PETERSON CASE Jury begins to decide case of slain pregnant woman

Jurors began listening to evidence in June.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- Jurors began deliberating the fate of Scott Peterson on Wednesday, wrestling with five months of prosecution contentions and defense questions over whether he killed his pregnant wife, Laci, and unborn son.
Judge Alfred Delucchi gave the case to the six-man, six-woman panel at noon PST after telling them they could consider first- and second-degree murder and detailing the rules they must follow.
Began in June
Sequestered and now under around-the-clock guard by 22 sheriff's deputies, jurors filed from the second-floor courtroom where they've been coming since June to decide a case that armchair analysts worldwide have pondered for 22 months.
Peterson, 32, the man prosecutors called a cold-blooded killer, eyed each juror as they passed the defense table. None returned the look.
"That's it," Delucchi said. "The jury's going to be in deliberations now. We'll be in recess until we hear from them."
When that will happen was anyone's guess as jurors began discussing the testimony of 188 witnesses and hundreds of items of evidence presented in all.
Theories that have bounced in their heads for months can finally be aired during what could turn into an ultimately immovable slugfest with neither winner nor loser.
Both sides grabbed one last chance Wednesday to bring jurors into their camp.
Defense contention
Defense lawyer Mark Geragos continued beating the drum of innocence, pounding out the message that police bungled the investigation and prosecutors failed to prove their case.
Peterson told police he was fishing alone on Dec. 24, 2002 in the San Francisco Bay when his 27-year-old wife vanished from their Modesto, Calif., home. He returned to an empty house and a mystery that investigators believed they had sorted out within one hour, Geragos said.
Their fixation on Peterson became an obsession, he said, and allowed Laci's real kidnappers and killers to get away.
Geragos said evidence shows Laci was alive after Peterson was under the microscope of the police and press. He, very simply, was "stone-cold innocent."
Wednesday, he reminded jurors of Lydell Wall, the Stanislaus County sheriff's computer expert who indicated Laci could have been shopping online the morning of Dec. 24, 2002. A dead woman, very simply, cannot shop.
Geragos pointed to plastic twine knotted around the neck of the fetus, saying Laci's killers secured it before dumping the body in the Bay to frame Peterson.
Leads were not followed, evidence was ignored, police and prosecutors proved little more than that Peterson was having an affair, which the defense has always conceded, Geragos said.
"The state of the law is that they have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt," he said. "They can't do it because Peterson did not do it."
Prosecution's view
Prosecutor Rick Distaso, though, told a different story. He reminded jurors of his earlier declaration that it was a "common sense case," one that clearly proved Peterson was a calculating killer.
The defense can and has tried to chip away at evidence, failing miserably on many accounts, he said.
"This is a very easy case for you to decide because the bridge has already been built," he said. "I told you they wouldn't be able to address why those bodies showed up exactly where Scott Peterson was. They didn't touch it because they can't."
Laci's remains and those of the unborn son she planned to name Conner turned up along the Richmond shoreline in April 2003. Nearly four months earlier, Peterson was fishing within sight of that place, giving prosecutors their most damaging piece of evidence presented to jurors.
"And with that," Distaso said, his voice crackling with emotion before pausing, "I'm going to close and I would ask you to find the defendant guilty."