PETERSON IS HOUSED HERE ON SAN QUENTIN’S DEATH ROW
By Glenn S. Reiner
I HAVE HAD REASONABLE DOUBT about Scott Peterson’s guilt from the very start, as — for more than one reason — this judicial equation just doesn’t balance out!
Although there are exceptions, data has steadily shown violent criminals are the product of abusive homes, broken family’s, and the most impoverished of neighborhoods. Peterson, conversely, grew up in a loving, upper middle-class family.
An educated, articulate man, he was no imbecile. If he wanted his wife out of the way to pursue a life with Amber Frey, why didn’t he just get a divorce? That would have been a far simpler, easier and civilized way out.
His dishonesty with his wife about his affair with Frey and with Frey about his wife was not unusual, as this is quite common among cheating spouses. So was his inability to level with police. Modesto, CA, is a small conservative town where morality is heavily weighed, and I believe Peterson was just merely trying to protect his reputation with the Christian majority.
I have always said if I was ever falsely accused of a crime, I would ask for a bench trial, as I don’t trust the average American juror’s ability to be objective. Time and again, we have seen them so easily swayed by their own personal values and emotional appeals from prosecutors.
There is an old saying in many law schools: “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you don’t have the facts on your side but have the law on your side, pound the law. But if you don’t have the facts or the law on your side, pound the table.”
And this is what I believe the DA successfully did with Peterson’s jury.
Again, jurors tend to allow the emotional attorney outbursts of trial lawyers, as well as the defendants’ character flaws, influence their decisions. This certainly explains why many people have been convicted of crimes they didn’t commit and several exonerated of crimes they clearly did.
But a judge is a professional jurist and is bound to only consider the facts and law. He/she is seldom impressed by the emotional antics of the attorneys. They generally read the trial transcript before rendering a decision.
When testimony or an attorney’s inappropriate questions or comments are removed from the record, they honor that. What they heard doesn’t matter, only what they read and the law.
So my question still remains this: Was Peterson truly guilty or just railroaded by a jury convinced by circumstantial evidence along with his adulterous behavior.
And it is only fair to note why the DA asked for the death penalty. Peterson was accused of multiple murder, which — in California — is considered the “special circumstances” necessary for Capital Murder.
But one alleged victim was his unborn son — the operative word being UNBORN!
Can you smell the filthy hand of the Religious Right here? Although they believe life begins at conception, the American Medical Association and our legal system disagree.
Consequently, Peterson’s attorneys will most likely have his death sentence overturned on appeal.
This is why I sincerely doubt he will spend too many more of his days on death row. Plus, the public tide on capital punishment is changing rapidly.
Other states have already either eliminated their death penalty or are the process of doing so. And with California’s current budget woes, coupled with the lack of executions that actually have taken place there, I believe capital punishment in the “Golden State” will become moot within the next two years.
12 responses so far ↓
A Voice of Sanity // December 27, 2008 at 9:42 pm |
You’ve missed the point here. Distaso and Fladager both stood up in court and said that the facts they had in the Peterson case were insufficient for a 1st degree conviction. In fact they claimed that even much, much better facts were insufficient. What they didn’t admit was that they never actually had any facts to convict him – that all of the evidence went only to his innocence. They used a hand picked judge and a hand picked jury and 11 million taxpayer dollars to convict him against the evidence and get their promotions.
He was convicted by the media, not by any facts. The police spent 20,000 hours – and found one hair and some cement mess, nothing else. No evidence of murder was ever found.
Most who believe Scott is guilty don’t know what the evidence actually is and so misstate it. To save arguing it here, go look at
http://tinyurl.com/65fvud
to see what the prosecution had – which was nonsense.
Then look at
http://tinyurl.com/6d3g4a
to see what the real circumstantial evidence in this case actually proved.
18 items of evidence for fetal abduction.
Zero for uxoricide.
Scott Peterson is innocent.
Glenn // December 27, 2008 at 9:52 pm |
I’m totally willing to be wrong here, yet I believe we both have broached this issue accurately — just from different angles. But when the proverbial smoke clears the air, we seem to be in agreement: Peterson was innocent and railroaded.
In any event, I really appreciate your feedback and always enjoy reading the perspectives of broadminded thinkers who are willing to probe between the lines.
lynda // January 4, 2009 at 10:15 am |
Just sayin’….
“………..For one thing, how could a person who grew up in a loving, middle-class family become a murderer?.”
Jeffrey Dalmer had a good family life and a providing, loving father and still grew-up to eat people.
“…he is an educated, articulate man….”
So was Ted Bundy…
Just wanted to point out that looks etc do not explain what the hell happenes to some peoples minds along the way in life.
Glenn // January 4, 2009 at 12:42 pm |
No Lynda:
Jeffery Dalmer’s home was EXTREMELY dysfunctional. His parents were constantly fighting in front of him, mostly screaming. They got divorced before he became an adult. His father was cerebral and seemed virtually incapable of showing emotion. So Dalmer ended up stuffing his emotions — which in itself is very dangerous — especially the rage he felt about his parents’ horrible relationship.
Ted Bundy also had a nightmarish childhood.
The stats are real clear: serial killers do not come from good homes. And I never said education or intelligence was a factor with them. The Nazi’s were extremely bright and educated. Hitler was an artist.
But Peterson — who if was guilty, which I don’t believe he was — clearly didn’t fall into the psychopathic serial killer catagory. In fact, had Peterson not had the element of adultery involved in his case, the predominantly Fundamentalist jury might have seen things quite differently. And he would not have been charged with a double murder, as an unborn child isn’t legally considered a person — only theologically and only by Christian doctrine.
lynda // January 4, 2009 at 3:04 pm |
If you think Peterson is innocent– what are the factors/ evidence that goes against the conviction evidence??? Even if he is a lair and an adulterer… what things show he did not do this?
lynda // January 4, 2009 at 3:14 pm |
Serial-killers database created
Radford professor’s list contains names of 1,873 murderers
March 2006
RADFORD — Radford University psychology professor Mike Aamodt has spent years compiling a list of serial killers, and, after subtracting competent hitmen and bloodthirsty pirates, he reckons there have been at least 1,900 since the beginning of the 14th century.
