Brent Rocha

Jury Tampering

October 22, 2004

If we hand-pick the jury, it is as easy to convict an innocent man as it is to set a guilty man free, and that is what makes the perpetual campaign to stack the deck in the Peterson trial, absolutely repugnant. The latest failure to comply with the principles that make our justice system work relate to the antics of juror #8, a person who has sworn to be an impartial adjudicator of the facts that surround the murder of Laci Peterson.

Before exploring evidence of jury tampering, we should also not forget the fact that in the case against Scott Preterson, the judge has also been hand-picked. The judge in the Laci Peterson murder trial was supposed to be retired Contra Costa County judge Richard Arnason, who was chosen by California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George. Arnason is a well known, criminal law expert with extensive death penalty case experience and having served on the Superior Court of Contra Costa County for 31 years, legal experts were shocked to hear that he had been replaced. In retrospect, it was the first move of the effort to construct the kangaroo court that is required to convict an innocent man, because Judge Richard Arnason has the reputation of doing what is right, while Judge Alfred A. Delucchi has exposed the unlawful propensity to allow the Peterson jury to be tampered with.

On October 19, 2004, Prosecutor Dave Harris was questioning forensic accountant Martin Laffer about Scott Peterson's finances when juror #8 passed a note through a court officer to Judge Alfred Delucchi. The judge read the message and after saying "I normally discourage these," he showed the note to Harris and defense lawyer Mark Geragos.

Juror #8 stared intently at forensic accountant Martin Laffer, and when Harris read his note, he resumed his cross-examination of the expert with a new focus: Peterson's monthly tax payments. Juror #8 was seeking to spin the straightforward claim that Scott Peterson did not have money problems, and he cleverly focused on Scott's net disposable income, instead of the gross, to create the impression that Scott Peterson was not as well off as he claimed to be.

Laffer, the forensic accountant that juror #8 sought to discredit, testified that Peterson and his wife, Laci, had ample disposable income - just more than $2,000 a month, according to one chart shown to jurors. Under questioning by Harris, Laffer acknowledged that $1,300 of that amount went to taxes, and on the prompting of Juror #8, Harris asked the obvious question, "So, you have $700 extra, not $2,000?" A young couple under 30 that has $700 left after bills, does not have money problems. Laffer went on to testify that Scott had monthly reimbursement from the company of $1400- $2700, depending on Scott's productivity, so when you take into account the fringe benefits of a generous expense acount, it is safe to assume that Scott Peterson did not have to worry about spare change.

Court TV reported that juror #8 is a member of the Teamsters Union, he often works double shifts to make ends meet, and he has appeared annoyed with Peterson's defense in the past, sneering and crossing his arms when television interviews of the defendant were played in court. It is safe to assume that this arrogant Teamster is one stubborn, close-minded man who believes that anybody who is as free-spirited and as worry-free as Scott Peterson was, does not deserve his freedom. Juror #8 and Scott Peterson may live in worlds apart, but he promised to be objective and impartial, he did not say that if the prosecutor failed to prove his case, he would help him out.

Juror #8 cannot simply reverse the view that Scott Peterson did not have money problems by pointing out the known fact that taxes consistently claim a bulk of every income. If Scott Peterson earns absolutely nothing at all and feels comfortable living off his dad's money, that is his business. Isn't that what Scott Peterson is doing now, living off the generosity of his parents? When he was not in jail, Scott Peterson was working to raise his family, he did not have money problems, and the suggestion that a man with his income and energy was financially stressed, is not realistic.

Juror #8 evidently sought to prove otherwise, and the Teamster with the thick skull acted like an over-eager high-schooler running for Class President/Jury Foreman. Applauding the prejudicial, blue collar worker who is as financially sophisticated as a child at the mall, Peterson haters are calling his antics "the revelation that discredited the forensic accountant", but on close examination, this cameo-rated billing is merely a mask to conceal the paranoia and the hysteria that surrounds the prosecutor's bankrupt case.

The judge reviewed the question of juror #8 to ensure that it was proper and relevant, and he should have denied the opportunity to interrupt the trial because it was clearly not appropriate. Selective questions expose bias and when a judge who is supposed to be impartial and objective proves that he is essentially granting a juror the opportunity to assist the prosecution, he betrays his 'hanging judge' mentality. Judge Alfred Delucchi may feel comfortable promoting the question of a soulmate,'hanging juror', but that is not the appropriate role of a fair and impartial judge.

