CALIFORNIA Prosecution rests in Peterson's trial

The prosecution's case was too drawn out, critics say.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- After four months of stringing together hundreds of hours of testimony and mounds of evidence, prosecutors rested their double murder case against Scott Lee Peterson on Tuesday.
Wrapping up in the same understated fashion in which they began June 1, the Stanislaus County prosecution team summoned two final police witnesses to testify before handing the trial over to the defense.
Detective Jon Buehler told jurors Peterson was carrying cash, clothes and equipment that suggested he planned to flee.
Peterson had $14,922.14 on him when he was arrested April 18, 2003, in La Jolla, Buehler said. A car he bought in his mother's name for $3,600 in cash six days earlier was stocked with cell phones, credit cards in multiple names as well as camping tools, he said.
Piecing it together
But much of what Buehler had to say Tuesday had been heard before, leaving legal pundits who have followed the case with little to say about prosecutors if not the case they left with jurors.
"We've been talking for months now about connecting the dots," said former San Mateo County prosecutor Dean Johnson. "Nobody has pulled this together for the jury as yet. The prosecution will get the opportunity to do that, but whether they can remains to be seen."
The pundits roundly agreed that the prosecution's conclusion Tuesday lacked conviction and pizzazz, a complaint that has regularly surfaced through much of the trial.
Days before Peterson's arrest, the remains of his wife Laci, 27, and their unborn son Conner turned up along the Richmond shoreline.
Police had long focused on Peterson, 31, since his pregnant wife disappeared on Christmas Eve 2002. He said he had been fishing on San Francisco Bay and pointed out the possibility that Laci was abducted while she walked in her quiet Modesto neighborhood.
But police wondered why Peterson passed up closer fishing holes in favor of the windswept Bay and openly criticized what they deemed was his suspicious behavior.
Adding fuel to the fire was Amber Frey. The Madera woman told police a week after Laci disappeared that he passed himself off as single during their brief relationship.
Even more suspicious, she said, was that he told her his wife had died after a Frey friend confronted him about his marriage. He bought a boat that same day and nearly two weeks later his wife vanished.
Strongest witness
Frey provided some of the most damaging evidence against Peterson when she testified in August, legal commentators following the case said.
"They in effect have put Amber back on the stand through this detective," said Michael Cardoza, a former prosecutor now in private practice in Walnut Creek. "She has been their strongest witness so far."
Buehler acted as a liaison to Frey, helping her record hours of conversations with Peterson that sealed the man's fate as prime suspect to both police and the public In tapes played in court, jurors heard the one-time fertilizer salesman woo Frey with sugary talk while the desperate search for his wife continued.
Although the Frey tapes and testimony were compelling, observers said the prosecution's case was too drawn out, observers said.
Deputy district attorneys David Harris, Rick Distaso and their boss Birgit Fladager have presented jurors with too much information that has been too hard to piece together, critics contend.