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Defense Asserts Evidence Withheld in Peterson Case

By TChris, Section Crime in the News
Posted on Tue May 25, 2004 at 08:05:18 AM EST
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by TChris

Scott Peterson's lawyer, Mark Geragos, filed a motion yesterday accusing the prosecution of withholding key evidence: the statement of a former peace officer who says he saw two men pull Laci Peterson into a van. Scott is charged with Laci's murder.

In the motion, Geragos alleges that the prosecution has known about the unidentified witness since December 2002 but didn't interview him until just last week -- just days before the start of the trial. Opening statements are scheduled for a week from today. "The witness confirmed his sighting of a woman he identified as Laci and her two abductors,'' according to the defense motion. "However, the Modesto Police Department chose to ignore this former peace officer's report presumably because 'it was not going in the right direction.' This ... clearly establishes that the prosecution's conduct was undertaken in bad faith."

Another witness, Diane Jackson, saw a van acros the street from Laci's house on the morning she disappeared.

Jackson gave her account twice to police in the days after Laci Peterson's disappearance. But after placing her under hypnosis using Dale Pennington, an "unqualified hypnotist,'' prosecutors decided they would not call her as a witness. Stanislaus County Superior Court Judge Alfred Delucchi later ruled that another witness interviewed by authorities while hypnotized by Pennington could not be called at trial because Pennington was not qualified.

Geragos correctly argues that hynotizing a witness amounts to destroying the evidence that the witness would give -- at least if the hypnosis results in the exclusion of exculpatory testimony. Geragos wants to introduce Jackson's testimony as proof that someone other than Scott abducted Laci.

Update by TalkLeft: We'll be discussing the case at the top of the hour today on MSNBC's Abrams Report (and later in the show, after the half hour, we'll be talking about Kobe, whose hearings start up again Thursday.

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