Judge Alfred Delucchi should have rejected the unexpected offer to help the prosecutor from the jury box, and most judges would not allow it. The judge who granted Prosecutor Harris the opportunity to incorporate juror #8's question into the cross-examination of an expert witness highlighted the fact that there is no greater hypocrisy than to dismiss a juror who is favorable to the defense and to retain one who is seeking to dominate the prosecution.

Contrary to their oath, people like juror #8 do not listen to all the evidence because they think they are even smarter than the prosecutor and they just want to get the trial over with, without granting the opportunity to launch a defense.

The question that juror #8 asked was potentially relevant if Scott Peterson had murdered his wife for the lack of money, but there is no evidence of that. We cannot simply spin and twist a person's financial condition, for the sake of manufacturing a motive to murder. Moreover, the decision to ask a specific question betrays extreme bias, not necessarily because of anything that juror #8 asked, but because of the questions he chose to ignore. In particular, the evidence of the forensic accountant followed the explosive revelation of a cement expert who proved that the anchors that Scott Peterson had allegedly used to bury Laci at sea did not exist because the cement that was supposed to have been used to make them had been used to repair Laci's driveway.

Why didn't juror #8 ask about the prosecutor's failure to "cement" the case against Scott Peterson? Isn't that the lynchpin of the prosecutor's entire case? Why is this juror merely interested in trying to poke a hole in the case for the defense? That is ultimately the glaring omission which betrays a bias that is so extreme, that it is safe to say that juror #8 has determined that Scott Peterson is guilty without even giving Mark Geragos the opportunity to defend him.

Clearly, if the Teamster had said "no anchors to submit, no basis to convict" Judge Alfred Delucchi would have dismissed juror #8, without question.

It is astounding that juror #8 betrayed his view about Scott Peterson's guilt after Geragos had proved that the prosecutor failed to cement the case against Scott Peterson. Indeed, Geragos proved that the four anchors that Peterson allegedly used to dispose of Laci's body did not even exist -the bag of cement that Peterson allegedly used to make anchors was fully accounted for and the prosecutor could not produce a single anchor, to prove otherwise.

The importance of this groundbreaking evidence cannot possibly be exaggerated because it highlights the fact that Scott Peterson has not been proven to have made a single, material lie in connection to the murder of Laci Peterson, and that's what counts. The fact that Peterson is a liar is a serious character flaw, but the prosecutor's tendency to imagine evidence that does not even exist, distorts the truth about the murder of Laci Peterson.

The experts have already acknowledged the importance of failing to cement the case against Scott Peterson. According to Christopher Pixley, "...if the defense experts are a cut above the prosecution's, it certainly goes a long way towards acquittal. In this case, Mark Geragos hired a defense expert, a concrete expert who trained and taught the prosecution's own expert..." Indeed, Mark Geragos proved that the investigation by the defense was far more credible and far more reasonable than the state's, and that is not spin. Even Chuck Smith, a seasoned, sombre, pro-prosecution advocate said, "If the defense on this particular fact, which is one of the facts that the prosecution is relying upon can raise a reasonable doubt, it breaks the chain of circumstantial evidence. And by itself can cause the jury to find the defendant not guilty. So, it's critically important. And I think the defense won this, because the defense expert gave them common sense reason why the prosecution expert was wrong."

This evidence has highlighted the fact that Scott Peterson deserves an acquittal, and pro-prosecution hysterics like Nancy Grace have gone berserk because they have even lost the respect of seasoned prosecutors like Chuck Smith. Indeed, after seeking to discredit his reasoned approach to reviewing the evidence, Chuck Smith ignored Nancy Grace's hysterical antics and continued to explain the strength of the case for the defense when he said:

He (concrete expert) testified, that the reason the prosecution did not believe it was the same concrete, was because the prosecution expert talked about bigger rocks in the concrete. The defense expert said, yes, bigger rocks because the concrete was laid in a bed of gravel. That explains the bigger rocks. The prosecution guy is gone. I'm talking about this from a stand point of a former prosecutor. I have nothing vested in that. My observation was the defense had the better of this.

