Peterson's Attorney Whittles Away at Prosecution

In his second day of cross-examination of lead detective Craig Grogan, Scott Peterson's attorney Mark Geragos began to counter each point of the prosecution's circumstantial case in the murder of Laci Peterson.

During cross-examination Monday, Geragos brought out the following points:

• Geragos moved quickly to show jurors all the evidence that police did not recover in their investigation -- no murder weapon, no crime scene, no witnesses, and no cause of death.

• Grogan admitted under cross-examination that police took no fingerprints from the Petersons' home, since there was no indiation of a break-in.
• Grogan testified that one of the reasons he suspected Scott Peterson was because he referred to Laci in the past tense during a TV interview with Diana Sawyer. But Geragos revealed that Laci's mother and brother also referred to her in the past tense in interviews with police shortly after she disappeared. Using the past tense was “an indication of nothing,” Geragos said.

• Grogan had also testified earlier that police didn't believe Scott's story about Laci walking the dog on the morning she disappeared because she had been told by her doctor to stop doing it. But Grogan acknowledged Laci Peterson’s mother, Sharon Rocha, and Rocha’s longtime companion, Ron Grantski, both told him shortly after the disappearance that her regular routine including walking the dog. Sharon Rocha told Grogan that Laci walked the dog every morning, Grogan said.

• Police believe that Peterson intentionally kept the purchase of his fishing boat secret because he planned to use the boat to dump his wife's weighted body in the bay. Geragos got Grogan to admit that police located another cheaper boat that Peterson looked at before buying another. "If you were going to just buy a boat to dump her in the bay, wouldn’t you buy the cheaper boat?" Geragos asked.

• Grogan admitted that Peterson was cooperative from the beginning of the investigation. After police got a search warrant for Peterson's wearhouse Scott told them "If you had asked me I would have let you search teh warehouse."

See also:
Peterson Defense Continues Cross-Examination of Lead Detective
Pundits in Peterson Trial Reach for Sound Bite
Peterson Trial Reveals Abortion's Exploitation of Women

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