From the limited media reports I saw, I say guilty guilty guilty. I don’t believe that his cheating on his pregnant wife has any bearing on my verdict. However, not being a member of the jury, I reserve the right to change my mind. I am a woman, after all. 
Trials in the United State are public. The jury doesn’t have access to special evidence that the rest of us are unaware of.
Yes, I am aware of that. However, since my statement has now been misinterpreted twice, let me clarify…
Barring the highly unlikely circumstance that someone is basing their opinion of this case on having read the trial transcripts in their entirety, it is foolish to say - as RickJay did, in the post to which I originally responded - that there “just isn’t much evidence.” The brief descriptions of the presentation of evidence in media stories of trials are not enough for a reasonable person to say that the jury got it wrong.
Nor are they enough to say they got it right, so I’m not sure of the relevance.
In that other thread, it seems the proffered idea was that other people have had similar levels of evidence, and yet, due to the lack of media coverage, the trials did not have the same result. If this is true, that is quite damning. I mean, it’s practically the scientific method in action: providing a control.
What needs to be proven is that the cases really are the same besides that one detail.
I believe that he IS guilty, but I believe that the state didn’t have enough evidence to convict him, and that a competent lawyer could have got him off.
Best wishes,
hh
Despite your characterization of me being foolish, I did go to the trouble of reading up on the case pretty thoroughly. I didn’t read all the transcripts but I have a fairly good command of the evidence that was presented at trial.
I found it surprisingly, well, lacking. It’s not that I’m dumb enough to go by a snippet I heard on CNN. Nor, for that matter, am I one of those people who think everything has to be just like it is on “CSI.” And yet I still came away thinking the evidence was awfully paltry.
The evidence against Peterson is sufficiently brief that it can be listed here:
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Some of the witnesses’ accounts of the event of December 24 did not precisely match Peterson’s in terms of the exact time they took place, though in fact nothing Peterson claimed was definitely refuted and his account of the events of the day was essentially proven to be true.
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Peterson was having an affair. Peterson’s mistress claimed that he said some thing that could be construed as referring to his wife in the past tense, and seems to have been trying to imply to Amber Frey that he wasn’t married anymore.
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A hair that probably belonged to Laci Peterson, but couldn’t definitively be established to be hers, was attached to a pair of pliers that probably wasn’t used in the commission of the crime.
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Peterson was in San Diego with a car full of survival implements when he was arrested. It is worth noting that Peterson’s family lived in San Diego, so his presence in that city has a fairly innocuous explanation, though the bizarre contents of his car are certainly not what you’d usually load your ride up with. Of course, this is long after the murder of his wife.
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Peterson went fishing on Christmas Eve to the body of water where his wife was found, at what is accepted to be the time she went missing.
To my mind, point 5 is certainly the most damning, but most of the rest of the evidence is silly bullshit. Frey’s memory can’t necessarily be trusted, and proves nothing. The hair on the pliers is pointless.
A lot of the case against Peterson is based on his weird behaviour AFTER the event - his attempt to sell his house, the stuff that was in his car, and his generally acting like a nut. I’m not really sure what to make of that. He did act really, really strangely. On the other hand, a lot of the evidence is hyped up - the “He was close to the Mexican border” thing is frequently trumpeted, ignoring the fact his family lived in San Diego and there isn’t much you can do about the fact that SD is close to Mexico. I’d also point out that Peterson’s behaviour, while it is consistent with a murderer who is both extremely stupid and inexplicably slow to make his getaway, is ALSO consistent with a guy who’s both stupid and is being harassed by a media and public that have already convicted him in the court of public opinion. And when the evidence includes things like “He grew a goatee” - I mean, Jesus, give me a break.
If I sound like defense counsel here I’m not, just explained why I think the evidence is slim. Breaking it all down, the only peices of evidence I find that are both pertinent and that haven’t been spun wildly out of proportion and context are:
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The fact that Peterson took his boat out more or less in the same place that his wife must have been dumped at more or less the same time, and much of his recollection of how and why he came to be fishing there was at least partically fabricated.
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The fact that Peterson immediately sold his wife’s car, before the media frenzy and general opinion turned against him.
Beyond that there’s not much I see that doesn’t have a logical, not-at-all-crazy alternative explanation. Now, I might convict based on those points and the preponderance of the other evidence as well; it really is hard to get past Peterson fishing on Christmas Eve in the same body of water his wife was being dropped into to, probably on Christmas Eve or shortly thereafter.
A mutual friend discovered Peterson was married and confronted him. Peterson told him he’d lost his wife. He then “confessed” to Amber Frey and repeated the lie, saying he’d lost his wife and this was his first Christmas without her - 15 days before she disappeared. During later phone conversations between Frey and Peterson that she allowed the police to tape, she asked him repeatedly about the lie and he agreed that he’d told her he’d lost his wife though he was evasive about what he meant by that.
