Peterson Trial Turns to Dog-Tracking Testimony

In Scott Peterson's double-murder trial a search-and-rescue team testified that search dogs picked up Laci Peterson's scent at the Berkeley Marina where Peterson launched a fishing trip on the morning his wife disappeared, but under cross-examination Christopher Boyer admitted that the dogs could have picked up her scent from the boat or the truck and there was no way the dogs could determine when she may have been there.

Prosecutors are trying to show that Peterson killed his wife Laci in their Modesto home, then drove to the San Francisco Bay and dumped her body, where her badly decomposed remains and her unborn baby washed ashore four months later. The defense theory is that someone else killed Laci and dumped her body there to frame Peterson after learning of his highly-publicized alibi.

Boyer spent most of the day testifying about how dog tracking works and the science of tracking scents. Defense attorney Pat Harris pointed out that Boyer said in a preliminary hearing that dog-tracking was "not a science. It's an art." Harris consistently referred to the operation as "scent theory," rather than science.

See AP report: Peterson Trial Turns to Dog-Tracking Evidence
See also: Scott Peterson Murder Trial Resumes

Background: The Scott Peterson Trial
See Also: More Headline Cases