Jurors hear details of affair, other evidence as case builds

The prosecution's case against Scott Peterson is circumstantial.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- Seventeen months after his pregnant wife went missing, during which time he was transformed from small-town fertilizer salesman to celebrity murder suspect, Scott Peterson finally faced a trial jury Tuesday.
Given the long media buildup to Peterson's trial on charges of killing his wife, Laci, and their unborn son, it was difficult for the prosecution's opening statement to be anything but anticlimactic. Much of the most sensational evidence was already out: the affair he was having with another woman; the haste with which he sold his missing wife's Range Rover; and the varying stories he told about his whereabouts on Christmas Eve in 2002, when she disappeared.
But over nearly four hours, prosecutor Rick Distaso methodically detailed an hour-by-hour chronology of Laci and Scott Peterson's last weeks together. He recited shopping trips, parties, a family outing to Carmel with as much detail as damning evidence, such as the fact that Scott Peterson bailed out of an event with his wife so he could attend a Christmas party with his girlfriend.
One image that drew audible gasps from a packed courtroom showed the former girlfriend, Amber Frey, sitting on Scott Peterson' lap as he sported a Santa cap.
Pictures of remains
The biggest emotional charge occurred near the end of Distaso's opening statement, when pictures of the remains of Laci Peterson and her unborn son were projected onto a large screen. When the bodies washed up on the shore of San Francisco Bay in April 2003, they had been in the water nearly four months. Some jurors looked away. Scott Peterson, dressed in a tan suit, averted his eyes, as he did when pictures of him and Frey were shown.
There was a purpose to the tick-tock chronology of events in numbing detail. There are no smoking guns in the case. Nor are there any eyewitnesses who saw what happened to Laci Peterson nor anyone claiming to have heard Scott Peterson confess.
The case is circumstantial, meaning that the jury will be asked to put together all the times and dates and seemingly minor incidents into a story of two people's lives together and the end of one of them. Distaso intends that when the six-man, six-woman jury does that, they will reach a guilty verdict.
"This is a common-sense case," Distaso said at the end of his presentation. "I'm going to ask you to find [Scott Peterson] guilty of murdering Laci and his unborn baby."
Objections from defense
Peterson's attorney, Mark Geragos, objected several times during the prosecution's remarks. He is expected to make his opening statement today. Geragos will likely portray the prosecution's case as nothing but a collection of unrelated suspicions woven together by a Modesto Police Department that rushed to focus on Scott Peterson as the only suspect.
In the past, Geragos has raised the possibility that a satanic cult kidnapped Laci Peterson. Whether he takes that tack or not, it is likely he will call witnesses who claim to have seen her with strange men in a variety of cities.
Trying to forestall that, Distaso told the jurors that police had collected 9,000 tips, some from foreign countries. Tips were still coming in, he said, despite conclusive proof that the bodies found near the Berkeley Marina were those of Laci Peterson and her unborn son.
"Are you going to hear that the Modesto Police Department completed a perfect investigation?" Distaso said. "No, you're not." But he maintained that if the jury looks at everything police found, they will conclude the right man is in jail.
Some court observers were unimpressed with the numbing prosecution recitation.
"The good points were lost in the detail," former Alameda prosecuting attorney Michael Cardoza said. Although there were some important revelations, "they didn't have the emotional punch" because they were buried in detail, he said.