They range from Joseph Kallinger, who claimed he was told by a floating head with tentacles to murder young boys, to Joe Ball, who killed between five and 14 waitresses at his Texas tavern and threw them into an alligator pit.
“There are so many different types,” Aamodt said recently. “If somebody says, ‘Give me a profile of a serial killer,’ we have to say, ‘That depends.’”
Working with more than 300 students in his forensic psychology courses over 15 years, Aamodt has created the Radford University Serial Killer Database. With 1,873 names, it is one of the largest ever constructed.
Aamodt said he is only now beginning to analyze the information his students have gathered and hopes to one day make the database publicly available. But already, he said, certain stereotypes are crumbling beneath the weight of the data.
For instance, think serial killers are super-intelligent schemers along the lines of the fictional Hannibal Lecter? Think again: The median IQ is 102, or about average. Unabomber Ted Kaczynski was an exception, with an IQ once measured at 165. In general, according to Aamodt’s data, the smartest serial killers are the ones who use bombs: Their median IQ is 126.
Buy into the conventional wisdom that serial killers are usually white males in their midto late-20s? They’re not: Only 18 percent fit that profile. (The FBI released a report this month debunking the stereotype; the report also noted that the racial diversification of U.S. serial killers generally mirrors the national population.)
The family back ground of these killers is not statistically equal across the board either. Early childhood issues and family dysfunctions only account for 18% of these killers childhoods.
Aamodt said he began asking students to put together timelines of murderers’ lives and crimes because it was a subject they seemed interested in. “It was pretty much driven by the students — my interests are kind of boring,” said Aamodt, who added that statistics and common denominators among killers are what intrigue him.
Defining a serial killer generally as someone who has killed three or more people on separate occasions, the students gathered centuries’ worth of details on killers’ intelligence, upbringing, race, gender, age at the time of the first murder, type of victims, murder weapon, proximity of the crime scenes to their homes and sundry other data, such as whether they pleaded insanity at trial.
Heather Custer, one of Aamodt’s former students, said she was only mildly interested in serial killers when she was assigned to dig into the background of a man who preyed on elderly women. “This really got me interested,” she said of the database. Now, she added, each Christmas she hands her husband a list of grisly nonfiction books to put under the tree. “He kind of laughs at it, but he does think it’s a little weird,” she said. “I read strictly true-crime stuff when I read for pleasure.”
Gathering the serial killers’ stories into one database has allowed Aamodt to group them into a variety of categories. For example, there are “black widows,” women who kill a string of husbands, and “Bluebeards,” men who kill a string of wives or lovers.
“Our plan right now is to keep adding to the database and make sure it’s accurate, because there’s a lot of information we’re still missing,” Aamodt said. He added that a detailed analysis of the data might not be available for a couple of years.
Glenn // January 4, 2009 at 4:20 pm |
lynda wrote:
If you think Peterson is innocent– what are the factors/ evidence that goes against the conviction evidence??? Even if he is a lair and an adulterer… what things show he did not do this?
_______________________________
In America Jurisprudence, the burden of proof is on the state, not the defense. All it has to do is establish reasonable doubt.
There was no physical evidence that tied Peterson to the murder. It was all circumstantial.
If I was the actual killer and watched media reports about Peterson fishing up in the Bay Area during the murder, I would dump the body there and provide an anonymous tip to the either police and/or the press that I saw him dump something off the boat.
This is why it took so long for the authorities to actually check out the area. They could have easily taken care of that when he first offered his alibi. But obviously they believed only an idiot would dump the body in his alibi location, and their thinking was right.
Scott Peterson was no idiot.
–
As far as the element of psychopathy you sited and the news story you posted to substantiate your view, I believe I noted in my last response that I didn’t group Peterson in with serial killers:
“The stats are real clear: serial killers do not come from good homes. And I never said education or intelligence was a factor with them. The Nazi’s were extremely bright and educated. Hitler was an artist,” I wrote. “But Peterson — who if was guilty, which I don’t believe he was — clearly didn’t fall into the psychopathic serial killer catagory.”
Of course serial killers are brilliant. I agree with you about that. How else could they get away with so many murders before the authorities can finally piece all the cases together?
lynda // January 5, 2009 at 8:12 am |
from above:
“….The family back ground of these killers is not statistically equal across the board either. Early childhood issues and family dysfunctions only account for 18% of these killers childhoods…..”
Glenn // January 5, 2009 at 9:28 am |
Lynda:
Again, your story is focused on serial killers. Mine is about Scott Peterson, a non-serial killer.
This is the last response I will make toward this issue with you. I love you, so know this is coming from the heart: I get the distinct impression being right is very important to you about this case. I can understand because I have gone there myself on other issues many a time, but it never brought me an ounce of peace. It’s when I can believe in what I believe in and not have to have protracted arguments with others that produces a far more positive experience.
lynda // January 6, 2009 at 8:05 am |
No, it’s not the part about being right… I know I am not correct– it is the part about being understood as to where I had come from… etc. Thats all . That is sincerely all. I post what i post at times to show clarity as to what and why I had thought a certain way etc. I am FAR from a ’stump debator’.
Glenn // January 6, 2009 at 12:58 pm |
Lynda:
Okay, consider yourself understood for clarity.
Burkey // September 17, 2009 at 12:56 am |
Peterson was framed.
California has an innocent man on death row.