The former fertilizer salesman bullshit peddler was convicted. Scott Peterson is guilty. Maybe now he'll wipe that smug little smirk off his face.
I was actually nervous listening to the verdict. (You can hear it yourself at usatoday.com.) I don't know anyone involved in the case, yet, I felt like it would be a great personal loss if Scott Peterson had been acquitted. There was no doubt in my mind that he did it. As a husband and a father, I know enough to be certain that the the conduct by Scott Peterson in the days and weeks after his wife disappeared was a strong indicator of guilt.
If your wife disappears with your unborn first child, you do not sell her truck; you do not call your girlfriend; you do not order a new porn channel; you do not use the baby's room for storage; you do not dye your hair, borrow your brother's identification, stockpile cash and head toward the border. Unless, of course, you killed her.
Why do people think Mark Geragos is a good lawyer? He did Winona Ryder no good. He did Scott Peterson no good. Why would anyone hire this guy? He wasn't even there to hold his soon-to-be-given-the-death-penalty client's hand as the verdict was read. If you're going to pay a guy a fortune to blow your defense and seal your fate, you should at least get a hand to hold when the jury nails you. Scott didn't even have his dad with him in the courtroom. He was practically alone, as he deserves to be.
Make no mistake, Geragos blew it. Granted, he didn't have great facts to work with (as Geragos said himself, before being hired: "You'd be hard-pressed to find a prosecutor who couldn't put together an indictment, let alone a conviction"), but he compounded that problem by making a bunch of promises in his opening statement that he knew he could never keep. That's rule number one of trial work. You don't let the jury down by offering more in the opening statement than you can show them during the trial. Geragos promised a lot in his opening statement, and all he had to offer the jury was (to paraphrase) "My client is an asshat, but you shouldn't convict him of murder unless you can determine how the asshat killed her."
I hope he gets the gurney. Sadly, Peterson probably won't be put to death for 20 years or more. In fact, they'll probably put him on a suicide watch and prevent him from trying to kill himself in the interim.
But he will be put to death, methinks. The only way Scott can avoid death, if the jurors think at all like me, is to testify in the penalty phase, show remorse and beg forgiveness and mercy. He won't do that. It's a near certainty.
I believe in the death penalty, but it does have one tiny little flaw: it potentially deters other prisoners from killing inmates like Peterson. If you are in for life, without parole, and if there is no death penalty, you are completely free to kill Peterson without consequence, a la Christopher Scarver (the Wisconsin inmate who killed Jeff Dahmer). I wouldn't give the death penalty to a vigilante who ended Scott Peterson. But, if you are in for life, but not on death row, or if your death penalty case is on appeal, you can't whack Peterson without worrying about the death penalty, unless you really know the "special circumstances" law well. Most inmates don't.
Can you believe how quickly the newspapers came out with their special editions? I saw video of people holding newspapers just a few minutes after one o'clock.
I'm glad that this verdict came down today. I was sick of seeing Yassar Arafat junk on the news. Plus, it was almost poetic that the day of reckoning came on what would have been Laci's 28th birthday.
It doesn't bring their daughter back, but the Rochas must be so happy, knowing that they will not have to suffer the pain of the Goldman and Brown families, who have to watch their children's killer enjoying his freedom. Scott Peterson's freedom is gone.
Sometimes, the system works.
Hooray! Justice served at last!
Posted by: Retro Girl | November 13, 2004 at 08:32