not have murdered his wife, Laci, and their unborn
child. But the Redwood City, California trial that has just convicted
Peterson of murdering
Laci with premeditation was a kangaroo court in which none of the elements
necessary to achieve a murder conviction were offered, much less proved
beyond a reasonable doubt.
 The first
element that needs to be proved in any murder trial is that a murder has
occurred. There was never a determination by any California medical
examiner that the cause of Laci Peterson’s death was homicide. No
medical examiner was able to determine the cause of Laci Peterson's death,
nor even prove to a medical certainty in what week beyond her disappearance
on Christmas Eve that she died.
A thorough
examination of the residence where Scott and Laci Peterson lived together,
by teams of detectives and forensic experts, uncovered no evidence whatsoever
that a crime had occurred there.
No crime.
No forensic
evidence was found in the Petersons’ motor vehicles lending any foundation
to the suspicion that she had ever been transported in one of them -- alive
or dead -- to the place where, months later, her body was found.
No weapon
was ever produced with any evidence that it had been used to cause Laci
Peterson’s death.
No witness
was produced who had seen or heard Scott Peterson argue with Laci near
the time of her disappearance, much less any witness who had seen Scott
Peterson fight with his wife or kill her.
The only
forensic evidence produced in court that even presumptively linked Scott
Peterson with the death of his wife was a strand of hair that DNA analysis
showed to be Laci's, in a pliers found in Scott Peterson’s fishing boat. A police detective interviewed a witness who had seen Laci in the boat
warehouse where Scott stored that boat. Even in the absence of this
witness statement to a police detective, the rules of forensic transference
indicate that transference of trace evidence between a husband and wife
who lived together is common, and not indicative of foul play.
No witness
ever saw Laci in that fishing boat, nor did any witness ever testify to
seeing Scott Peterson bringing a corpse-sized parcel onto his fishing boat. Thus, the fishing boat never should have been allowed into evidence, nor
should prosecution speculation into his dumping her body using that boat
have been permitted.
Nor was
any evidence offered in court showing that Scott Peterson had engaged in
any overt activities in planning of a murder. He was not observed
buying, or even shopping for, weapons or poison. Police detectives
found no records in his computer logs that he was spending time researching
methods of murder. No evidence was offered that he ever considered
hiring someone to kill her.
No evidence
was offered in court indicating that Scott Peterson had any reasonable
motive for murdering his wife, such as monetary gain, or to protect great
marital assets that he’d lose as an adulterer in a divorce in California,
a no-fault community-property state, or because Scott had some basis to
believe he had been cuckolded.
So in
a case without an ME’s finding of homicide or a known time of death;
without
a single witness to a crime having occurred;
without
a crime scene;
without
a murder weapon;
without
any indisputable forensic evidence linking the defendant husband to his
wife’s death;
without
an obvious motive;
without
the prosecution presenting conclusive direct or circumstantial evidence
in summation,
without the prosecution demonstrating that Scott Peterson and only Scott
Peterson had the means and opportunity to murder his wife and transport
her alive or dead to the San Francisco Bay in which her body was found
... how is it possible that Scott Peterson has just been convicted of a
premeditated murder with special circumstances warranting the death penalty?
It comes
down to this: Scott Peterson was having an adulterous affair at the time
of his wife’s disappearance, and Scott Peterson is a cad and a bounder.
Scott
Peterson repeatedly lied to everyone around him -- including his new mistress -- to further the pursuit of this affair. This pattern of lying was
established by audio tapes of his phone conversations with his mistress
that were played in court. But these tapes were played before the
jury without
any foundation for their playing being offered, since their playing
spoke to no element required for conviction in the crime with which he
was charged. And these tapes -- which were more prejudicial than
probitive -- destroyed Scott Peterson's credibility to appear as a potential
witness in his own defense. They served only to make the jury hate
Scott Peterson.
Scott
Peterson found himself at the center of a media circus, and his attempts
to change his appearance and escape being followed can equally be interpreted
as either avoidance of the media who were stalking him or avoidance of
police who were tracking him.
The bodies
of Laci Peterson and her unborn child were discovered in close proximity
to the location where Scott Peterson said he had been fishing at the time
of her disappearance. But those bodies were found after months of
all-media publicity in which Peterson’s alibi was broadcast and published,
and if Laci had been murdered by some third party, the murderer would have
easily had both means and motive to dump her body at that location to convict
Scott and end pursuit of themselves for that murder.
In any
case where more than one explanation of a fact can be offered, the judge’s
charge instructs the jury that the explanation suggesting innocence is
the one they are legally required to adopt in their deliberations.
Scott
Peterson was convicted at trial of murder possibly leading to a death sentence
in which the trial judge allowed prosecutors to speculate in front of a
jury on how Scott Peterson might have murdered his wife. Anyone who’s
watched a single episode of Perry
Mason or Law
& Order knows the judge is charged with forbidding such
speculation unless there is a foundation
of facts in evidence.
No such
foundation was presented indicating a method of murder in the murder trial
of Scott Peterson.
In other
words, Scott Peterson looked and acted guilty, and in the age of 24-hour-a-day TV news networks that have to fill up those hours with ratings-producing
subjects, Scott Peterson’s trial and conviction was the perfect storm of
Guilty by Suspicion.
Scott
Peterson may very well have been convicted of a murder that he committed. If so, he was convicted in a case that under our system of justice -- in
which the presumption of innocence may only rightfully be overcome by evidence
that is convincing beyond a reasonable doubt -- never should have been allowed
into court, much less handed over to a jury.
The jury
that convicted Scott Peterson was a lynch mob inflamed by prejudicial testimony
and their conviction of Scott Peterson qualifies as a hate crime. The verdict needs to be overturned on appeal. The judge brought out
of retirement to preside over the case needs to be retired again. The prosecution needs to be brought up on civil rights charges to make
sure this behavior is punished.
May God
have mercy on Scott Peterson’s soul if he is, in fact, a psychopath who
spent Christmas Eve murdering his pregnant wife so he could avoid the inconvenience
of a divorce.
And may
God have equal mercy on the prosecutors, judge, and jurors who have taken
away Scott Peterson’s life -- whether through a sentence of life imprisonment
or death by lethal injection -- if they have allowed their disgust for a
deeply flawed man to whip them into a passion in which suspicion in the
absence of any proof was sufficient to convict him.
Copyright © 2004
by J. Neil Schulman. All rights reserved.
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