The Supreme Court today affirmed the conviction, but reversed the death sentence in the high-profile case of Scott Peterson, who was found guilty and sentenced to death for the 2002 killing of his pregnant wife. The court’s unanimous 100-page opinion by Justice Leondra Kruger concludes that “the trial court made a series of clear and significant errors in jury selection that, under long-standing United States Supreme Court precedent, undermined Peterson’s right to an impartial jury at the penalty phase.”
Update:
The jury selection errors came in the so-called death qualification of the jury — a person can’t serve as a juror in a capital case if they are unable or unwilling to impose the death penalty. In Peterson’s case, the superior court erred in excusing for cause 13 prospective jurors who, in questionnaires, had expressed personal opposition to the death penalty, but who indicated they would impartially apply the law and could vote for death. The court’s opinion says the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that “prospective jurors may not be disqualified from service in a capital case solely because of their general objections to the death penalty” and that “even one such error requires ‘automatic reversal of any ensuing death penalty judgment.’ ”
Because of the improper jury selection process, the court says, “the penalty phase in this case was over before it ever began.”
However, based on its own precedent and the U.S. Supreme Court’s, the court rejects Peterson’s argument that the error required a new trial not just about his sentence, but also about his guilt. The court finds unpersuasive three studies examining how death qualifying a jury alters the jury’s willingness to convict: “These studies do not establish that excluding one — or even 13 — prospective jurors, from a pool of nearly 1,500, ‘substantially increase[s] the risk of error in the factfinding process.’ ”
Earlier this month, Justice Goodwin Liu — joined by Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar — filed a concurring opinion suggesting a reexamination of the death-qualification system is in order. He recommended that the Legislature and a Judicial Council work group that is addressing discriminatory jury selection (see here and here) should consider “whether current standards and processes for excusal of prospective jurors for cause contribute to racial disparities in jury selection and to implicit biases in the resulting petit juries.”
The court today also dismisses a number of other arguments Peterson made in seeking a new trial as to his guilt. One contention was that, although the case was moved from his home county, it should have been moved again because, as the court acknowledges, “This case was the subject of massive, worldwide media attention.” The court concludes that “it is unclear what purpose a second change of venue would have served,” reasoning that “[t]he publicity the Peterson trial generated, like the trials of O.J. Simpson, the Manson family, and any number of other so-called trials of the century before them, was intrinsic to the case, not the place.”
[May 30 update: “D.A. won’t pursue new death penalty trial.”]