D.A. Will Seek Death For Scott Peterson
The district attorney announced late Friday he will seek the death penalty against Scott Peterson, who was arrested last week on murder charges in the deaths of his wife and their unborn son.
Stanislaus County District Attorney James Brazelton made the announcement in a statement issued shortly after he spoke with Laci Peterson's family about the possible punishment for their son-in-law Scott. As CBS' Manuel Gallegus reports, the meeting with Laci's parents was about whether they would want a death penalty case against their son-in-law.
Scott Peterson pleaded innocent Monday to the murders. Laci Peterson, who was eight months pregnant, disappeared on Christmas Eve, and the bodies washed ashore last week in San Francisco Bay, three miles from where Scott Peterson said he was fishing.
However, from what the public knows, the case against Scott Peterson is circumstantial.
The evidence is built on a fishing trip far from home, but near where Laci's body was found, empty bags of cement allegedly found in a storage shed, cement residue allegedly found in Peterson's boat, and computer information showing tidal charts allegedly found on his computer.
Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School, told Gallegus what has been heard so far is not enough to convict, so there has to be much more evidence to bring charges against Peterson.
"I think they probably have notebooks, they went into the house, they got bags and bags of evidence. It's the little clues that could make this case," says Levenson.
She also says Scott Peterson has not helped himself at all. Unlike O.J. Simpson for example, Peterson has no fans. The public, and potential jurors, seem completely against him.
"The problem with Scott Peterson is that whenever he opens his mouth or that he acts a certain way, people react very negatively. They say that's not a way a grieving father should act that's not the way somebody accused of a crime should act," says Levenson.
Levenson says the jurors will hold onto to those images at trial: his blond hair when he was arrested, or the way he involved the public in the search for Laci, only to have them find out he was having an affair.
The defense will likely ask to move the trial completely away from northern California, probably to Los Angeles. And because it's likely a death penalty case, it may take two years to begin.
"He already has three lawyers. Whatever the evidence is in this case, they will want to comb over it. They will want to get their own experts. Eventually it will be a battle of the experts," says Levenson.
On May 6, a judge will be asked to grant bail for Peterson. The judge must weigh public safety, the type of the charges and whether he is a possible flight risk.
Meanwhile, because of the Peterson case, the White House on Friday called on Congress to pass a law making it a federal crime to harm a fetus during an assault on its mother.
The House passed legislation in 2001 supported by President Bush that would make it a criminal offense to injure or kill a fetus during the commission of a violent crime. The Senate never took up the measure.
Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer declined to comment on the Peterson case specifically.
But asked whether it is appropriate for Scott Peterson to be charged with two murders that of his pregnant wife and their unborn son, Fleischer responded that the president believes that "when an unborn child is killed during the commission of a crime of violence, the law should recognize what most people immediately recognize, and that is that such a crime has two victims."