Defense cross-exam blasts police work

The lawyer asked about tips the police never followed.
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP) -- In a blistering cross-examination of the lead detective assigned to Laci Peterson's murder, the defense tried to show the case was shoddily executed and designed from the start to implicate her husband.
Near the end of his fourth day on the witness stand Monday, Detective Allen Brocchini watched the clock hanging on a wall above the jury as he faced a barrage of pointed questions from defense lawyer Mark Geragos.
Asked about discrepancies
Geragos asked Brocchini about several tips police received that seemed to point away from Laci's husband, Scott Peterson.
Geragos also probed a previous burglary of the Peterson home and mysterious men spotted in the neighborhood.
Brocchini was due back on the stand today for another round of questions from Geragos, who has used several prosecution witnesses to attempt to explain how Laci Peterson's disappearance and murder could have come at the hands of someone other than her husband.
Geragos asked Brocchini about several tips police received early in the investigation, including one on Dec. 26, 2002 -- two days after Laci was reported missing -- that she was being held in a storage bin about 30 miles from her hometown of Modesto.
Brocchini said he knew of it, but did not have much information.
Geragos said police flew over the area with a helicopter equipped with a heat-seeking device and discovered what could have been a sign of life, but officers never searched the area.
Peterson, 31, is accused of murdering his pregnant wife on or around Dec. 24, 2002, then sinking her body in San Francisco Bay. Defense lawyers say he was fishing on the bay when Laci Peterson disappeared, and that someone else abducted her near their Modesto home as she walked the dog, and held her captive before killing her and dumping her body in the bay to frame Peterson.
Attempted kidnapping
Geragos then asked the detective about a report from police in nearby Tracy that a man of Pacific Island descent had tried to kidnap a 15-year-old girl a few days before Laci's disappearance. Brocchini said he never followed up on that tip.
Witnesses have said they saw a van with three "dark-skinned" men in the Petersons' neighborhood around the time Laci vanished.
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