Convicted murderer Scott Peterson is back in court Wednesday in his latest bid for a new trial.
Peterson went to court in Redwood City via Zoom from Mule Creek State Prison in Amador County, where he is currently serving a life sentence.
Peterson’s lawyers at the LA Innocence Project — who took up Peterson’s case in January — ask for evidence from the original investigation to undergo a DNA test.
That includes a bloody mattress found in a burned-out van near Peterson’s home in Modesto.
Detectives discovered that a burglary had occurred across the street from where Peterson lived with his pregnant wife Laci. One witness told police she believed the burglary occurred the same morning Laci disappeared.
Bryan Spitulski, a former fire investigator who responded to the crime, has maintained that some important evidence was ignored. On Christmas morning 2002, he was working for the Modesto Fire Department and was sent to investigate a van fire that he still thinks about to this day.
“My motivation here is the way it has always been: let the facts say what they have to say,” Sputulski said. He currently works as a private fire investigator.
In court documents, attorneys describe the mattress as having stains that presumptively tested positive for blood, saying only a very small portion of the mattress fabric tested for DNA, which was insufficient to determine whether DNA belonged to Laci and/or her unborn son Conner was present.
Peterson was sentenced to death in March 2005. He had admitted to police that he was fishing the day his wife disappeared, but at trial he could not explain what type of fish he was trying to catch that day. Peterson had also sold his wife’s car, explored selling their home and turned the nursery into a storage unit in the weeks after Laci disappeared.
The California Supreme Court in 2020 overturned Peterson’s death sentence after determining that potential jurors had been improperly dismissed after saying that they did not agree with the death penalty but that they would follow the law and impose it.
In 2021, Peterson was sentenced to life in prison without parole under the glaring eyes of Laci Peterson’s family. Peterson was transferred in 2022 from San Quentin State Prison, now known as San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, to Mule Creek State Prison east of Sacramento.
Later that year, a judge denied Peterson’s plea for a new trial. ruled that a former juror was not guilty of misconduct during the trial.
