A judge denied Scott Peterson a new trial in the 2002 death of his pregnant wife, Laci Peterson.
Peterson was dismissed more than a year after the California Supreme Court directed Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo to investigate whether juror misconduct denied him a fair trial.
Peterson’s team argued that Juror 7, a woman named Richelle Nice, had been untruthful and withheld details of her personal life that they claimed presented a conflict.
Nice was accused of “prejudicial misconduct” because she failed to disclose that she had been the victim of domestic violence and had sought a restraining order in 2000, fearing that her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend would harm her unborn child.
According to court documents obtained by NBC Bay Area from Tuesday’s decision, the court found that several of Nice’s answers on a juror questionnaire were “false in certain respects,” but they were not “motivated by pre-existing or improper bias” against Peterson.
Her responses “were the result of a combination of good faith misunderstanding of the questions and sloppiness in answering,” Massullo wrote.
Nice, who co-wrote a book about the case with the other jurors, has denied that her personal experiences influenced her decision.
Peterson was convicted of murder in 2004 and sentenced to death the following year. In 2020, the California Supreme Court overturned his conviction. Last year, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Laci Peterson, 27, was eight months pregnant with their son, Conner, when she was killed in December 2002, five years after she and Peterson married.
According to online court records, prosecutors claim he dumped his wife’s body in Berkeley Marina on Christmas Eve and attempted to cover up the crime by making it appear as if she was missing. Later, her body washed up on the beach. Peterson’s attorneys claim she was murdered after discovering a burglary.