The hysterical, Nancy Grace tried to divert attention away from the simple truth by embracing a bizarre lecture about how you mix cement, and she blurted incoherent nonsense like, "That's not how you make cement. Richard, please. Get real." and "That's not how you make cement." and "With dry cement mix. OK, Richard. If that's how you mend your driveway, get after it."

Bloggers around the world noted Nancy Grace's hysterical repsonse to the homerun that Geragos scored on the first day of opening his defense, and they astutely made comments like; "Nancy Grace completely misses the point...on purpose no doubt...she is smarter than that. The point is how the cement mix was used, not if it was the best way to patch a driveway."

Ordinary people get it. Nancy Grace's whirlwind hysterical tour failed to ridicule the fine defense that earned the respect of seasoned prosecutors, but the blowhard ranted on through comments like;

Larry. This is Geragos' theory. Now you all tell me how reasonable this is. This is Geragos' theory is regarding the cement. The reason the cement is so important, is because we're all wondering what happened to the rest of that 90 pounds of cement that Peterson said he used to mend the driveway. To believe the defense expert, you've got to believe Geragos' theory that Peterson made the one anchor and then went and poured dry cement mix on to the holes in his driveway, and prayed for rain, did a little rain dance and hoped it would mix with the cement mix and patch the holes. I'm reading it out of the transcript. Now, Larry, I'm not a mason or a masonette, as it might be, but I know that is not how you fix a hole in the driveway, OK. Didn't happen that way.

Needless to say, it is a delicious irony to note that in this case, it is clearly possible to learn something by unravelling the truth behind Nancy Grace's hysterical outbursts. Bloggers have certainly determined the meaning behind somebody who routinely misses the point on purpose, and that is what makes the following, Nancy Grace comment, extremely revealing:

Well, I expected them to start off with a bang. I think they started off with a boo-boo. But I think Geragos had a good plan. He wanted to bring on the cement expert. I think the cement expert went south because of the theory that Peterson sprinkled cement on a driveway, dry cement mix to repair it. So that's screwed up. Then you have got the financial expert. I think he did a pretty good job. You've had a defense investigator. A couple of other witnesses. I see where they're headed, but the same argument that was leveled against the state, none of it is a wham in the courtroom. None of it has really proven anything yet.

Make no mistake about it, Mark Geragos scored a homerun in the first inning, and the disgenuine effort to suggest otherwise is extremely deceptive. As a matter of fact, Nancy Grace had always claimed that the prosecutor had to produce at least one anchor to convict Scott Peterson, and her noted hysteria reflects the clear understanding that this prosecution has failed to cement the case against Scott Peterson.

The most compelling statement about juror #8 belongs to the blogger who wrote: "As far as the jurors telegraphing their feeling about how they view one side or the other.... I have been on a jury 3 times...one a Death Penalty case. In a very small town. Not a one of the jury would have dared rolled our eyes, crossed our arm etc. We would have been dismissed immediately. And we did not talk about the case either. If you don't have integrity to be honest and listen to both sides, you should tell the court before you are seated."

Incidentally, Nancy Grace inadvertently betrayed that fact that the bias of juror #8 is even more extreme than the lack of fairness and balance she routinely promotes on national television. When juror #8 chose to ignore the explosive revelation about cement anchors, in lieu of sparring with a forensic accountant, he was obviously too clever by half. Even Nancy Grace said, "Then you have got the financial expert. I think he did a pretty good job." Juror #8 thinks that he can outgun Nancy Grace in the bias department, and that is a level of prejudice that should never be tolerated in any court room.

When we compare Judge Alfred Delucchi's decision to dismiss juror #5 with his unreasonable tendency to give an extremely biased juror the opportunity to feel like he is a part of the prosecution, it becomes very clear that the jury has been improperly stacked against Scott Peterson.

