Scott Peterson’s team to file an appeal after a judge rejected allegations of new evidence
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A California judge has dismissed claims by Scott Peterson’s Los Angeles Innocence Project defense team that witnesses saw his wife alive after she disappeared on Christmas Eve in 2002.
San Mateo Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Hill received evidence and testified that her disappearance was related to a nearby burglary.
Peterson was convicted five months later in 2004 of killing his wife, Laci Peterson, and their unborn son, Conner.
SCOTT PETERSON PROSECUTORS FILE ‘FAILED EVIDENCE’ AGAINST MURDERER’S NEW COMPLAINT IN 337-PAGE FILING
Scott Peterson and Laci Peterson appear in stills from the upcoming documentary “American Murder: Laci Peterson.” (Lucky Netflix)
Although Peterson has suggested for years that those accused of breaking into the house across the street from where he and his wife lived in 2002 may have killed him, prosecutors say the break-in happened after he disappeared.
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He initially received the death penalty, which was later commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2021.
Scott Peterson is shown in a still photo at a police interview on Christmas Day 2002, hours after his pregnant wife Laci Peterson was reported missing in San Mateo County, California. (San Mateo County Court)
He has a separate appeal pending in the California Supreme Court to have his sentence overturned because of alleged jury misconduct, and his Innocence Project legal team said it would appeal the judge’s decision on Tuesday.
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The court previously denied Peterson’s request for new DNA testing in the case on almost all of the evidence, except for a piece of tape found in his wife’s pants.
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Convicted murderer Scott Peterson appeared in court Wednesday, May 29, 2024, seeking a new trial. (Courtesy of KTVU)
Laci Peterson was pregnant when she disappeared. His remains were also found in San Francisco Bay. It was the same with their son, in a different place.
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Police arrested her husband in 2003 near the Mexican border after he dyed his hair blond and left Northern California with his brother’s passport and $10,000. She had a new goatee and recently bought a used Mercedes for cash, using the name “Jacqueline,” which she told the salesperson was “a Sue-type thing for a guy.”
Scott Peterson was arraigned in Stanislaus County Superior Court in Modesto, California, on April 21, 2003, to be charged with first degree murder in the deaths of his wife Laci Peterson and their unborn son Conner. (Ted Benson/Reuters)
At the trial, the woman he was dating, Amber Frey, testified that he told her his wife had died a month before he went missing.
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In the recorded calls, he told her he did not want to be a father and was considering a vasectomy.
And his alibi, which was that he was fishing when his wife disappeared, placed him in the same waters where her remains were later found.
A photo submitted as an exhibit in the Scott Peterson trial shows Scott Peterson and Amber Frey smiling together. (San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office)
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Prosecutors wrote in court that an officer’s K-9 picked up his scent at a boat ramp in Berkeley, Calif.
An autopsy also suggested her remains had been weighed down on the ocean floor before she broke loose and washed ashore — and prosecutors also presented evidence that Peterson made several homemade anchors out of concrete and rebar.
