REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – First, Scott Peterson’s death sentence was overturned. Now, depending on the power of testimony from a controversial juror who helped decide the notorious case nearly two decades ago, his murder conviction also could be overturned, triggering a new trial.
That decision lies in the hands of Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo, who will hear the testimony beginning Friday of “Juror No. 7” about why she kept secret her own history as a domestic violence victim before she was chosen for the jury.
“If she had told the truth, she never would have been put on the jury,” Pat Harris, Peterson’s defense lawyer who has stuck with his client since the first trial, said in an interview this week.
Peterson was convicted in 2004 of murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, and their unborn son on Christmas Eve 2002, weighing her down with homemade concrete blocks and dumping her over his small fishing boat into the San Francisco Bay. Mother and child washed up separately four months later along the Richmond shoreline. The case drew so much attention, including with the revelation that Peterson was having an affair at the time, that the 9-month trial was moved from Modesto where Laci disappeared from the couple’s home, to Redwood City. Nonetheless, the case became so sensational that a raucous crowd gathered on the courthouse steps the day of the verdict and cheered.
Peterson’s lawyers will have to clear a high bar to overturn the case, said East Bay lawyer Daniel Horowitz, a legal pundit during the original trial who continues to follow the case.
“It’s not so much that she wasn’t truthful about her background, but was there anything that made it look in any way like it wasn’t a fair jury?” Horowitz said. “It’s going to be a little bit more than just not fully disclosing because I’m telling you people lie on juries all the time, or withhold all the time, and everybody gives the politically correct answers.”
Prosecutors have granted juror Richelle Nice immunity, presumably against perjury charges, to testify about why she failed to declare her past in written questionnaires and during jury selection questioning from defense and prosecution lawyers. The questionnaire had asked whether she had ever been the victim of a crime or involved in a lawsuit. Peterson’s lawyers say that she failed to mention she had been abused while pregnant three years earlier by a boyfriend who was charged in the case. She also didn’t reveal that she had obtained a restraining order against that same former boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, whom she feared would injure her unborn child.
In a declaration filed in court, Nice explained that she didn’t consider the restraining order a lawsuit, and the issue with her boyfriend at the time was more of a “heated argument” and she didn’t consider herself a victim because it was her boyfriend who called the police. Whether she will stick to this explanation or not remains to be seen — and immunity will protect her from perjury charges if she doesn’t.
“Minor indignities, shoving matches, raising of voices, and other undignified means of communicating frustration do not stick out to me, let alone cause me to feel ‘victimized’ the way the law might define that term,” she wrote. “I have had countless unpleasant experiences in my life. Those outlined above did not cross my mind during any portion of the jury selection process or during the trial. They did not play any role in my evaluation of the evidence or my verdicts.”
Nice, nicknamed “Strawberry Shortcake” from journalists covering the case because of her dyed-pink hair at the time, often spoke publicly about the Peterson trial after the verdict. She co-authored a book on the case and wrote 17 letters to Peterson while he was on death row at San Quentin. Peterson wrote back eight times.
In a 2017 interview with The Modesto Bee, Nice said that she wanted Peterson to explain to her why he committed the murders, although she didn’t expect a confession, and insisted she didn’t seek to get on the jury to “fry Scott Peterson.”
The “evidentiary hearing” that starts Friday will also feature a shortlist of journalists who covered the original trial or wrote books about it, as well as Peterson’s former lead attorney, Mark Geragos, who is expected to testify in person next Tuesday. Former jurors are also expected to take the stand to testify about whether Nice appeared biased during the trial.
In August 2020, the California Supreme Court overturned Peterson’s death sentence, ruling that potential jurors who personally opposed the death penalty but said they would be willing to follow the law and impose it were improperly excluded from the jury pool. Peterson’s death sentence was converted to a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
He is being held in the Redwood City jail through the course of the trial and is expected to appear in court each day. The courtroom is expected to be packed, once again, and seats for the media and the public will be chosen by lottery each morning.
