A California judge has dismissed a request from Scott Peterson’s attorneys with the Los Angeles Innocence Project, who argued that some witnesses claimed to have seen Laci Peterson alive after she went missing on Christmas Eve in 2002.
Judge Elizabeth Hill of San Mateo Superior Court ruled that any related testimony and evidence connecting Laci’s disappearance to nearby robberies was not admissible.
In 2004, Scott Peterson was convicted of murdering his wife, Laci, and their unborn child, Connor, following a lengthy trial that lasted five months.
Peterson has put forth claims over the years that individuals involved in a robbery across the street from his home might be responsible for Laci’s death, but prosecutors countered that the burglary took place after Laci had already vanished.
Initially sentenced to death, Peterson’s punishment was changed to life in prison without parole in 2021.
Currently, he has a separate case pending in the California Supreme Court, seeking to overturn his conviction due to alleged jury misconduct, and his legal team is preparing to appeal the most recent ruling.
The court had earlier denied his request for new DNA testing on almost all pieces of evidence, except for some duct tape found in Laci’s pants.
Laci was pregnant when she disappeared, and her body was later found in San Francisco Bay. In 2003, Scott was arrested near the Mexican border after he attempted to flee, sporting bleached hair and possessing a false passport, along with a significant amount of cash.
During the trial, he claimed that a woman named Amber Frey, with whom he was having an affair, informed him that Laci had died prior to his vanishing. Also, his alibi of being out fishing during Laci’s disappearance placed him at the same location where her body was ultimately discovered.
Prosecutors have argued that a police K-9 detected Laci’s scent at a Berkeley boat launch, and evidence suggested hair from her was found on tools retrieved from a boat. An autopsy indicated that her body may have been weighted down on the ocean floor, indicating a brutal act prior to her washing ashore, with evidence showing that Peterson had fashioned several homemade anchors from concrete and rebar.
