Scott Peterson isn’t giving up on getting a new trial. Here’s who he says killed Laci

Scott Peterson’s quest for a new trial was dealt a significant blow in December when a judge rejected his claim that a biased juror served on his 2004 murder trial. His case is far from over, though.

Peterson last month filed a new petition for habeas corpus in California’s First District Court of Appeal. It has six claims, including that new witnesses have come forward with information supporting the defense’s theory that Laci was abducted and killed by men she saw burglarizing a neighbor’s home.

After walking her dog on Christmas Eve 2002, she “confronted the burglars by threatening to call the police,” The petition reads. “They then killed her and, after learning Scott, the primary suspect, had been fishing in the San Francisco Bay, dumped her body there.”

In early January 2003, Modesto police issued a press release saying they had arrested Steven Wayne Todd and Donald Glen Pearce for the burglary across from the Peterson home on Covina Avenue in Modesto. Police said the burglary occurred two days after Laci Peterson went missing and they had no reason to believe the men were connected to her disappearance.

That was the information the jury heard in Scott Peterson’s 2004 trial.

Peterson’s trial attorney Mark Geragos told the jury in opening statements he would prove that Peterson was “stone cold innocent” based on evidence that Laci was alive when Scott drove to the San Francisco Bay.

But the jury never heard from any of the 12 people who reported to police that they saw Laci Peterson walking her dog that morning, after Scott left to go fishing, or evidence that she had witnessed the burglary.

Peterson was convicted of the first-degree murder of Laci and the second-degree murder of their unborn son, Conner, and sentenced to death.

Peterson sat on death row for 15 years waiting for a team of lawyers to draft and file his appeal and first habeas petition and for the California Supreme Court to rule on them.

In 2020, the court overturned Peterson’s death sentence on the grounds that the trial judge wrongly dismissed jurors who were opposed to the death penalty but might still have been able to apply it fairly. It then remanded the case to San Mateo Superior Court, where the 2004 trial took place, for a judge to determine whether a juror lied to get on his jury because she was prejudiced against him.

Following a five-day evidentiary hearing and an extensive briefing by Peterson’s team and the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office, Judge Anne-Christine Massullo denied Peterson’s claim on Dec. 20. She determined that while the juror gave false answers on a jury questionnaire, they were not motivated by preexisting or improper bias.

Peterson could not appeal Massullo’s decision but he could file another habeas petition with the First District Court of Appeal so long as it contained new information.

This time, he did it without the team of court-appointed attorneys he had when he still faced the death sentence.

As a defendant in a capital case, Peterson was entitled to those attorneys. Now that he has been resentenced to life without the possibility of parole, that is no longer the case.

Peterson is representing himself but has the help of his sister-in-law Janey Peterson, who has maintained Scott’s innocence and has been intimately involved in his legal proceedings. She even attended law school but is not a licensed attorney.

Janey Peterson also maintains a website and social media pages that detail Scott’s appeal process.

“They had to shut her up”

On Aug. 22, 2022, a little over a week after the conclusion of the evidentiary hearing in Scott Peterson’s juror misconduct claim, a person identifying herself as Melissa messaged Janey Peterson on Twitter. Melissa told Janey Peterson she knew of a man who, during a gathering a few months earlier, made confessions about the burglary and Laci’s abduction and murder.

Janey Peterson contacted one of Scott’s attorneys at the time, Pat Harris, who with private investigator Jason DeWitt interviewed three people who said they were present when the man made the incriminating statements.

One told DeWitt she heard the man make statements about Laci’s murder but didn’t want to be involved in the case. The other two gave details about what the man said and signed declarations.