Unjustified Verdicts. The two verdicts in the Scott Peterson case are incomprehensible, given that (a) no one knows how Laci died; (b) so there is no murder known to have occurred; (c) no murder weapon has been found — in part because (d) we don't know what kind of weapon that might have been, since we don't know how she died; (e) there is nothing to connect the nonexistent murder weapon with Scott in any case (you can't, after all, have fingerprints on a nonexistent murder weapon);(f) there wasn't a single witness to any crime; and (g) Scott did not confess. The entire case revolved around motive, Scott's apparent lack of panic about his wife's disappearance, and the suspicion, ever-present, that whenever a wife is killed, the husband did it. Yes, the husband is often the murderer, but not always, no matter how many commentators and comics, like Jay Leno, may want to convict a husband without the need for proof.
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I am not at all opposed to the death penalty for people whose guilt is unquestioned, but Scott Peterson denied murdering his wife and unborn son — the latter being an even more unlikely crime for a middle-class American man — and there is no real evidence to prove he did any such thing. I'm not saying he didn't do it. I'm just saying (1) there is no evidence that the wife and son were even murdered, much less that Scott murdered them; and (2) given the powerful reasons to doubt the rightness of a conviction, it is morally impermissible to impose the death penalty on someone who continues, beyond conviction, to maintain his innocence.
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Is there any alternative explanation for how Laci and son died? Yes, of course there is. More than one. The most disturbing aspects of the 'evidence' against Scott for me are (a) that the child was found outside the mother's body and (b) that both bodies were found. They were not weighed down by chains or concrete or anything else that would have kept their bodies from ever floating ashore. How did the child get out of the mother's body??
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Isn't it conceivable that Laci went to the dock thinking maybe her husband was working on the boat or relaxing there with friends, and while there had a contraction that doubled her over and caused her to fall into the water, where she continued to have contractions while struggling to keep from drowning, expelling the child in the process, and then nonetheless drowning? If the tides don't account for a death at the dock, there must be other places where a similar situation could have developed. Or perhaps she was herself in a boat to perform or have performed an abortion upon herself and then throw the child's body into the ocean to remove the evidence of her crime, but something went wrong and she fell overboard after losing blood and thus consciousness. Or perhaps she had an abortion on land, died on the table, and a doctor who had had trouble with botched abortions in the past disposed of the two bodies to keep himself from being subjected to a ruinous malpractice action or even a criminal prosecution.
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There are, in short, a number of ways Laci and, separately, her son's bodies could have ended up in the ocean, unweighted as to float ashore. Scott Peterson may have been an adulterer, but that does not make him a double murderer. Absent real proof of his guilt, it is insane to find him guilty just because he's not likable, and doubly insane to sentence him to death for a crime that may not even have occurred.
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I hope that, on appeal, saner heads rule that the jury finding is contrary to the very-sketchy facts produced at trial; that other possible explanations for the deaths plainly exist; and that at the least a death penalty is excessive, given the reasonable doubts any impartial observer must have.
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Maybe Scott Peterson did kill his wife and children. Absent a credible confession, however, that is unknowable. If he did, a death penalty would be appropriate. But maybe he didn't, in which case death is entirely inappropriate.
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Three things, if nothing else, are clear: (1) our trial system stinks, and leaves us over and over with verdicts that many people cannot accept; (2) defendants must be required to testify, so the non-self-incrimination provision of the Fifth Amendment must be abolished, because it also prevents self-exoneration; and (3) we must devote ourselves to finding an absolutely foolproof way of checking the truthfulness of testimony — a "lie detector" that really works. With compelled testimony and reliable truth-checking technology, we might end up with verdicts everybody can accept.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:38 PM