Scott Peterson Murder Case | Did bad science convict the wrong person?

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel well this is dr. grande today's question asks if I can review the Scott Peterson murder case so I'll be taking a look at the timeline here and then some of the evidence from the prosecution and defense and then talking about some of the mental health personality and human behavior factors that played a part in this case this analysis is based on information that's been reported I'm not diagnosing anybody that is involved in this case just speculating based on what could have happened in a situation like this so taking a look at the people involved first we have Scott Lee Peterson who is 30 at the time of the murder and this was back in 2002 we see Lacey Peterson his wife she was 27 and she was seven and a half months pregnant with her unborn son named Connor and then we see another kind of key player in this murder case Amber Dawn Frye amber fries she was also 27 and she was Scott Peterson's mistress so the case kind of starts there right we see Scott Peterson has an affair with amber Frey allegedly he tells her that he's not married so a single and he's looking for a long-term relationship so they have a relationship that kind of heats up in a short period of time and then we moved to December 23rd 2002 and this is the last time that Laci Peterson was seen alive by people that she knew right so this was on December 23rd now Scott Peterson claims that he saw her life the next day but that's different there was some eyewitnesses that may have seen her that's kind of a different thing in terms of like initially looking at this case there's pretty clear evidence that she was alive on December 23rd so what happens here is that after she's seen on December 23rd Scott Peterson claims that they home they were home on December 24th and that he left to go fishing around 9:30 a.m. and that she was in the house and alive now he went fishing and came back and she wasn't there and eventually the police were called a little bit after 5 p.m. now it's interesting because that's all we have so far right she was alive on December 23rd Scott Peterson said she was alive on the 24th and he left and came back and she was missing now the police came out and right away suspected that Scott Peterson had murdered his wife and Conner they were thrown off by how calm he was his kind of cool demeanor and they're also thrown off by how he didn't seem to have a lot of questions for them now it was a little while later when Conners body was discovered and shortly after that when Lacey Peterson's body was discovered so a little bit after the bodies were discovered Scott Peterson was arrested he was arrested on April 18 2003 near a golf course and what's interesting about his arrest is kind of what he had in his possession at the time when he was arrested in his car they found almost 15 thousand dollars in cash for cellphones survival and camping equipment his brother's driver's license and of course his own driver's license and 12 viagra tablets so he'd also dyed his hair blond so this didn't look too good for Scott Peterson at this point right he looked like he may have been getting ready to flee so as I mentioned he was arrested he was charged and later on he was convicted a first-degree murder for Lacey Peterson's murder and second-degree murder for the murder of Conner Peterson so Scott Peterson was sentenced to death for those convictions and currently as I'm making this video he's still in prison appealing the death penalty so now taking a look at the evidence for the prosecution and defense I'm looking here at the entire picture not just what was presented back at the trial so we look at the prosecution's case their theory of the crime it was actually priest straightfoward they believe that Scott Peterson strangled or smothered Laci Peterson on the night of December 23rd or on the morning of the 24th but they didn't know when it happened and they argued they didn't have to prove when it happened they only need to prove that it happened they believed after that when he went on what he called the fishing trip he dumped the body and the San Francisco Bay and his motivation would have been money like life insurance money and of course the affair with amber Frey so taking a look at the evidence on the side of prosecution we see both physical and behavioral evidence so in terms of physical evidence they found a strand of hair in pliers on the boat but I don't think this really was too convincing they had this theory that Connor died on 12 24 and they supported this theory by using an expert who testified about the filled bones and how he measured them and how the time of death could be calculated with that measurement but the expert used an incorrect method he used a method that deviated from the method that he said he used so that was problematic they also had evidence about the dogs picking up Laci Peterson scent at the marina but this is pretty interesting the dogs were actually unqualified I'm sure they were nice dogs I have anything against the dogs but evidently they were not qualified they weren't very good or accurate at their job and also the method that was used the way the dogs were used was actually incorrect and one example of this is the scent they gained the scent from cross-contaminated items so items that Laci Peterson touched and used but also items that Scott Pearson could have touched or used now recently we see that an expert has weighed in on this and indicated that these searching protocols that were used in the case were virtually guaranteed to produce an unreliable result so the dogs