| SCOTT'S ATTORNEY QUESTIONS HAIR EVIDENCE Oct. 8, 2003 - FULL STORY Scott Peterson's defense team may have a tough time keeping out evidence from hair attached to a pair of pliers found in his boat, legal observers said."It sounds like a play out of the O.J. Simpson playbook," said San Francisco Assistant District Attorney James Hammer, alluding to the defense contention that police planted evidence in that murder case. Peterson's defense is claiming that police mishandled evidence after officers initially reported finding a single 5- to 6-inch dark hair on the pliers Dec. 27. Two strands of hair were noted after two detectives checked out the items from the Modesto police evidence room weeks later, according to defense documents filed Tuesday in Stanislaus County Superior Court. The hairs and two hairbrushes used by Laci Peterson were submitted the next day to a state Department of Justice crime lab for analysis, according to the documents. Defense attorney Mark Geragos wrote that it is "reasonably certain the evidence has been altered in some way," adding that officers reviewed the evidence without supervision by a criminalist or lab technician. DNA tests show the hair could have belonged to Laci Peterson, a source has said. Physically linking Laci Peterson to her husband's newly purchased fishing boat -- bought in early December while she was about seven months pregnant -- is "potentially very powerful evidence," Hammer said. The defense is using various arguments to try and exclude from court an array of evidence, including information from wiretaps, scent-tracking dogs and GPS tracking devices hidden in Peterson's vehicles. The defense also wants to bar testimony from a witness police had hypnotized. The issues are to be hashed out at preliminary hearing set for Oct. 20. Several legal observers said it may be difficult to keep the hair evidence out on the basis that police broke the so-called chain of custody.Modesto police spokesman Detective Doug Ridenour refused to discuss the Peterson case, citing a gag order in the case. But Ridenour said that in general, detectives can look at items that have already been logged into the secure evidence room."They have every right in the world to check the evidence out to do further investigation," Ridenour said. Evidence can re-examined. Detectives assigned to a case can check items out from evidence clerks after specifying why they need to re-examine the item, Ridenour said. Officers can privately examine the evidence in small rooms with locked doors adjoining the evidence room lobby. Ridenour said he was not aware of any security cameras to monitor activity in those rooms. Many explanations for extra hair There are explanations short of planting evidence to explain the appearance of a second hair after police reports only referred to a single hair, said Dr. Michael Baden, a New York forensic pathologist who worked on Simpson's defense team when the former football star was accused of killing his ex-wife and her friend in 1995. "Sometimes people can make a mistake," Baden said. "Some kinds of hair can break." Roger C. Park, an evidence law specialist at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, said the appearance of two hairs did not automatically taint the evidence. "The fact that it was one hair here and two hairs later, I don't know if that's enough for a jury to conclude it wasn't the same hair sample," Park said. If prosecutors could effectively demonstrate the hair they want to submit was found on the pliers in the boat, a judge would be compelled to allow it into evidence, observers said. "It all comes back to relevancy," said Bradley Brunon, a prominent Los Angeles defense attorney. "There has to be enough reliable identification of the source and identity of the hair to connect it the investigation. The significance would be for the jury to decide," he said. That significance was an open question, according to some observers. "Her hair would have some evidentiary significance if she'd never been in that boat before," Baden said. "Then the issue comes up, what if one hair got caught on Scott's clothing and then was passed to the boat and dropped there?" RELATED STORY HAIR EVIDENCE HOME INDEX SCOTT LACI EVIDENCE & STORIES WIRETAPS AUTOPSY INDEX ALIBI-WITNESS LIST |
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