Scott Lee Peterson, who was convicted of the murder of his wife and their unborn baby 20 years ago, was denied a retrial on Tuesday after a judge rejected his lawyers’ allegations that one of the jurors in his case was biased against him.
A jury convicted Peterson in 2004 for the brutal murder of his then-pregnant wife, 27-year-old Laci Peterson, and their unborn child, and dumping his wife’s body in San Francisco Bay on December 31, 2002.
Laci Peterson was reported missing on Christmas Eve in 2002. When police questioned Peterson, he said he last saw her that morning at their house before going to the Berkeley Marina.
The following year, in January, a woman told the police that Peterson had introduced himself as a widower when they had met a couple of months before. Police also learned that the man had cashed in a $250,000 life insurance policy against Laci.
Police found the remains of Laci and her unborn child in April 2003. They arrested Peterson and charged him with murder.
Peterson, now 50 years old, has sought to fight his case again by arguing that one of the jurors in his original trial, Richelle Nice, had been biased against him in the well-publicized case. His lawyers contend that she lied about being a crime victim on her juror questionnaire.
His defense team argued that Nice had gotten a restraining order against an ex-girlfriend of her then boyfriend.
Mark Geragos, Peterson’s attorney, said that if he had known about the circumstances alleged about Nice, he would have challenged her place on the jury. He said that there is no way that he would have wanted her on the jury that would decide his client’s fate.
Speaking to a news outlet in 2017, Nice said that her case and Peterson’s were completely different because her boyfriend’s ex never threatened to kill her or her unborn child or physically assault her. She told the outlet that when she filled out her juror’s questionnaire, her situation did not once cross her mind because it had no similarity to the Peterson case.
Judge Anne Christine Massullo agreed that the situations were different. She evaluated the situation with Nice, her boyfriend, and his ex-girlfriend and described it as nothing more than a love triangle. She said that it was not a traumatizing experience for Nice.
Before Nice filed for the restraining order, she had tried to talk to the ex-girlfriend to stop her behavior, but that did not work, which is why she filed for the order. She didn’t want to get into a physical altercation with the woman, especially while pregnant. She used the restraining order as a de-escalation tactic and did not consider herself a victim.
Peterson’s lawyers’ attempts did not result in a retrial, but the California Supreme Court ruled that the court in Peterson’s trial had improperly dismissed jurors who said they were against the death penalty.
The California Supreme Court overturned Peterson’s death sentence in 2020.