MURDER TRIAL Scott Peterson's defense blasts cops' thin case

The defendant's lawyer said Laci Peterson's baby was born alive.
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REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- Saying Scott Peterson is "stone cold innocent," defense attorney Mark Geragos blasted the police detectives who investigated the murder of Laci Peterson and the thin case he said they cobbled together against her husband.
In his first chance to lay out his side of the case, Geragos said Wednesday that Modesto, Calif., police believed early on that Peterson had something to do with his wife's Dec. 24, 2002, disappearance and they worked to prove only that. Through slip-shod detective work, lies and far-fetched theories, they built a laughable case from circumstantial evidence that led to the prosecution of an innocent man, he said.
"The evidence is going to show beyond any doubt that not only is Scott Peterson not guilty," Geragos told jurors, "Scott Peterson is stone cold innocent."
Discounts evidence
Taking only about 90 minutes, Geragos worked to chip away at the evidence prosecutor Rick Distaso told jurors Tuesday would prove Peterson killed Laci, 27, and the couple's unborn son.
He zeroed in on Amber Frey, saying Peterson was not willing to throw away his life with Laci for the Fresno, Calif., massage therapist and single mother with whom he was having an affair. He loved Laci, Geragos said, even if he was cheating on her.
Many people publicly questioned that love and criticized the former fertilizer salesman in the days and weeks after Laci vanished. Peterson did not appear emotional in many televised interviews. He did not cry publicly or seem like a desperate husband concerned for his pregnant wife's well being.
But that was not unusual for Peterson, Geragos said. "This is not somebody who wears his emotion on his sleeve," he said, adding that Peterson was very emotional outside the public eye.
One by one, Geragos tried to dismantle the bricks of the prosecution's case against Peterson.
There was the boat that no one knew he had. Not true, Geragos said. Laci herself saw the 14-foot aluminum Gamefisher just days before she disappeared, he said a witness would testify. And Peterson was indeed an experienced angler, not the "neophyte fisherman" Distaso claimed, Geragos told jurors. He had fished since he was 3 years old, Geragos said.
Then there was the son for whom Peterson had prepared his house, Geragos said. Simply put, Laci's fetus was more developed than if it had died on Dec. 23-24, 2002, he said, citing the prosecution's experts.
"The evidence will show that this baby was born alive," he said, displaying autopsy images on large television screens. "If this baby was born alive, clearly Scott Peterson had nothing to do with the murder."
At every turn of the investigation, police came up with nothing on Peterson, he said. They found nothing in the boat and they found nothing at the warehouse he used for work, Geragos said.
Nothing in house
They found nothing in Peterson's house, despite multiple search efforts using the best that Modesto police and the FBI had to offer. They searched and tested and searched again without success, he said.
Investigators even compared red paint found on the lip of the boat with paint from a buoy in the San Francisco Bay, but came up short when it did not match, Geragos said. Peterson, who told police he went fishing the day his wife turned up missing, must have stabilized the boat on the object so he could dump Laci overboard, Geragos said was the police theory.
"You know what they got out of all those tests?" he asked jurors. "Zip, nada, nothing. The Department of Justice found zip, not one thing."
What was discovered after months of investigation was that police botched the case, he said.
They ignored eyewitnesses who said they saw Laci walking the dog the day she disappeared, he said. They mishandled evidence at best, tampered with it at worst, he said. They misled a judge for search warrants and wiretaps at best, out and out lied at worst, he said.