On Monday, June 21, 2004, Judge Alfred Delucchi properly determined that Juror #5, who appeared to interact briefly with Laci Peterson's brother, could stay on the Scott Peterson murder trial. It was like a breath of fresh air, coming on the first day of summer, because the judge in fact took the time to question the parties involved and to reach a reasonable and rational decision. After talking to Brent Rocha and to Juror #5, Judge Alfred A. Delucchi announced the juror would not be excused, because, in his own words, "The court is of the opinion that there was no misconduct on the part of Mr. Rocha or on the part of the juror." The judge and defense attorney Mark Geragos said that, based on their conversation with Rocha and the juror, media descriptions of the interaction were inaccurate, and it was not necessary to dismiss the juror. Case closed.

But the case was later re-opened, and the intent of the encounter between Brent Rocha and juror #5 became crystal clear. The media promoted the false claim that the juror was heard on the tape saying "could lose today", and in retrospect, this carefully orchestrated smear against juror #5, is not justifiable. Both, the judge and Peterson's lawyer had indicated that the interaction was misportrayed by reporters, but the overzealous campaign to suspend common sense prevailed.

The entire role of media interference has not been fully analyzed, but irresponsible, overzealous blowhards like Nancy Grace are never far behind.

The following exchange between Larry King and Nancy Grace, on June 15, 2004, reflects the hysteria which is directly responsible for the dismissal of juror #5.

KING: Nancy, do you jury-read?

GRACE: I certainly do. And it's just what we do, what we all do every day in our life. It is instinctual. You don't think it through, you feel it. It's a gut reaction when the hair stands up on the back of your neck. And this juror, for about a minute, had me worried because every time -- it wasn't during the trial...

KING: How do you know, if you weren't there?

GRACE: Because my reporter is there...

KING: Oh.

GRACE: ... every single day and observes the jury. I have two reporters in the courtroom every day. And both of them observed this male juror, not the one with the restraining order, come in the courtroom, and then he sees Peterson -- it's not during the evidence, but it's when they come in and out -- he's, like, Yo. But today, he didn't do that. That has ceased.

Nancy Grace specifically identified juror #5 to be a threat to the case for the prosecution, and he was subsequently ambushed, just like the media irresponsibly targeted and ridiculed the observations of Vivian Mitchell.

It in now quite obvious that the media frenzy that hysterics like Nancy Grace produce targeted and destroyed juror #5 with the pinpoint accuracy of a laser, and the predictable, hostile treatment that anybody who promotes the truth receives, is not an isolated incident. Like Vivian Mitchell, who witnessed Laci walking her dog on Christmas Eve, Chris Clark saw Laci walking a golden retriever about two weeks before she vanished. Clark was working at the home of his boss, Carl Williams, who lives near the Petersons. He did not come forward for fear of being ridiculed in the media, and the evidence clearly proves that the threat was very real. When Mrs. mitchell came forward, she was aggresively targeted and if she wasn't murdered by the people who planted Conner's fetus, above the shoreline, to implicate Scott Peterson, her timely death was a bizarre coincidence.

Beyond the distortions that target innocent victims like Vivian Mitchell, the fact that Nancy Grace thinks that she is the star of 'Runaway Jury' can no longer be seriously disputed. On July 15, 2004, a caller on Larry King live noted Nancy's relentless obsession when she said, "My question is directed to Nancy Grace, and Ted Rowlands, in specific, since he's in court every day. Last week on Nancy's show, they mentioned that there's one male juror, and when he comes in every day, he's making eye contact with Scott Peterson, where the other jurors are all averting their eyes." It doesn't take a genius to figure out the fact that the juror who made eye contact was selectively targeted.

This is not the first time the media has manipulated a jury to railroad an innocent man. During the Skakel trial, the media and Dominick Dunne dined within earshot of the jury, every single day during the trial [same restaurant], and the suggestion that Dunne's celebrity did not influence the jury is also silly.

"The prosecution hasn't given us any reason to believe Scott Peterson committed murder," Falconer, the dismissed juror said, and that has not changed.

Freed to discuss the trial, Falconer, a 28-year-old airport screener said he thought his exchange with Brent Rocha was "all blown out of proportion" by the media and that he would have found Peterson innocent if asked to deliberate the case. "He'd be innocent because the prosecution hasn't given us any reason to believe otherwise so far," he said. "Yeah he lied about a couple of things that we saw in there but I haven't seen anything to make me believe that he comitted this crime." Falconer was removed from the case because he is not an ignorant, self-serving jailhouse snitch who thrives on the capacity to promote fabricated stories.

