23 Years Later, Scott Peterson’s Legal Fights Continue

Scott Peterson continues to challenge his murder conviction, but a veteran prosecutor says his chances of ever being released remain slim, according to Fox News. Twenty-three years after Laci Peterson vanished from the couple’s Modesto, California, home on Christmas Eve 2002, Peterson is still serving a prison sentence for the murders of his wife and their unborn son, Conner.

Peterson was convicted in 2004, and his conviction has survived numerous appeals. In 2020, the California Supreme Court overturned his death sentence after ruling that potential jurors had been improperly dismissed because of their views on capital punishment. Prosecutors later chose not to seek a new death penalty phase, and Peterson was resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The Los Angeles Innocence Project has since taken up Peterson’s case, maintaining that he is innocent. The group argues that Laci Peterson was kidnapped by burglars, later killed, and her body was placed in San Francisco Bay in a way that implicated her husband, who had told investigators he was fishing in the area. “That’s really the alternate theory right now,” said former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani. However, Rahmani described the prosecution’s original case as strong, citing Peterson’s extramarital affair, the discovery of Laci’s remains near the location where he said he had been fishing, and his purchase of concrete shortly before her disappearance.

Earlier this year, the Innocence Project filed a 400-page petition seeking a new trial, alleging prosecutorial misconduct and claiming law enforcement ignored evidence that could have supported Peterson’s innocence, according to ABC News. Rahmani dismissed the idea that Peterson is close to release, calling the remaining legal challenges “narrow.” He added, “I do expect Scott Peterson to die in California state prison.”

The Innocence Project did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

original source