| FIVE MORE POSSIBLE JURORS CHOSEN TODAY Tuesday, April 6, 2003 Five more people were chosen Today as possible jurors in the Scott Peterson double-murder trial in Redwood City. The three chosen in the morning included: -A flight attendant, who says she has not heard much about the case because she does not own a television and whose daughter was once struck by a car; who felt that an undocumented, unlicensed, uninsured motorist should have been punished more harshly after driving into her daughter and injuring her. -A UPS employee, a devout Catholic, said he had struggled with his feelings about the death penalty. At first he said his religion told him he could not vote for death, but he recently changed his mind. He said he had an epiphany while watching "The Ten Commandments" movie on television Sunday, and that he could vote for the death penalty if he thought it was warranted. -A homemaker who said she understood pre-judgment because people have unfairly judged her in the past based on her attractive appearance and who strongly supports California's fetal homicide law, in which the killing of a fetus is charged as a separate crime. "I'm glad to hear an unborn child's death is a murder. That's a human life," she said. The mother of three said she could be fair to both sides, pointing out that she "could not live with myself" if she did anything other than just that. "The defense has no burden in this case; the burden is on my side," Distaso told the homemaker and mother of three, pre-empting Geragos, who questions jurors after the prosecution. "Mr. Geragos could sit here and read the paper," Distaso said. "The law is the prosecution has the burden of proof. That's the way it is and that's the way it needs to be." The woman said she agreed. After being qualified, the woman sat for a moment alone on a bench outside the courtroom with her head in her hands, visibly shaken. Geragos took steps to apparently counter residual effects from one of Delucchi's routine questions. The judge, carefully stressing that the question is hypothetical, asks prospective jurors whether they would be open to considering both the death penalty and life without parole if Peterson is proved guilty. Only people who haven't ruled out one of those options can sit on the jury. "It's very hard to hear that case scenario," Geragos said shortly into his questioning of the flight attendant. "My question is a variation of that," Geragos said before asking the woman to imagine what it would be like to be wrongly accused of murder. "He could just as easily be innocent as guilty, nobody knows that," said the flight attendant, who is divorced, has three children and no television. The judge took a moment before opening court to joke with those in the gallery that he had been receiving correspondence from people angry he is not allowing it to be televised. "I'm getting letters," Judge Alfred A. Delucchi said, smiling. He said one woman expressed concerns that she had been following the case and was upset she would not be able to watch the trial unfold on television. He joked about a New Yorker cartoon on Monday before beginning jury selection, passing it around to reporters. The cartoon, by Mike Twohy, depicts a seated jury with the foreman standing, his hands resting on the jury box railing. The caption reads: "Your Honor, we feel the trial failed to deliver on its pretrial publicity." Two more potential jurors were picked in the afternoon. One is a woman whose mother was shot and killed by her stepfather when she was a child. She was in another room sleeping when it happened. The other is a woman whose whose husband and father are police officers. She is a 911 dispatcher in San Francisco, where her husband is a motorcycle officer. Last month, the jury pool was reduced from 1,000 to about 300, mainly because most of the prospective jurors' employers would not pay them for the duration of the estimated six-month trial. In the current, more in-depth selection phase known as Hovey voir dire, those who were not initially dismissed have returned to be individually questioned. In this phase, people are dismissed for being adamantly for or against the death penalty, and for having a strong belief that Peterson, 31, is guilty of killing his pregnant wife, Laci Peterson, and their unborn son. About 12 people have come to court for questioning each day. Hovey voir dire began March 22 and is expected to last through early May. Those who are not dismissed will return to court May 13, known as the "Big Spin" day, when the pool will be narrowed to 12 jurors and six alternates. Opening arguments are scheduled May 17. Jury selection will continue this week through Thursday. JURORS - WHO THEY ARE HOME INDEX LACI TRIAL NEWS ALIBI-WITNESS LIST EVIDENCE-NEWS MAGAZINES WIRETAPS LACI'S ALBUM LACI'S FAMILY |
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