Juror #5 is as honest and as ordinary as reliable witnesses like Vivian Mitchell, who was reportedly murdered because her testimony cleared Scott. Needless to say, Vivian Mitchell would probably still be alive today if she was a prosecution witness like the repugnant Yoga Instructor who was willing to lie, to support the ridiculous, prosecution claim that Laci was not able to walk her dog. It is absolutely disgusting to watch the truth butchered and tampered with in this maner and method, and those who are responsible for this absolute fiasco, should be prosecuted.

The dismissal of juror #5 is merely a matter of crushing opposition to the claim that Scott Peterson is guilty, and that is as illegal as murdering Vivian Mitchell because her testimony, according to Nancy Grace herself, could have cleared Scott Peterson. The murder of Laci and Conner has spawned a cottage industry of criminal conduct, and Scott Peterson is now the ultimate victim.

Indeed, the authorities even tolerated the burglary of Scott Peterson's own home, where Brent Rocha was videotaped laughing, as he drove away from what was suppossed to be a preserved, crime scene. Did the police fail to understand the fact that Laci's property belongs to her husband, Scott Peterson and that her home should not be burglarized, simply because she is dead? When you place events in context, this latest jury manipulation incident is not an isolated occurance, it is a part of a persistent, illegal obsession to replace the truth with the bias that it is alright to destroy anybody who is not brainwashed by the irresponsible, false claim that Scott Peterson murdered Laci. That is not what justice for Laci Peterson demands. Justice is about solving crime, it is not about framing an innocent man, and Laci and Connor deserve better because Scott Peterson is evidently all they had and if we continue to blame an innocent man like Scott Peterson, the people who are responsible for kidnapping and murdering Laci Peterson will rest easy.

The case against Scott Peterson has produced one of these seminal moments where you have to stand up and demand justice, because there is absolutely nothing more cruel and torturous than failing to rescue a kidnapped woman and blaming her husband because the authorities are either too perplexed, too corrupt, too embarrassed, too busy or too incompetent to recognize the truth.

The fact that the entire court room process has been tainted in the Scott Peterson trial has not escaped the notice of the mainstream media. In particular, the commentary of Julie Hilden, a FindLaw columnist who has practiced First Amendment law at a D.C. law firm, has been widely reported. The following summary, in the words of Julie Hilden, explores some of the ways that a Peterson, jury verdict is potentially contaminated.

After his dismissal, Falconer told the media that based on the evidence he'd heard so far from the prosecution, there was "no way I would even believe [Scott Peterson] was guilty."

The way Falconer put the point suggests he was adamant. It seems likely that not only would he have voted for acquittal, he would have been the lone holdout who hung the jury if necessary. So not only did the media, it seems, end up getting a juror dismissed, but it ended up getting a pro-acquittal juror dismissed.

Thus, in a very real sense, if Scott Peterson is convicted, he may end up having been convicted because of the media. For the media's coverage in the case triggered the dismissal of a juror who would almost certainly have prevented conviction.

The jury's composition should be sacrosanct from outside influences. How ironic if jurors who are asked never to read the newspapers, nevertheless get dismissed because of what is said in the media about them.

The need to control everything is spawned by the fact that evidence to implicate Scott Peterson does not exist and the following blogger who carefully analyzed the case for the prosecution, focused on the central question which relates to the Laci Peterson, murder mystery, when he said:

The bizarre effort to link Scott Peterson to the murder of Laci through a tidal expert, has turned the case against Scott Peterson into a grotesque circus. The absurdity of backtracking to the location where a body might have been dumped in the Bay, over a lengthy period of time, is very clear because we do not know if, where, or for how long Laci's body was weighed down.

Moreover, weather conditions change surface currents and you have to be able to calculate resistive forces, to be able to predict a driving force. How can you possibly calculate the distance and the direction that a body floats in the water, if you do not know how or if it is weighed or where it is weighed or when the weights were released from the body. When you combine natural variables, including the time of day and the moon cycle, etc., with the failure to determine where, how or if Laci's body had ever been anchored, it is absolutely not possible to determine where a particular body will move or relocate.