really weren't used correctly and again they didn't appear to be qualified the prosecution also called an expert who was supposed to understand how bodies would move in water because again of the theory of the crime Scott Peterson must have dumped the bodies but of course they washed up somewhere else and the prosecution had to explain that difference and they explained it through this so-called expert but as it turned out on the stand this individual admitted that he had done those studies he had no education or expertise in terms of how bodies move and water he also indicated I think this is particularly important that he was aware of the prosecution's theory of the crime now it's interesting because his testimony was key in getting the convictions one Scott Peterson and yet he's saying he really doesn't know what he's doing and he was aware of what result he was supposed to find and I'll talk about this more in a moment now we also see that my detectives said that the house smelled like bleach turns out there was no evidence to support that and we see that there was really no evidence anywhere else there was no evidence on Scott Peterson in his boat in his yard in his house in his vehicle anywhere so this just seems kind of unusual that there be no physical evidence at all well on Scott Peterson were the places where he would have needed to be in order to commit the crime now getting into the behavioral evidence I think this is particularly interesting because we see this a number of cases right we see that there was this feeling that the police had that Scott Peterson was too calm also that he was keeping secrets so allegedly he kept the fact that he had a boat secret from Laci Peterson we find out of course that this wasn't true and really what the police were saying was Scott Peterson was not reacting in the right way and I'll talk more about this in a few moments so now moving over to the defense well the defense had a few different components they challenged of course the prosecution's assertions they indicated that the timeline could be accounted for right so Scott Peterson went fishing and they kind of showed the different steps in that going to the warehouse getting the boat towing the boat to the marina all this and they also looked at this idea that you didn't lie right there weren't lies told the beginning and then you see him changing his story that seemed to happen and usually when people are guilty of murder they do change their story once or maybe even more so he didn't appear to lie he went fishing and came home and that seems to be supported by quite a bit of evidence now I mentioned before the prosecution had that witness that testified about the length of the fetal bones to establish when Connor had died and the defense called a witness to counter that prosecution witness and this witness was going to testify that the unborn son Laci Peterson's unborn son lived until well after the mother was reported missing so that would of course kind of tear apart the prosecution's case now this individual his name was dr. March he was a fertility expert and on the stand he kind of came apart under cross-examination so when the prosecution was asking him questions it kind of came apart and he said he was sorry that he made an error and he even asked the prosecutor to cut him some slack this actually happened on the stand so this was fairly devastating to the defense other evidence they had though was that there was a burglary that was committed in the house across the street from the Petersons on December 24th now this gets a little mixed up because the prosecution had a different theory about what had happened but that was still something the defense brought up so if there were burglars there then it makes sense that those burglars would be dangerous so it offers an alternate theory of the crime and there are also a number of witnesses that saw Lacey walking her dog after Scott Peterson already left to go fishing so if that's true if Lacey was walking her dog after Scott Peterson left there's no way he could have committed the murder so that was a good point for the defense of course ultimately the defense failed and Scott Peterson of course as I mentioned it was convicted and sentenced to death so now I'm moving to my thoughts on this in terms of a mental health personality and human behavior aspect and also my thoughts on whether Scott Peterson is guilty or not guilty so obviously I don't know for certain I don't know if he did it or not but I will offer my opinion on this and I have a lot of difficulties with this case I have a few different problems about what happened this case the kind of procedures that were followed at how they didn't really follow the scientific method and really didn't represent good investigative practices and how really Scott Pearson's behavior was used against him in a way that doesn't seem to be really supported by scientific evidence so in terms of that aspect in terms of his behavior we see that in this case there's really a certain way that somebody's supposed to act when someone dies and Scott Peterson didn't act that way and that kind of got him in trouble right in terms of the investigation but this brings up an important point do we really know how somebody's supposed to act when their spouse is missing or when they've committed a murder we're both murders are not that common and people going missing really isn't that common either right if you go and talk to a married couple that's been married 10 20 30 or say 40 years and you ask them how many times has your spouse gone missing a lot of them will probably say it's never happened so we don't really have a