Scott Peterson fooled no one and won’t get a new trial. Once again, justice is served | Opinion

The first and perhaps best indication that Scott Peterson would not get a new trial probably came back in August 2020. That’s when the California Supreme Court essentially scoffed at claims of innocence in his appeal and solidly stood behind the same evidence in his 2004 trial that led jurors to declare the Modesto man worthy of death for murdering his pregnant wife and unborn son.

Most of the attention in that 2020 ruling understandably was focused on the Supreme Court reversing Peterson’s death sentence — again, not because the high court thought he was innocent. Some potential jurors before the 2004 trial were improperly excused when they should have been questioned more thoroughly about their views on the death penalty.

Peterson’s legal team, in other words, prevailed then on a technicality, which has everything to do with process and nothing to do with truth.

His attorneys were unable to pull the wool over the eyes of the Supreme Court two-plus years ago. So they focused recently on another technical question: whether a stealth juror had sneaked herself into the process by hiding her bias and secret desire to punish Peterson.

The second-best indication that he would not get a new trial probably came during hearings in March when the juror in question, Richelle Nice, stood her ground under intense pressure on the witness stand, insisting she had no preconceived notion of Peterson’s guilt. She came to that conclusion, she said, same as the other jurors — after listening to months of evidence in his insanely high-profile trial. Nice was honest, vulnerable and entirely believable.

It was the same thing she had told The Modesto Bee back in February 2018, on camera and in print: “I did not lie to get on this trial to fry Scott.”

The third-best public hint that he would stay put in prison came with an interview granted this month to The Bee by Birgit Fladager. She led the team of prosecutors in his 2004 trial, later became district attorney of Stanislaus County and will retire in a few days. In that recent talk, she knocked on her wooden desk while proclaiming herself “very optimistic” because Nice had done such a nice job in the hearing.

A huge sigh of relief

No one in the legal system believed Scott Peterson’s claims that he did not murder his eight-months-pregnant wife, Laci, and the son they had decided to name Conner — not Fladager and her team, not jurors, not Supreme Court justices, and lastly, not Judge Anne-Christine Massullo, who rendered Tuesday’s landmark decision.

Laci’s family won’t have to relive the horror and the grind of an emotionally draining, spirit-bludgeoning, a six-month trial like they did 18 years ago, reminded as they were daily of the deaths and grisly recovery of their remains. Ditto for friends and other loved ones.

Prosecutors won’t have to cobble 20-year-old evidence and witnesses.

Modesto won’t have to carry once more the unjust burden of an avalanche of negative media attention with reporters and talking heads turning over every stone to feed insatiable 24-hour news cycles.

It’s appropriate to applaud Tuesday’s ruling and come to the same conclusion almost everyone did 18 long years ago: Sometimes, the justice system works.