| Geragos: Evidence is 'feeble' December 23, 2003 Police "deliberately ignored" evidence that would have benefited Scott Peterson, and prosecutors have failed to show that his wife's death involved a crime, according to a motion seeking to dismiss double-murder charges. "The police -- from the very beginning -- decided that their job was to put Scott Peterson on death row," defense attorney Mark Geragos wrote in the motion filed Monday afternoon in Stanislaus County Superior Court. "They deliberately ignored any exculpatory evidence, and from day one worked only toward the goal of putting Scott in the gas chamber," Geragos said in a 12-page motion laced with disparaging comments about police and prosecutors. The motion challenges the order holding Peterson for trial, handed down last month at the close of his 12-day preliminary hearing on charges he murdered his wife, Laci, and unborn son, Conner. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, which in California is administered by lethal injection or gas. Chief Deputy District Attorney John Goold said he had not reviewed the motion and would not comment on it. A formal prosecution response is expected Jan. 8. "We'll make our response known and address the applicable law in the paperwork we file," Goold said. The defense contends there is no reasonable cause to order Peterson to stand trial, because prosecutors failed at the preliminary hearing to show the deaths involved a crime and did not present physical or circumstantial evidence to indicate Peterson murdered his wife and child. In April, passersby found the bodies of mother and son along the shoreline of San Francisco Bay, a few miles from where Scott Peterson said he went fishing Dec. 24. He reported his wife missing later that day. The standard of proof prosecutors are required to meet at a preliminary hearing is significantly lower than what's required to find a defendant guilty at trial. The defense motion to set aside the ruling and dismiss the case has little chance of success, legal observers have said. Judge Marie Silveira is scheduled to hear the motion Jan. 14. Peterson's trial is set for Jan. 26, but that date will likely be pushed back if Girolami grants a defense request to move the trial because of massive publicity. Calling the prosecution evidence "extraordinarily feeble," Geragos wrote in the motion that prosecutors had only established that Peterson was an unfaithful husband who had happened to go fishing on the "same day his wife tragically disappeared." "There was no evidence at all at the preliminary hearing suggesting Laci's cause of death or Conner's cause of death," Geragos wrote. The medical examiner testified he could not determine the cause of death. In a wide-ranging assault on the prosecution's case, Geragos attacked the notion that Scott was preparing to flee when he was arrested outside the Torrey Pines Golf Course near San Diego. A detective testified Peterson had $15,000 cash, four cell phones and camping gear in his car. "It also stretches credulity that an alleged 'murderer on a run for the border' stopped on the way to Mexico to play nine or 18 holes while heading north," Geragos wrote. "Only the geographically challenged would miss the fact that Scott HOME INDEX LACI TRIAL VERDICT SCOTT INCONSISTENT STATEMENTS EVIDENCE NEWS |
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| LACI & CONNER Never to be Forgotten |