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Matt, good to see you again. Thank you for being here. All right, so this is so crazy. The more I hear about this case, the more it feels like Scott Peterson actually has a shot at a retrial, which just seems insane to me. But since you're a prosecutor and you're from California, I'm going to play devil's advocate here and I will try to make the case on his behalf. OK, it's more interesting if we if we have both sides. So he's just been given wide access to a whole new host of discovery that he says he was entitled to in this case, which my understanding is the judge had earlier said, you're not getting this. Go back to prison. Goodbye. But now he is getting access to a bunch of new evidence that would support allegedly this whole theory that what happened on the day Lacey Peterson went missing and was murdered was not that Scott Peterson killed her and then disposed of her body and that of their unborn son. It was that she witnessed a burglary across the street from where they lived. She either tried to stop it, which is what Scott Peterson says he believes, or she was just an eyewitness and therefore became a target. They abducted her. They killed her. They then drove around with her body for some sort of period. And then when the police made clear that Scott Peterson was believed to have been at this harbor, this marina on the day that Lacey went missing, they thought, aha, this is our chance. We're going to dump the body over there so that he will be blamed for this crime. And it does appear like this judge has at least opened up discovery again for him to start probing that theory more meaningfully. Is that about where things stand?

Yeah, that's about where things stand. I mean, it's utterly absurd. But yeah, look, don't you hate it when women who are seven and a half months pregnant go charging in to stop burglaries? And then burglars who are there to steal drive around for days and days with a dead body in their car of somebody that they killed just because, apparently. and then they get really smart at that point and decide that they're going to drive to probably a marina that will have more law enforcement witnesses and everybody else because the attention given this case back in the day and they're going to take the body out and go to pretty much the exact same place that scott peterson was fishing according to him and dump the body um yeah it happens all the time you I mean, let's give him a new

try. And not to help you out, because, yeah, I'm supposed to be taking the other side. But the other piece of that story that's just so nonsensical is, if that's what they wanted, to frame him, why would they weigh down the body in the ocean with a bunch of anchors? Why wouldn't they just throw the body on the shore or go out in the middle of the night and dump it overboard so it would float back in? Because

burglars go and make fake anchors with cement that they purchase all the time. That's why. I mean, anybody, anybody knows that. It's like, look, this is, this is one of, this is the latest case in a few of these that are going on right now where it's kind of like a couple of decades have gone by and everybody has forgotten the overwhelming evidence against Scott Peterson. And this guy, look, this is a domestic violence murder. And I don't have to say alleged because the guy is convicted right now of it. So, you know, everybody forgets Amber Frey and all of the stuff regarding the affair and the fact that he dyed his hair and had $15,000 and was down in San Diego and looked like he was going to flee to Mexico. It's like we get these cases. Menendez Brothers is another one right now where everybody forgets. And then all of a sudden, you know, hey, the LA innocence project is on there, which is a misnomer. If there's ever been one, um, I mean, look, they, they, they did some really good work back in the day when, right when DNA became, um, ubiquitous in, in when CODIS went online and every state joined it. And right when they were using modern co-filer and profiler DNA kits, which are way easier than the old RFLP to understand. That's the gel that they used to inject. So they found some people that were wrongfully convicted, and that happens in our system. I sit on a board with Purdue University where that's our sole task is trying to identify people who are wrongfully convicted. But since that initial flurry of kind of glory, if you call it that, where they're they're doing good work, you know, finding people that are wrongfully convicted. They it seems like they've really settled more into stuff like this high profileile stuff that gets a lot of headlines. And then as soon as you, all your viewers have to do is just read the Wikipedia on this case. The California Supreme Court affirmed this conviction 7-0. They reversed the death part because of some irregularities during jury selection, but they affirmed his conviction. And another term that we keep hearing, there's a Newsweek article on this, and the defense alleges it was circumstantial evidence. We've all heard that. We've seen that in TV shows, right? Like you see Starsky and, I mean, I'm going to date myself here, Starsky and Hutch, or Cagnon Lathier. I know the reference. You know, whoever the cops are today, we have this concept, and it's a myth that circumstantial evidence, quote unquote, is somehow inadmissible or bad evidence. And that's exactly the way Newsweek wrote their article on this that I read this morning. A case based on circumstantial evidence according to LA Innocence Project. It's like every single domestic violence, murder guys in America and in the world throughout history involves some degree of circumstantial evidence. Direct evidence just means a witness comes into court and they say they saw something. Circumstantial evidence is pretty much everything else. I mean, circumstantial evidence, it's like, you know, this guy had every poker tell that you could ever want during this investigation, including refusing at one point to communicate with her family, refusing to speak to the police anymore. He told his his his paramour mistress, whatever we want to call Amber Frey, that Lacey was dead when she was very much alive. He said that he was a widower. He bought this boat two weeks before she disappeared. He bought cement, which is consistent with the way her body was found. Her body was heavily decomposed. And they believe that the coroner testified at the time that it was consistent with several anchors holding her down. There's so much overwhelming evidence And circumstantial evidence is that good old fashioned common sense stuff like somebody running away from a crime scene, somebody in possession of stolen property from a recent burglary that that happened down the street from that like circumstantial evidence is the bread and butter of every domestic violence murder case in the history of justice. And that really is the right word for it is justice, like holding people accountable for what they did. The evidence against this guy is is laughably overwhelming. And they come in, they get the headlines, Ellie, Ellie Innocence Project. And then everybody forgets all that stuff. And it's like, ooh, there was a van down the street with a mattress in it. And essentially, that's what the current legal action is about. They want to test a mattress that was found in some burnout van somewhere in the neighborhood of where Lacey Peterson lived. Okay, so if they get in there, and I can already tell you what the argument's gonna be. This is the

