It has become much easier for Scott Peterson to show that he is not guilty of killing his pregnant wife and future child.
Judges are looking at evidence one last time to see if Peterson is not guilty of the killings. This week, they decided that an item that was taken 20 years ago during his murder trial could be tested for DNA again.
The Los Angeles Innocence Project is a nonprofit legal group that is known for freeing people from prison who were wrongly convicted. They are trying to clear Peterson of killing Laci Peterson and their unborn son Conner. More than a dozen pieces of evidence that Peterson’s new lawyers say could point to other people responsible for the killing were asked to be tested.
Judge Elizabeth M. Hill of San Mateo County only agreed to test one piece of duct tape for DNA. It was found with Peterson’s body after it was dumped in the San Francisco Bay.
A mattress found in a burned-out van that was used in a break-in near the Petersons’ Modesto home was a key piece of evidence that could not be tested again.
It’s about 15 inches long and was stuck on Laci Peterson’s right leg. The duct tape will be looked at. It was tested in 2013, but Hill said that new technologies for even smaller pieces of DNA could give answers that weren’t possible before.
“A section of the duct tape that was folded over onto itself was tested for DNA and human DNA was found, but no DNA profile could be obtained,” Peterson’s lawyers said.
Peterson was locked up at Mull Creek State Prison and watched the meeting. In 2004, when he was 51 years old, he was found guilty of the murders and given the death penalty. However, that sentence was later overturned, and he is now spending life without the chance of parole.
Laci Peterson was last seen at their Modesto home on Christmas Eve 2002. At the time, she was eight months along with her first pregnancy.
The baby’s body and hers washed up on a rocky shore in San Francisco Bay in April 2003. The baby’s umbilical cord was still connected. A woman walking her dog found the body a few miles from where Scott Peterson told cops he was fishing when his wife went missing. Peterson was arrested for murder four days after that.
A van that was stolen and set on fire in Modesto on December 25, 2002, one day after a break-in near the Peterson home, is a key piece of evidence that the Innocence Project is using to re-test the Peterson case. One detective said that the mattress inside the van looked like it had blood on it.
The Innocence Project says it has proof from the van’s owner that it didn’t have a mattress inside before it was stolen. The van was found a mile from the Petersons’ house.
David Harris, the prosecutor, said that Peterson’s team wanted a “do-over” and that it wasn’t fair to the distraught family of the victim. He said that there was no blood on the mattress and that the defense didn’t have any “actual evidence.”
Hill agreed with the prosecutors on Wednesday that the mattress and 12 other things sent by the Innocence Project could not be tested. The judge said the mattress did not have any blood on it when it was checked in 2019. A hammer and a work glove found during a break-in near the Peterson home were also turned down for testing, as were the contents of a Target bag found near Laci Peterson’s body and a black blanket.
Paula Mitchell, executive head of the Innocence Project, told the judge that Peterson’s conviction in 2004 was based only on “circumstantial evidence.” This meant that there was no murder weapon, no witnesses, and no proof of the cause, time, or date of death.
She made the case that DNA proof could be found with new technology and said that the test was “a no-brainer in this case.”
Hill has set a hearing for July to figure out the exact steps that will be taken to look at the DNA on the duct tape.
