July 9 CALIFORNIA: THE PETERSON TRIAL Jury shown photos of boat and woman -- Debate over theory on disposal of body Using a dramatic series of pictures, prosecutors in Scott Peterson's double-murder trial tried Wednesday to answer a large question lingering over their case -- how the body of an 8-months pregnant woman could be spirited out of Modesto and dumped into San Francisco Bay without anyone noticing it in a 14-foot fishing boat. The photos demonstrated that the boat that prosecutors say Peterson used to dispose of his wife's body had ample room to allow a pregnant woman to lie down in various sections of the vessel. And moreover, the pictures showed how a woman's body on the floor of the boat could go virtually unnoticed when viewed from a short distance away. The pictorial re-enactment, presented to jurors on a large screen by prosecutor Rick Distaso, featured an eight-months pregnant woman, roughly Laci Peterson's height and weight the day she disappeared, fitting easily inside the boat and a gigantic tool box Peterson kept in the back of his truck. The demonstration marked the 1st time prosecutors have hinted that Peterson may have used the box to hide his wife's body while transporting it from their Modesto home to a nearby warehouse, where he kept his newly purchased boat. Kim Fulbright, an employee of the Stanislaus County district attorney's office where Distaso works, testified that she stood 5 feet, 2 inches tall, weighed 157 pounds and was 38 weeks pregnant in January 2004 when the photos of her in Peterson's boat were taken. Laci Peterson was 33 weeks pregnant and slightly smaller when she disappeared in December 2002, standing 5 feet 1 inch and weighing 153 pounds. In the pictures, the very pregnant-looking Fulbright is seen lying on her side in various sections of Peterson's boat. In 2, taken while she was in the back and middle sections of the boat, she is seen in a fetal position with her legs slightly bent. A 3rd, taken in the front of the boat, shows her with her legs scrunched up. Fulbright also was pictured in the back of Scott Peterson's truck, first standing and then lying scrunched up inside a very large tool box the fertilizer salesman kept in the bed of his pickup. The question of how Laci Peterson's body could possibly go unnoticed inside her husband's boat has loomed large in the Redwood City courtroom, where Scott Peterson is being tried on charges that he murdered his wife and their unborn son. Prosecutors allege Peterson towed his boat to the Berkeley Marina, motored it out onto the bay and dumped her body, anchored by several cement weights, into the water. Laci Peterson's body and the couple's baby boy washed up on a Richmond shore 2 miles from the marina almost four months later. Peterson has acknowledged he was fishing on the bay the day his wife disappeared, but defense attorney Mark Geragos maintains the bodies were dumped in the water by someone who wanted to pin the murders on his client. Judge Alfred Delucchi allowed the 11 photos of Fulbright to be shown to the jury despite protests from Geragos, who, out of the presence of the jury, called the pictures "fabricated evidence" that were "clearly misleading." "I think (Fulbright is) close enough in size and weight to Laci Peterson," Delucchi said in his ruling. During cross examination of Fulbright, Geragos repeatedly mocked the photos, suggesting that a live body was no substitute for a dead one. He prodded Fulbright, who delivered her baby in January, about how she got into the boat and truck. He asked her whether the Modesto police officer who was with her had picked her up and lifted her into the boat, truck or tool box, as Scott Peterson would have had to have done with his wife. "Do you have any idea what it would be like to be eight months pregnant and have rigor mortis set in?" Geragos asked, referring a stiffening of a body after death. "No," Fulbright answered. "You didn't have weights on you did you?" the defense lawyer prodded. "No," she said. The re-enactment helped prosecutors diffuse questions raised earlier during Wednesday's testimony about how a body could be kept in a boat at the Berkeley Marina in broad daylight without being noticed. Several employees of the Berkeley Marina were called by prosecutors to show how quiet the boat dock had been on Christmas Eve, 2004, the day they say Scott Peterson towed the boat carrying his wife's body to the boat launch. Just three people paid the $5 fee to launch a boat between Dec. 23 and Dec. 27, the manager of the marina testified. 