A judge upheld Scott Peterson's murder convictions and life sentence Tuesday for the 2002 deaths of his wife and her fetus, finding that one of Peterson's jurors had made false statements in pretrial questioning about her own experience with domestic abuse but did not show bias against him.
Peterson was convicted and sentenced to death in 2004 for killing his eight-months-pregnant wife, Laci, 27, in their Modesto home on Christmas Eve 2002. He was also convicted of murdering their unborn son, Conner. Their remains washed ashore in Richmond and nearby Point Isabel four months later near an area where Peterson said he had gone fishing.
The state Supreme Court overturned Peterson’s death sentence in 2020, ruling that the trial judge had improperly disqualified 13 prospective jurors who opposed capital punishment but said they could put their views aside and consider a death verdict. Stanislaus County prosecutors decided not to seek another death sentence, and Peterson was re-sentenced to life in prison without parole.
After rejecting other challenges to Peterson’s murder convictions, including defense claims that previously undisclosed evidence would have shown his innocence, the state’s high court ruled later in 2020 that he was entitled to a hearing on whether one of the jurors had failed to disclose that she was predisposed to convict him because of her background.
The juror, Richelle Nice — who later identified herself when she and six other jurors published a book about...
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