Scott Won’t Go Scot Free

Scott Peterson was found guilty of first degree murder in the case of his late wife Laci and of second degree murder in the case of their unborn son Connor (Laci was eight months pregnant), according to a California jury. Peterson, who has used what I’ll call a “chutzpah defense” strategy, was, as you will recall, found shortly after the death of his wife having $15,000 in cash and having dyed his hair, and reputed to be headed for Mexico (rule one: when fleeing the country after committing a heinous crime, flee). Peterson had also (coincidentally) bought a boat shortly before Laci’s death and (even more coincidentally) was “out fishing” around the time of the mureder and (you just won’t BELIEVE this coincidence– but it’s just a coincidence– or a frame) Laci’s body washed up right around the marina where Scott kept his boat.
Among the theories (besides “no one actually SAW him kill Laci” and “Scott watched CSI enough times to know not to leave physical evidence, so he must be not guilty”) offered by defense lawyer to the star scumbags Mark Geragos concerned the motive: why would Scott want to leave his life for this particular bimbo when he had at least two other affairs? (chutzpah defense).
Well, the judge having duly tossed off the troublemaker jurors likely to acquit, Peterson has been duly convicted, and faces either the more humane lethal injection, or life without parole in California’s gang-rape happy prison system (at least the former California attorney general was big on telling us it was gang-rape happy).
To be honest with you, if someone like Peterson were actually executed (not merely sentenced to death, but actually executed), it would go a long way at least in my own mind of dispelling the notion that Americans cannot– as in we’re incapable of it– administer the death penalty fairly, because we would never (as in NEVER) administer it to a good looking middle class White man.
Not to worry. We won’t in this case, either. Even if Peterson seems as deserving a case as any we’ve seen in some time.

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