2 other employees said it was quiet on Dec. 24 because of the holidays. But under cross examination from defense attorney Pat Harris, marina employees seemed to bolster the defense contention that it would have been ludicrous for Peterson to travel through the marina with a dead body. The employees acknowledged the marina, which has 1,000 boat slips, is the largest public marina in the Bay Area and frequently a busy place. The area surrounding it is regularly used by joggers, dog walkers and strollers, making it an unlikely place to go if you were trying to dump a body, Harris suggested. Moreover, dozens of people live on their boats in the marina year round, and any one of them could have been walking along the dock that day, Alonzo Chess, a landscape and maintenance manager acknowledged. "People frequently drive through the (marina's) parking lot, don't they?" Harris said. "Yes," Chess answered. "People take walks through there," Harris continued. "Yes," Chess said. Chess also confirmed that boaters using the marina have to tie up their vessel to the dock after putting it into the water and leave it there in order to park the car and trailer. *************** THE PETERSON TRIAL -- Day 20 A testy moment It got momentarily tense Wednesday in the gallery of the Redwood City courtroom, where Scott Peterson is being tried on charges that he murdered his wife and their unborn son. It began when prosecutor Rick Distaso objected to a question from defense lawyer Mark Geragos because he said it misstated the evidence. "There is no evidence," Geragos fired back, stirring laughter from spectators seated in the back of the room, which, in turn, caused 2 of Laci Peterson's friends, seated in the front row, to whip their heads around and glare at the disruptive crowd. Peterson's boat Bruce Peterson, the man who sold Scott Peterson the aluminum fishing boat, testified that he had used the boat for trout fishing in fresh water lakes and that he and his wife were often positioned on the same side or section of the boat while he was catching fish. Questions have been raised about how Scott Peterson could have possibly dumped his wife's body out of the boat without tipping it over. Trial recess The trial is in recess until Monday because Geragos plans to attend the funeral of Eric Douglas, the son of actor Kirk Douglas, who was found dead in his New York apartment Tuesday. Geragos has been a friend of the Douglas family for 15 years. (source for both: San Francisco Chronicle) USA: The quiet ascent of Justice Stevens----A liberal on a conservative Court, the justice uses seniority to play key behind-the-scenes role. If there is one word that best sums up Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens's approach to constitutional law, it is patience. And this year more than any other Justice Stevens has demonstrated that patience has its rewards. A longtime judicial maverick known for his liberal outlook and a fondness for silk bow ties, Justice Stevens has quietly emerged as a behind-the- scenes force on a largely conservative high court. He has done it in part by taking a long view of his role at the court, sticking to his convictions, and waiting - often for decades - until a majority of the court recognizes what he sees as the wisdom of his position. For example, in the decision extending federal court jurisdiction to detainees at Guantnamo Bay, Justice Stevens firmly established as law a legal argument he first encountered in 1948 as a Supreme Court law clerk. His boss, Justice Wiley Rutledge, embraced the argument in a dissent. But last week - 56 years later - the same legal principles expressed in that Rutledge dissent became the clear law of the land in a landmark decision Stevens penned. His hand is also apparent in last term's landmark gay rights decision. Some of the same language used by Justice Anthony Kennedy in his majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas stems from a 1976 decision written by a little-known Chicago-based appeals court judge. His name: John Paul Stevens. The Stevens-Kennedy collaboration was no accident. Stevens used his power as the court's senior liberal justice to assign the gay rights opinion to Kennedy, opening the way for a blockbuster ruling reflecting a constitutional conclusion Stevens had reached 27 years earlier. "I think it is the hidden story of the last several years," says David Barron, a former Stevens law clerk who now teaches at Harvard Law School. "In many ways it is becoming the Stevens Court." As the 2nd most senior justice after Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Stevens' influence comes more by default than design. But the Chicago native appears to have made the most of his opportunities, voting with the majority in the recently concluded 2003-2004 term in seven of the term's top ten cases. In addition to authoring the Guantnamo Bay decision, he wrote the opinion dismissing the Pledge of Allegiance lawsuit of California atheist Michael Newdow, and teamed up