Friday, November 12, 2004

Justice: a dish best served cold

Surprise, surprise: Scott's guilty.

If Scott Peterson had not, in fact, murdered his wife and unborn son, he would have had to have been the unfortunate victim of the most bizarre sequence of circumstantial coincidences in the history of humankind...or at least since the O.J. Simpson case.

For me, the most telling evidence in this entirely circumstantial case was the fact that the bodies were discovered in the general vicinity where Scott had claimed he was "fishing" (apparently, with a rather substantial hunk of bait) on the day Laci disappeared. If this area had been in the Petersons' back yard, or around the corner from their house, or in the area around Modesto, one could write that off to — as the defense counsel attempted at various times — homeless people, neighborhood sexual predators, or Satanic cultists. But considering that the location was 90 miles from the Petersons' home, the chances of any of the abovementioned alternative suspects picking that exact same area to dump the bodies are...well...let's say Scott would have a better chance of winning the California Lottery, being struck by lightning, and engaging in a passionate affair with Princess Stephanie of Monaco, all in the same day.

Scott telling his girlfriend Amber Frey (and boy howdy, you'd want to think that if a guy was going to be moved to kill his wife as a result of an affair, the Other Woman would have a little more going for her than a Fresno "massage therapist" — we called those "hookers" back in the day — who looked like the illegitimate offspring of Courtney Love and Keith Richards) his wife was deceased two weeks before he actually killed her didn't help him any, either.

There was no video in the courtroom as the verdict was read, but on the audio feed, the jurors all sounded firm, adamant, and unwaveringly definitive as they were polled on each of the five portions of the information: guilty of the murder of Laci Peterson, guilty of the murder of Connor Peterson, first degree on Laci's murder, second degree on Connor's, and special circumstances that could result in the death penalty.

It's always interesting, the cases that transfix the American media and public. There will be other murderers convicted today, some of them having committed more numerous crimes than Scott Peterson, though perhaps few (if any) more heinous than the murder of a pregnant woman and her child. But this is the verdict that booted the afternoon soaps from the schedule, that will occupy most of the time on this evening's newscasts, and that will blare from banner headlines in tomorrow's newspapers.

Based on what I've studied of the case, I believe it's the right verdict.

1 insisted on sticking two cents in:

Blogger Joel offered these pearls of wisdom...

OH!

3:09 PM  

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