lot of observations of these kind of extreme situations on which we can make these judgments there is no normal way to act there is no correct way to act or if there is it hasn't been established through scientific research so we don't really know yet again this was really used against Scott Peterson I've seen people react in all kinds of ways to all kinds of stressful and unusual situations right terrible things will happen in people's lives and they'll be calm and collected and kind of even calculating sometimes other times I've seen events occur to seem really minor or just routine and people have incredibly strong dramatic reactions so I'm not really kind of buying this argument that there's a certain way to act when bad things happened and that he didn't act that way the bottom line here is that the police believed he was supposed to be distressed crying and inconsolable and he wasn't that way so what happens and this is why this is a problem what happens here is that little misinterpreted observations so small things that the police saw lead to more significant events like the police obtaining search warrants so really Scott Peterson's behavior right his demeanor kind of directed the investigation so this really brings up this argument about the role of the police right as their job to collect evidence and to find the truth they have to be open to the truth whatever the truth is so that includes that Scott Peterson may have been not guilty of this and somebody else was responsible but instead they used Scott Peterson's behavior to form the theory of the crime again it directed the investigation they did this with no mental health training yet they used his personality and his behavior to make important decisions now as I mentioned I've been a counselor for a long time I've seen people react in all kinds of situations and I don't know what to make of Scott Peterson's demeanor that's with the years of training and experience so how could it be that these detectives were able to draw all these conclusions from really this short period of time right there's this idea that this behavior indicates a state of mind not like a long history not like we see in counseling where we can work with people for a long time and kind of see patterns but just this brief behavior really this momentary interaction with Scott Peterson leads to this inference about his state of mind and eventually of course helps build the case against him so you could argue of course that momentary behavior has meaning but I think my argument would be that look at just behavior that happens quickly in isolation and there could be a lot of explanations there right it's not always clear like if somebody's crying that could mean that they're sad that could mean that they're acting or that could mean that they just laughed a lot sometimes when people laugh really hard they cry at the same time or something could be smiling and so they could say well if that person's smiling they're happy or they're thinking Pleasant thoughts or they're up to no good it could be that they're just physically smiling they could be faking that smile so if we only have a brief interaction to deal with it's very difficult to draw conclusions if you work with somebody for years and you see they tend to smile in like socially inappropriate situations then you have a pattern to work with then you can say okay I've seen them manifest that behavior many times and there's a theme or pattern available there but a brief interaction is not enough to establish a pattern so my theory about this part is that we really just asked too much of police officers I don't think these police officers were necessarily bad or anything like that I think we just asked too much of them I call it the James Bond theory of police work right if you look at James Bond like in the movies he was good at everything he was an excellent driver he knew how to operate a number of different types of weapons including rifles and pistols and explosives he could pilot anything a jet fighter a helicopter a boat he was great at hand-to-hand combat he understood technology and he had fairly good social skills although of course this would be debatable I suppose so James Bond really could do everything but real people can't and we see a number of examples in this case of this happening we see one of the detectives talking about a witness that saw Laci Peterson alive when Scott Peterson already left and he said that he didn't think that occurred because it didn't happen she was already dead by that meaning Laci Peterson so he had already formed his conclusion and then was finding or excluding evidence based on that conclusion right because in his mind Laci Peterson was already dead that witness didn't say that she wasn't that was the logic being used there we also see that those burglars that burglarize the house across the street they were eventually arrested their names were Stephen Todd and Glen Pierce and when they arrested they said no that didn't happen on the 24th it happened on the 26th because of course we know that burglars would never lie right so this was really what the police were thinking that burglary was okay with these two people with these two men but it would somehow violate their values to lie so burglary that's okay but lying is where they draw the line this is actually what the police must have believed now of course they were trying to fit the evidence to the theory of the crime but it's interesting because there was a guard and a nearby prison who monitored a phone call between an inmate and the inmates brother and on that call the inmates brother said that Steven Todd one of the burglars