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SACRAMENTO, Calif .– A California judge said on Wednesday she plans a two-week hearing early next year before deciding whether Scott Peterson deserves a new trial for the death of his pregnant wife in 2002.
It’s been over a year after the California Supreme Court ordered Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo to consider whether a juror’s misconduct was so serious that she denied him a fair trial .
Massullo is expected to hear testimony from juror Richelle Nice, who is at the center of the dispute and has denied being influenced by her own history of domestic violence. Nice is identified in court documents as Juror 7. But she co-wrote a book on the case with six other jurors.
This hearing would be “the meat and potatoes of what juror information is,” Stanislaus County Assistant District Attorney Dave Harris said.
Laci Peterson, 27, was eight months pregnant with their unborn son, Connor, when she was killed.
Massullo must decide whether Nice was “prejudicial” by failing to reveal that she sought a restraining order in 2000 for fear that her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend could harm her unborn child. Nice.
Peterson’s lawyers revealed in a court file in June that Nice also failed to reveal that her boyfriend had beaten her in 2001 while she was pregnant with another child.
As a potential juror, Nice had answered ‘no’ when asked if she had ever been involved in a trial or had been the victim of a crime.
Nice said in a court file that she did not think the restraining order was legal action, nor did she “feel” victimized “in the way the law might define it. term”.
Massullo said she wanted to schedule the evidence hearing for October, and could still try to do so in early November. But she said delays in gathering evidence and swearing testimony, in part because of the coronavirus pandemic, make it more likely that she will schedule the hearing for two weeks in late January or early February, after the recess. winter.
She plans to set the dates at a hearing on September 22 after reviewing several legal files in the meantime.
Peterson, 48, participated in Wednesday’s hearing via a phone link from San Quentin State Prison, the seat of death row in California. The state Supreme Court separately overturned Peterson’s death sentence last year for incorrect jury selection, and prosecutors have said they will no longer seek to have him executed.
If Peterson gets a new trial, his attorney said he would present new evidence to support the defense theory that Laci Peterson was killed when she came across a nearby burglary.
Investigators said that on Christmas Eve 2002, Peterson dumped the bodies from his fishing boat in San Francisco Bay, where they resurfaced months later.
Last year, the state’s high court said there was ample circumstantial evidence incriminating Peterson in the murders.
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