*Scott Peterson’s conviction for killing his pregnant wife Laci will stand, but the California Supreme Court has overturned his 2005 death sentence.
According to The Associated Press, the justices cited “significant errors” in jury selection as the reason for overturning the death penalty.
Peterson was found guilty in 2004 of murdering his wife, who was eight months pregnant at the time, and dumping her body from his fishing boat into San Francisco Bay. Months after she went missing on Christmas Eve 2002, the bodies of Laci and her unborn child surfaced in April 2003.
In a written decision Monday, the court upheld Peterson’s guilty verdict.
“Peterson contends his trial was flawed for multiple reasons, beginning with the unusual amount of pretrial publicity that surrounded the case,” the court said. “We reject Peterson’s claim that he received an unfair trial as to guilt and thus affirm his convictions for murder.”
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#ScottPeterson scumbag murderer of wife #Laci & unborn child escapes death penalty, as sentence is overturned. Guilty verdict remains in place. Death penalty is almost never carried out in California anyway, so no harm no foul. He’ll rot in #SanQuentin
— Geraldo Rivera (@GeraldoRivera) August 24, 2020
But the justices noted that “the trial court made a series of clear and significant errors in jury selection that, under long-standing United States Supreme Court precedent, undermined Peterson’s right to an impartial jury at the penalty phase.”
The court reversed the death sentence after determining that the trial court “erroneously dismissed” prospective jurors who opposed the death penalty, “even though the jurors gave no indication that their views would prevent them from following the law,” according to the report.
“We are grateful for the California Supreme Court’s unanimous recognition that if the state wishes to put someone to death, it must proceed to trial only with a fairly selected jury,” Cliff Gardner, Scott Peterson’s appellate attorney, said in a written statement.
“[While] we are disappointed that such a biased jury selection process results in a reversal of only the death sentence, we look forward to the Court’s review of the new forensic and eyewitness evidence of innocence,” Gardner continued in the statement.
Peterson’s family praised the court in a statement for recognizing “the injustice of Scott’s death penalty.”
“For a long and difficult 18 years, we have believed unwaveringly in Scott’s innocence, so today’s decision by the court is a big step toward justice,” they said.
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