REDWOOD CITY – Last arguments in Scott Peterson’s try and overturn his homicide conviction had been postponed Tuesday after one in all his legal professionals contracted COVID-19 and Peterson was placed on “unfastened quarantine” at San Quentin State jail after his pod was uncovered.
The listening to within the infamous case that dates again twenty years had been scheduled for Wednesday in a Redwood Metropolis courtroom, however was rescheduled to Aug. 11, in accordance with a courthouse spokeswoman.
Peterson, who was convicted in 2004 of killing his pregnant spouse, Laci, weighing her down with cement blocks and throwing her physique into San Francisco Bay, has been attempting to make the case that juror misconduct tainted his unique trial and he must be granted a contemporary trial.
Peterson’s demise sentence final 12 months was overturned by the California Supreme Courtroom, which discovered that prosecutors unfairly dismissed potential jurors who morally opposed the demise penalty however mentioned they might comply with the regulation and impose it anyway. The 49-year-old former fertilizer salesman and Cal Poly graduate who lived along with his spouse in Modesto earlier than she disappeared on Christmas Eve 2002 is now serving a life sentence at San Quentin. The case was moved to Redwood Metropolis due to pre-trial publicity 18 years in the past and the attraction stays there. Throughout February hearings within the case, Peterson was represented by Los Angeles lawyer Pat Harris, who was a part of his unique authorized staff, and a minimum of one different lawyer. It was unclear which lawyer contracted COVID.
By his legal professionals, Peterson has argued that Juror No. 7, Richelle Good, was unfairly biased in opposition to him from the beginning. She didn’t disclose that she was a home violence sufferer two years earlier, they mentioned, and that she had sought a restraining order in opposition to a girl she feared might hurt her unborn youngster.
Recognized by the nickname “Strawberry Shortcake” for her dyed-red hair by journalists masking the unique trial, Good was granted immunity in opposition to perjury to testify earlier this 12 months. On the stand, she mentioned it didn’t happen to her to say her previous expertise on the jury questionnaire or throughout questioning from legal professionals. She by no means thought-about herself a home violence sufferer, she mentioned, and defined that she was the aggressor in an altercation together with her boyfriend two years earlier than the homicide trial happened. The restraining order she sought in opposition to her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, she mentioned, was “spiteful” and she or he was probably not frightened concerning the girl.
Peterson was having an affair with a Fresno therapeutic massage therapist on the time of his spouse’s disappearance and had advised the mistress, Amber Frey, that he had “misplaced” his spouse earlier than Laci truly disappeared.
An analogous try and overturn a conviction based mostly on juror misconduct was just lately denied within the Ghislaine Maxwell case. In that case, the place Maxwell was convicted of procuring underage ladies for sexual abuse by New York millionaire Jeffrey Epstein, a juror had been accused of bias for hiding the truth that he had been sexually abused in his previous. The decide discovered, nonetheless, that his failure to reveal the abuse was “extremely unlucky, however not deliberate” and he “harbored no bias” towards Maxwell.
On Tuesday, Maxwell was sentenced Tuesday to twenty years in jail.