There’s a transcript of one conversation here. A couple of excerpts:
So they tried to get him to confess.
And he didn’t.
Perfectly logical explanation: what he meant by that was that he wanted to keep getting laid. The conversation reads to me like a guy trying to avoid answering the question because he’s a weasel who can’t admit he lied. Nothing you quoted amounts to a confession or anywhere close to it. Where’s the evidence?
Sorry, RickJay, I replied to your post because I thought what you’d written indicated that you thought it was only Frey’s word that he’d told her that he’d lost his wife. The parts I quoted were to show that Peterson himself, in a taped conversation, admitted telling her his wife was “lost” 15 days before her death. There’s no admission of guilt in her murder in the phone conversation, just an admission that he’d told the lie that she said he’d told.
Sorry, you’re right, I did mention what Frey had said Peterson had said before the murder without mentioning he had been taped saying the same thing afterwards.
Circumstantial evidence is evidence in a case which can be used to draw inferences (a hypothesis) about a series of events. Inferences are deductions, suppositions, conjectures, assumptions, suggestions, implications, and conclusions to build up a circumstantial evidence case against a defendant.
In the Scott Peterson Case, a circumstantial case, did any witnesses see anything or hear anything pertaining to the crime-alleged, any guns found, any rope found, any DNA from the victim found on the defendant’s body or clothing, did the prosecution have a one track mind against the defendant, didn’t the prosecution look somewhere else for other possible culprits other than just the alleged assailant, where was the case tried, was the jury an impartial jury?
And the most important question is “What does Laci want for lunch?”
[sub]BRAAAAIIINSSS!!!, perhaps?[/sub]
Do I think he’s guilty? Yeah.
But if they prosecution didn’t have enough evidence to couldn’t convict Casey Anthony, no way did the state have enough evidence to convict Peterson.
Am I missing something? The guy was convicted.
Guilty? How about guilty as sin? Guilty as hell? Guilty as Cain? So freaking guilty the jury shouldn’t’ve even had to leave the jury box?
My favorite part of the Scott Peterson trial was when the defense claimed that Laci Peterson was kidnapped and murdered by a Satanic cult.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/06/16/ctv.peterson/
I think that the Scott Peterson case should be the textbook case for what reasonable doubt is: It sure looks like the bastard is guilty. We don’t like him. Some evidence is there to say he did it. He’s a cheating asshole. We really hate him. He looks like he’s guilty and he probably is. But, dammit, he might not have actually done it because we just aren’t sure. Reasonable doubt applied to Peterson and he is probably is one of those hundred guilty that go free lest one innocent man go to prison examples…
Casey Anthony had far more damning evidence against her.
Could it be reasonable doubt that the real killer knew that Peterson went fishing that day so he dumped Laci’s body in the bay where he went fishing to pin it on him?
Is it reasonable doubt that looking out his window each day seeing Laci’s car brought home too much emotion so he needed to get rid of it, and when she returned home (*fingers crossed) use the funds (and more) to buy her a brand new car of her dreams?
That argument could be easily turned around: If he did kill his wife, why would he attract so much attention to himself by selling her car!!! He’s a reasonably intelligent man and would have known how bad it looked. But poor Scott just had to because of the emotional distress, and he really was innocent so justice would prevail and the police would find the real killers even if his petty act of selling the car would attraction suspicion (his thoughts). The professional police would find DNA to exonerate him.
—As I said, in my mind, I think he’s guilty, but I agree that those are the only two things which give me pause. And my responses are reasonable doubt in my mind.
The prosecution did not present a conclusive case. Peterson also had a lousy lawyer. Amber Frye should never have been allowed to testify, she was not a witness to anything. Her only role was to help poison the jury. I’m not surprised to see another case where California prosecutors can’t prove anything. In this case he was just a dislikable guy, so the jury voted guilty.
That said, of course he did it. Who else would, and provide such a lame defense.
The best and most accurate piece of circumstantial evidence seems to be DNA, to begin putting the pieces of the circumstantial case-puzzle together. Video cameras showing someone in the commission of a crime, and pictures taken of involved subjects may be other strong pieces of proof that they committed a crime. DNA may be seen as “direct evidence” that someone committed the alleged crimes, as opposed to indirect evidence.
DNA prints can match up the alleged perpetrator(s), and to his or her family members. However, circumstantial evidence other than (DNA) may not be enough to convict someone beyond reasonable doubt. According to a project that investigates circumstantial evidence lock ups, it has found hundreds of people locked up based on flawed circumstantial evidence. Juries have to be convinced that the accused is guilty beyond reasonable doubt to convict. In order to meet the standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt or “a shadow of the doubt,” as it used to be called in the past, they have to have solid and physical evidence that the alleged perpetrator committed the crime(s) he or she is accused of.
So circumstantial evidence that someone happens to be at a crime scene or someone says that he or she “saw another person do something” is just not enough solid evidence beyond reasonable doubt to convict someone.