| Jury Seated For Scott Peterson Trial
Six Men, Six Women Selected For Panel May 27, 2004 Six men and six women were selected Thursday to form the panel that will decide whether Scott Peterson killed his pregnant wife. Among the jurors are a high school coach, a former airport screener and a retired utility worker. They look to range in age from 20-something to 60-plus. Six alternates -- three women and three men -- also were chosen to backup the jury, which will hear opening statements in the former fertilizer salesman's double-murder trial Tuesday morning. The rapid-fire process was derailed briefly when one of the original 12 jurors was promptly excused after saying he would likely lose his salary during the trial, which is expected to last six months. It wasn't discussed why he waited so long to announce that conflict. A female alternate took his place. Nearly 1,600 prospective jurors were summoned to court over the past nine weeks. All but 76 had been dismissed for reasons including work hardships and opinions that Peterson is guilty or that the death penalty should never be imposed. Soon after the jury was selected, Judge Alfred A. Delucchi helped Peterson's case when he agreed to allow contested testimony from one of Peterson's neighbors which defense lawyers hope might create reasonable doubt as to who killed Laci Peterson. Diane Jackson told police in Modesto, where the Petersons lived, that she saw three men in their front yard on the morning Laci Peterson disappeared, according to a filing by the defense. She later told the same story to defense investigators. "Mrs. Jackson said that she had the feeling that they were up to no good," the filing states. Because prosecutors later hired an unqualified hypnotist to interview Jackson, however, it was possible the judge would not let her testify -- just as he rejected the statements of another potential witness who also had been hypnotized. Instead, Delucchi decided to admit statements Jackson made to defense investigators before she was hypnotized. Prosecutors assert that Peterson killed his wife in Modesto on or around Dec. 24, 2002, and dumped her body in San Francisco Bay. The defense has argued that someone else killed Laci -- that Scott Peterson returned from the fishing trip to discover his wife was gone. Before the judge decided that issue, prosecutors and defense attorneys spent the morning whittling the remaining potential jurors down to the final group. In each instance, attorneys used peremptory challenges, which meant they didn't have to explain why they rejected a potential juror. All the jurors have said they would be willing to sentence Peterson, 31, to death if they convict him of murdering his pregnant wife and their fetus. Their bodies washed onto the shore of San Francisco Bay in April 2003, not far from where Scott Peterson said he spent Christmas Even morning on his fishing boat. HOME INDEX LACI SCOTT TRIAL NEWS JURORS EVIDENCE-NEWS |
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