The suggestion that a hydrologist could trace currents from where Scott Peterson allegedly dumped Laci on December 24, 2003 to where she was found 4 1/2 months later, in time to arrest Scott on April 18, 2004 is so preposterous that it merits absoute ridicule.

If Peterson had in fact dumped Laci in the Bay in the middle of the day, at high tide, it would have been more likely for the body to commence it's outward journey towards the ocean with the ebb tide, rather than to be recovered precisely as expected, in a popular, dog-walking park, just in time to make it absolutely impossible for the stubborn, Modesto Police Department, to refuse to arrest Scott Peterson.

The tide of events is quite clear. Laci was walking her dog when she was kidnapped and a woman walking her dog discovered the body.

A woman walking her dog discovered the body in a popular dog-walking park. Under and under the circumstances, it is more reasonable to suggest that the bodies were deliberately planted to be found by a stranger, than to claim that a tidal expert can destroy Scott Peterson's alibi.

In a typical investigation, you begin with questions and you proceed to answer them. In the Peterson case, aggressive advocates assume that Peterson murdered Laci and they seek to gag anybody who raises the serious questions that suggest otherwise.

Needless to say, the people who are falsely implicating Scott Peterson have failed to convince any reasonable jury and they never will. We have all heard about imaginary anchors, about chicken wire that was allegedly used to decapitate Laci, about the false claim that Scott's boat was salt-water free --and a host of equally false theories. There is absolutely no material value in all this non-stop propaganda which sought to lynch Scott Peterson by planting National Enquirer caliber stories in the media. Gloria Allred and Nancy Grace may erroneously believe that everybody who is arrested is guilty but they never prove anything beyond their own ignorance.

The entire case against Scott Peterson is characterized by aggressive advocacy and by the obsession to distort the truth, and that is not right. Detective Grogan interrogated Scott using a hidden video camera and hidden tape recorder, and instead of relying on this objective evidence, the batteries in the tape recorder allegedly went dead thus the audio tape recording was not publicly disclosed. If the prosecution did not rely upon blowhards like Gloria Allred to prep prosecution witness, Amber Frey, it would perhaps be possible to excuse the claim that a taprecorder malfunctioned, but this absolute zeal to misrepresent the facts for the sake of implicating Scott Peterson, is not excusable.

Under the circumstances, it is more than reasonable to assume that the interrogation of Scott Peterson did not yield evidence as Grogan planned, so the audio was deliberately destroyed. Sound extreme? Not in this case.

Some will continue to believe that Scott is guilty even if he is acquitted, reasonable and knowledgeable people will understand the fact that an innocent man was railroaded if he is convicted. The truth is, Scott has been cleared by absolute scrutiny, and instead of using mouthpieces like Gloria Allred to distort the truth, we should be trying to identify the person or persons who are responsible for the murder of Laci Peterson.

Instead of investigating the murder of Laci Peterson, the prosecution is trying to convince a jury that Scott murdered Laci, put her into his toolbox, took her out of his toolbox, put her into his boat attached to four anchors that do not even exist and dumped her into San Fransisco Bay. And how did the prosecution prove all that? Kim Fulbright, who works for the Stanislaus County District Attorney's Office, posed for pictures when she was 38 weeks pregnant, 5-foot-2-inches tall and weighed about 157 pounds. The prosecution used reenactment photographs to illustrate how Peterson could have concealed the body in a large toolbox in the back of his pickup truck and on the floor of his small boat. This woman who was nearly identical to Laci's size and pregnant condition, climbed into Scott Peterson's toolbox, climbed out of the toolbox, into Scott's boat, out of Scott's boat, and we are to assume that Scott Peterson did the same to Laci.

Think about it. The mere logistics of the unsubstantiated claim that Scott managed to keep his wife's body hidden from investigators by attaching four cement anchors that were not heavy enough to sink Laci's body, is insane. The bonus, proven fact that Scott used the cement to repair his driveway, adds insult to insanity.

Never yield and never waver because Scott Peterson is absolutely innocent and anobody who accepts the obscene, manipulative and perverse tactics that are supposed to prove otherwis, is guilty of covering up the truth about the murder of Laci Peterson.

