Just barely, and always hand waved away that I recall. Absolutely no one was willing to provide the least appearance of sympathy for Petersen.
It is possible to railroad a guilty man.
This is true, but I hate to leave it there as if this were a desirable outcome. A) It’s a rotten influence on law enforcement. B) He may have been guilty of a lesser crime (e.g. manslaughter) and so is being over-punished.
That’s a problem with many cases. No one wants to defend Petersen while believing he is a heinous murderer. At the same time we have to make sure criminals are convicted based on actual evidence and not a presumption of guilt.
Yep.
Exactly.
I didn’t follow the incident at the time but I did just read the article. It looks like the defense theory is that burglars who were active at the time in the area did it and not Scott. This theory is allowing new and better DNA testing to happen.
Were valuables missing from the house? What is being DNA tested? I know that answers to this are probably speculation.
Pretty much my thinking.
IIRC, and I was actually around and an adult to follow this when it happened, was that there were several different theories floating around in the beginning; one was the burglary theory, and the other major one was trying to connect the disappearance to other murders of pregnant women in the area by [an] unknown person/people, which lost a lot of credibility when one news source speculated (on such thin evidence, it was diaphanous) that there might be some kind of cult or satanic ritual involvement, as opposed to a serial killer whose “thing” was pregnant women.
When Amber Frei came forward, at once Scott both lost the support of Laci’s parents, and the police zeroed their investigation in on him, tossing aside any other investigative theory. This happened before the body surfaced, though-- once it did, and it appeared that whoever tried to dispose of it meant for it never to be found-- it seemed that no one considered the implication for Scott of waiting out whatever time was legally required-- 7 years, usually, in the movies-- to be a widower, when, for him, there was a huge advantage to having the body discovered quickly.
Unless you want to consider that he is so clever and foresightful, he dumped the body in the lake weighted in such a way that the sinkers it was attached to would give after a few months, right when the body could still be identified, but would be useless as far as gathering forensic evidence.
People who are that good usually are not riding in their first rodeo. Hmmmmm. I sense a novel…
Gone Girl.
I would think that he wouldn’t want the body to be found because he wouldn’t want to be incarcerated for murder. Better to wait than to rot in prison.
Edit: Also, what DNA that they have could indicate that someone else was responsible?
Oh, I can think of all sorts of things. Anything from evidence of other people on the boat, in the house very recently when Laci disappeared, to Scott not being the father of the baby.
Actually, come to think of it, the police probably did evidence collection in the house once it was clear Laci was not gone of her own volition, and could have had a very good venue for investigation of someone else as a result, that was tossed by the wayside as soon as the Amber Frei story broke.
Many people these days (and before, but less so IMO) have no aptitude for any nuance beyond a binary yes/no, black/white choice. Thats why, for instance, Democrats are considered by some to be 100% evil and wrong. They simply can never, ever be good or correct.
That folks feel qualified to judge an accused person without having all the facts is not surprising. However I’m always a bit shocked how much that happens on the SDMB in pretty much any thread about a court case.
Makes sense but there is no way you or anyone could know that for sure. Thats why we have trials.
Almost- that burglars in the area could have done it, creating reasonable doubt. It it true the cops didnt look at anyone else, they focused on Scott.
Right- which is why altho I think he is guilty, there may well be reasonable doubt.
To state this axiomatically, then insist that it is actual evidence against burglars having killed her, is what “begging the question” really means. Or used to mean.
Of course she didn’t have to be a witness to the crime. Not a lot of cases go to trial when there is an eyewitness to the crime who can ID the defendant.
She was a witness who could provide a possible motive and would have had some knowledge of what has been going on with him.
I haven’t seen her testimony, so I don’t know what else her testimony covered or was relevant to.
The remedy to this is to punish the railroaders, not to free a man who murdered his pregnant wife.
I agree. But the alleged murderer has to be proven to have committed the crime in a fair trial or he must be released because otherwise he is not a murderer according to the law.
You really seem to be focused on this point, but you do realize that people can date and even live together without getting married, right? A missing body was no impediment to Scott having a relationship with Amber.
Who even knows how much of a relationship he wanted? Maybe he was looking for no ties to anyone, so he could sleep with Amber and any other woman without responsibilities.
Great user avatar / post combo!
The claim that Laci Peterson caught burglars in the act across the street and that their response was to kidnap and kill her has been circulating for at least two years as “new evidence” of Scott Peterson’s innocence.
Previous attempts to overturn the guilty verdict have involved claims that his defense attorney (Geragos) was incompetent, and supposed juror misconduct.
A lot of people doggedly defend the innocence of killers in prominent murder cases for reasons that have little to do with evidence. I just read a book about the woman convicted in the poisoning murder of the chiropractor she worked for - despite the overwhelming evidence against her she still has defenders, an active Facebook page and a website supporting her.
“The burglars done it” defense being promoted by Scott Peterson’s supporters has a heavily fishy aroma to me (sounds like a variant of the Bushy-Haired Stranger bogeyman), but we’ll see what they come up with.
To be fair, a lot of people do exactly the same thing but assume guilt instead of innocence.
I’ll again suggest that people watch The Murder Of Laci Peterson that I linked to above if you’re interested in hearing what the defense is likely to bring to the table.