with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to pen the decision upholding key provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Countering the conservatives Stevens' influence was also on display in majority opinions that turned back efforts by the court's conservative wing in the areas of states' rights, police interrogation tactics, and government funding of religion. "Justice Stevens emerged as a unifying and leading force on the court in part because in an array of important cases the conservative majority did not hold and that left him in control," says Thomas Goldstein, a Supreme Court advocate and analyst in Washington, D.C. The conservatives weren't completely thwarted, largely prevailing in two of the terrorism cases and issuing a string of opinions favoring law enforcement. But the big wins of the term belong to liberals and moderates, suggesting a Stevens role behind the scenes. Under court tradition, shortly after oral argument in each case the justices vote on how the case should be resolved. If Chief Justice Rehnquist is in the majority, he decides who will write the opinion. If not, the assignment is made by the most senior justice in the majority. Frequently that is Justice Stevens. It isn't enough to merely assign the author. The key to exerting influence within the high court is the ability to hold the majority during the opinion writing process. Sometimes this is done by assigning the case to the justice who is most likely to jump to the other side should the opinion be written too narrowly or too broadly. Sometimes the assigning justice assigns the case to himself and then assumes the role of judicial diplomat, taking care to adequately address the concerns of each member of the majority. It is in this role as a kind of shadow chief justice that Stevens has undercut the agenda of the court's more conservative justices. He has done it by appealing to the court's 2 moderate- conservative swing voters, Justices O'Connor and Kennedy. But another key to his influence is his ability to appeal for votes more broadly across the court's usual ideological divide. 2 criminal law decisions this year illustrate the point. In Blakely v. Washington, the court extended the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial in a way that raises significant concerns about the continued viability of federal sentencing guidelines. The 5-justice majority included conservatives Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Justice Scalia's opinion echoes a position raised in a Stevens dissent written 18 years earlier. In Crawford v. Washington, the court put new teeth into the Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses by barring prosecutors from introducing certain kinds of recorded statements as evidence at trial. Again the decision was written by Justice Scalia. It essentially laid out a position embraced by Stevens 25 years ago. The vote in the case was 9-0. Marci Hamilton, a law professor at Cardozo Law School in New York City, told a recent gathering of the American Constitution Society that 2003-2004 had been a "remarkable" term for Stevens. "He has brought together in a wide variety of decisions majorities that you never thought would coalesce in those cases," she says. "Stevens is starting to look like [the late Justice William] Brennan in his later years where he's more interested in finding a majority and consensus than he is in a particular extreme viewpoint." Is it still a Rehnquist Court? But other court watchers are reluctant to read too much into the recent term. "It is too early to tell if this is a major shift," Mr. Goldstein says. "It is unlikely that we are seeing anything that will cause us in 10 years to refer to the Stevens Court rather than the Rehnquist Court." Some analysts see the recent frustration of the conservative wing's agenda coming more as a result of the actions of Justices O'Connor or Kennedy, rather than Stevens. "We have reached the endpoint, for now, of the court's conservative jurisprudence on all the hot button issues - state's rights, property rights, abortion, gay rights," Goldstein says. "Over the last few terms the social conservative doctrine has been turned back every time. It has gone as far as Sandra Day O'Connor will let it." Others say Stevens has long been overlooked as an influential force on the court. "He is a very modest person and he doesn't convey to you that he is a politician looking for votes," says Professor Barron. "But when you look at the record of assignments he's made and the way he has crafted opinions," Barron continues, "it is really quite striking that he has been able to take the Rehnquist Court in a direction that I imagine Chief Justice Rehnquist did not want to go." (source: Christian Science Monitor)
