REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Final arguments in Scott Peterson’s attempt to overturn his murder conviction were postponed Tuesday after one of his lawyers contracted COVID-19 and Peterson was put on “loose quarantine” at San Quentin State prison after his pod was exposed.
The hearing in the notorious case that dates back two decades had been scheduled for Wednesday in a Redwood City courtroom, but was rescheduled to Aug. 11, according to a courthouse spokeswoman.
Peterson, who was convicted in 2004 of killing his pregnant wife, Laci, weighing her down with cement blocks and throwing her body into San Francisco Bay, has been trying to make the case that juror misconduct tainted his original trial and he should be granted a fresh trial.
Peterson’s death sentence last year was overturned by the California Supreme Court, which found that prosecutors unfairly dismissed potential jurors who morally opposed the death penalty but said they could follow the law and impose it anyway. The 49-year-old former fertilizer salesman and Cal Poly graduate who lived with his wife in Modesto before she disappeared on Christmas Eve 2002 is now serving a life sentence at San Quentin. The case was moved to Redwood City because of pretrial publicity 18 years ago and the appeal remains there. During February hearings in the case, Peterson was represented by Los Angeles lawyer Pat Harris, who was part of his original legal team, and at least one other lawyer. It was unclear which lawyer contracted COVID-19.
Through his lawyers, Peterson has argued that Juror No. 7, Richelle Nice, was unfairly biased against him from the start. She failed to disclose that she was a domestic violence victim two years earlier, they said, and that she had sought a restraining order against a woman she feared could harm her unborn child.
Known by the nickname “Strawberry Shortcake” for her dyed-red hair by journalists covering the original trial, Nice was granted immunity against perjury to testify earlier this year. On the stand, she said it didn’t occur to her to mention her past experience on the jury questionnaire or during questioning from lawyers. She never considered herself a domestic violence victim, she said, and explained that she was the aggressor in an altercation with her boyfriend two years before the murder trial took place. The restraining order she sought against her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, she said, was “spiteful” and she was not really worried about the woman.
Peterson was having an affair with a Fresno massage therapist at the time of his wife’s disappearance and had told the mistress, Amber Frey, that he had “lost” his wife before Laci actually disappeared.
A similar attempt to overturn a conviction based on juror misconduct was recently denied in the Ghislaine Maxwell case. In that case, where Maxwell was convicted of procuring underage girls for sexual abuse by multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, a juror had been accused of bias for hiding the fact that he had been sexually abused in his past. The judge found, however, that his failure to disclose the abuse was “highly unfortunate, but not deliberate” and he “harbored no bias” toward Maxwell.
On Tuesday, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
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