admitted that he was confronted by Laci Peterson on December 24th 2002 now there are other factors involved here too just not mistakes that the police might have made we see that we have in Scott Peterson somebody with no history of anger or violence so it doesn't seem likely that somebody like that would commit this type of crime and leave no evidence physical evidence behind at all again not in this truck on the boat on the warehouse not on his person and he did all this in broad daylight and there were no eyewitnesses now there were eyewitnesses that saw Laci Peterson alive after Scott Peterson went fishing but there were no eyewitnesses that saw him commit this crime now there were witnesses that saw Scott Peterson for example he was observed at the boat ramp and they said there was really nothing unusual about his behavior with the boat they didn't see like a human-sized bag being loaded on the boat or being in the boat so the witnesses that did see Scott Peterson really don't have testimony consistent with what we see in terms of what the prosecution was saying happened now at this time as I'm making this video there are 11 eyewitnesses that claimed to have seen Laci Peterson after Scott Peterson had already left so when you think about things like reasonable doubt with the strength of the prosecution's case meaning it's a fairly weak case how many witnesses would somebody need here to say okay there's reasonable doubt again there are 11 people saying that they saw her how many would be necessary how many could be wrong and there would still be reasonable doubt in this case so this brings me to my thoughts in terms of guilt or Scott Peterson being not guilty right so of course the answer is I mentioned for is I don't know but I will speculate and offer my opinion here and it really just is my opinion so if we start with some of the kind of key points of the case right with Scott Peterson a good guy well he was having an affair and apparently he had an affair before that so by that standard it doesn't seem like he was a good guy and I think that hurt him was he suspicious in this case was his behavior suspicious yes right being calm and having a cool demeanor and all that does seem suspicious but I talked about how that might not mean anything so what about in terms of like preponderance of the evidence of I think about this and say is there a 51 percent chance that he did it in my opinion right well criminal cases of course aren't decided by preponderance of the evidence but I'll give my thoughts on this I really thought about this a lot initially I thought that he probably did do it and I think that for me it was the timing with the affair but as I look at the timeline and the lack of evidence and the other evidence in this case I'm kind of left on the fence maybe even leaning toward I don't believe they did it I mean I believe there's a chance he did it but not a 51% or a greater chance right so that's kind of where I am right now I'm really not sure now this moving on kind of speaks to where somebody might be with reasonable doubt right was the reasonable doubt in this case based on what I know based on the evidence that I've seen and just my opinion I think there clearly was so he may have done it I don't know but there does appear to be reasonable doubt here so who knows what's gonna happen in this case maybe Scott Peterson will be executed maybe his sentence will be commuted maybe he'll get a new trial I don't know will happen but I think either way this is a great example of how bad science can be problematic right especially telling people who are doing tests what you need them to find that's not how science works and also I think just a lack of awareness about how people work how we can misinterpret people's reactions and this can really move people into focusing on something that they would not have focused on so if someone else had committed this crime the police really weren't looking for that person or those people so there's a lot of great information a lot of valuable information we can learn from a case like this and I think that in terms of what happens with Scott Peterson I think he deserves a new trial but again that's just my opinion based on the information that I know we'll have to see what happens there I know that with the system of justice the United States it's very clear in our system that we would rather let 10 people who are guilty not be punished than punished one person who is not guilty so that's important to keep in mind when we look at kind of this case and kind of frame it in the context of the justice system in the United States so I know that the Scott Peterson case is a controversial case a lot of people have strong opinions in both directions there are a lot of people to believe he's absolutely guilty and that he should have already been executed or he should be spending his life in prison and there are many people believe that he's not guilty and they're very sure these not guilty so with all these strong opinions if you agree or disagree with me or have other opinions please put those in the comments I think they will generate an interesting dialogue about this case as always I hope you found this description of the Scott Peterson murder case to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 573,250

Keywords: Scott Peterson, laci Peterson, laci rocha, amber frey, affair, murder, death penalty, 1st degree murder, Connor Peterson, reasonable doubt, cool demeanor, callous, unemotional, false conviction, bad science, ineffective defense, bad investigation

Id: XzSqQEqX-Hw

Length: 23min 33sec (1413 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2019