According to hanging Judge Alfred Delucchi,"the court is satisfied that the evidence before this court is sufficient to sustain a conviction on appeal." On the contrary, a fair and impartial judge would be forced to conclude that the evidence against Scott Peterson is so weak, that it would be unreasonable to dictate a finding of fact, with regard to the murder of Laci Peterson. (October 22, 2004)


Postscript: On November 3, 2004 the jury began to deliberate, but by November 8, 2004, all the signs pointed to a hung jury. The judge ordered the jury back into the court room and the fact that there was obviously a problem with deliberations was highlighted by a concerned judge who told the jurors "to keep an open mind".

On November 10, 2004, the jury foreman, who was a trained physician and lawyer, was dismissed. It was widely rumored that he was forcing the jurors to go over the facts and evidence piece my piece, and having taken copious detailed notes - 19 notebooks of notes, it was not a surprise. The foreman was replaced by a firefighter who hardly paid any attention at all during the trial, and the time "to keep an open mind" was clearly over. "I wouldn't say we have a runaway jury, yet," former prosecutor Jim Hammer said. "I am very surprised. I've never seen a case where two jurors were removed in two days." Is Hammer denying the obvious?

Nancy Grace exposed the fact that the new foreman essentially violated his oath to be be impartial, when she said, "I always thought back on six, who is now the new foreperson, and I looked at him throughout the state's case. He was so interested in his cuticles and his fingernails. He paid no attention whatsoever. But then I saw him in Geragos' closing argument, he didn't pay any attention to him either." The new foreman did not need a trial to determine Scott Peterson's guilt or innocence

On November 12, 2004, the jury reached a verdict. Less than six hours after being given instructions by the judge to go back and to start deliberations all over, this new, hand-picked jury decided to crucify an innocent man.

According to juror, Greg Beratlis, who helped crucify Scott Peterson: "After people start finding out that I had been picked for the jury, people would just walk up, people I didn't even know, and they would say, guilty, or fry him." Greg bertalis was emotionally charged, he knew that the prosecution did not prove Scott Peterson's guilt. In his own words, "I really thought that the prosecution was shooting in the dark on this and they were hoping they could pin this crime on a suspect." Indeed, all the bizarre theories that the prosecution promoted were previously published in the National Inquirer and they were all deservingly tabloid trash material. In the words of Greg Beratlis, the prosecution did not prove its case because, "Did you have a place, a time, a weapon, how why?" The prosecution had absolutely nothing, beyond the obsession to fry Scott Peterson, just like they tried to fry this innocent mother when her son was murdered.

Nancy Grace, Gloria Gomez and all the other talking heads who are responsible for railroading innocent people do not deserve their freedom. Some day, a worthy prosecutor will make that absolutely clear.


UPDATE: The jury that prosecuted Scott Peterson is not exactly what you would call reliable. Richelle Nice -- whose wild hair color earned her the nickname 'Strawberry Shortcake' by reporters and trial watchers -- said she still wrestles with nightmares over the trial.

"I sometimes wake up crying," she told the book's authors -- Frank Swertlow and Lyndon Stambler. "What is wrong, I think? What went wrong with my life? What happened t me? That is why I am on so much medication."

Nice grabbed headlines in May when she told People Magazine that she had been a Pen Pal with the death-row imprisoned Peterson for more than a year.

Nice said she wrote the first letter as an exercise suggested by her therapist, but she didn't intend to mail it. She said she wanted to tell Peterson how the seven-month trial had turned her life upside down. The mother of four boys also wanted to know why he killed his wife, Laci Peterson.

Then she decided to mail it. About a month later, she got a response.

"I started shaking and crying and hyperventilating," she told the magazine. "I didn't know what to do. I wondered, 'Do I call the police? Do I even want to open it?"'

"He talked a lot about those autopsy photos and how hard that must have been for the jurors to see," Nice told People Magazine at the time.

In December 2005, Nice suffered a major breakdown and was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward.

Even Alfred Delucchi, the Judge who sent Scott Peterson to death row for killing his pregnant wife, expressed doubts about the imposition of the death penalty after Scott Peterson was convicted.

Judge Delucchi died on February 26, 2008. He was 76.

When you sentence someone to death with some doubts it should play on your health and on your mind because you are obviously too ignorant to do the right thing.

Next: Victims like Scott Peterson are a dime a dozen.

Plus: Framing another innocent person.

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