mattress, which they say has blood on it, but the initial test suggested maybe it was blood. Then the second test done by the officials suggested it was inconclusive, not clear whether it's blood or rust. Go ahead, sorry, Matt.

Right, if they get that thing, they're gonna swab it. And modern modern genetic and DNA testing is so sensitive. I can virtually guarantee you will find unknown male DNA on that mattress. And the next thing that the Innocence Project is going to do is they're going to say, aha, that's the DNA for the real killer. And it doesn't match Scott Peterson. But without a link to Lacey Peterson, it is it is literally meaningless. And and look, we see that all the time in a lot of cases. Like like I said, there are cases where DNA has legitimately freed people that didn't do it. And thank goodness for that. And that's why we want the system to work. And forensic technology is unbiased. And it thank goodness. Right. Like but there's also a lot of these cases, Megan, that and this is something that drives me crazy, where you'll have, you know, something that happened, maybe say a rape murder. And in the nineteen nineteen eighty. OK. And somebody will have been convicted of rape murder. The jury who, in my experience, I've done a lot of capital case litigation. I've done a lot of cases like this, which are bifurcated murder trials. The juries take their task very seriously. The judges tend to be the most experienced and the best. The detectives tend to be the most experienced and the best. And it's imperfect, but everybody really wants to do their job. So then a couple of decades later, and say it's a homeless drifter, okay, and that guy is convicted and maybe he's got some sex offenses in his past. And the way it works over and over again is he'll say, hey, it was consensual sex. I understand that she's a stockbroker and I was living in a tent, but trust me, we really had a spark. And boy, did we hit it off. And so that's why my sperm was found all over the place. But somebody else came along later and killed her. And that will be the absurd, ridiculous defense that they will run. And the jury will reject it properly and he'll get convicted. And then what happens is that, you know, that the DNA comes back like 20 years later, 30 years later, and they'll test the scrapings under her fingernails, or they'll test some object that's found at the crime scene. And, you know, if she pat, if she patted a little boy on the head that day, or if she shook hands with her mailman or something, you can discover unknown male DNA that has no link whatsoever to the actual murder. But the standard on appeal could a jury could a reasonable jury have found differently? Essentially, could they have could they've come to a different result based on that new evidence? And the answer under those circumstances is, yeah, if they didn't consider that, maybe so. So that's the standard for reversal on appeal. So the case comes back for a retrial. And Aunt Millie, who worked in the evidence room, put it in the wrong box or the evidence got washed away in the great flood of 82. And they can't redo it or the critical witnesses have died. The investigator necessary to lay the foundation for that evidence has passed away. Like you can have this entire host of problems that can afflict a case like that 30 years later. So they they can't retry it. And then what happens is you've got people like Barry Sheck in front of the cameras going another innocent man exonerated, which is the term they love, exonerated from DNA evidence when they weren't exonerated at all. They were they were granted a new trial and the prosecution couldn't proceed. And then that guy goes out. And this has happened over and over and over again in America, because we know sex offenders keep doing it again. So they'll get out. They'll sue the county. They'll get settlements for a couple million bucks and then they get caught for doing it, doing it again. And nobody wants to talk about those. And it drives me insane. Scott Peterson is a

relatively young man. I mean, if he were to get out, I think he would pose a danger to other women and other people. Like I, obviously it would take the most stone cold sociopath in America to murder one's eight month pregnant wife and one's unborn child with your bare hands and then dump them in the ocean like they were trash while you're talking to your lover with these nonsense claims while you're actually I we actually have this queued up because it's just so amazing while you're actually at the vigil for your missing wife and child talking to your lover. In Amber Fry's defense here, she did not know he was married. And at this point, the reason it's on tape is because when she saw his picture all over the news, she called the cops to say, holy cow, I'm dating your suspect. And so she got him on tape and he's claiming he's in Paris on New Year's Eve while Lacey's still missing. They haven't found the body. He's there. The vigil's there. The people with the candles. He's on camera like, oh, poor, poor husband And he's talking to the lover about the fake Paris fireworks. Here it is. American.

having a good time. I'm by the Eiffel Tower. New Year's

Celebration is unreal. Unreal is exactly the word. Now, Matt, I want to ask you a couple things. Okay, so first of all, I understand there is a distinction between the Innocence Project and the LA Innocence Project. I don't know about this LA Innocence Project, because in my experience, the bar is a little high for the Innocence Project to take on your case. I don't know about LA Innocence. I've seen this. There's like a cleavage there in the reporting about these two. Maybe they have a lower standard. Secondly, the judge did say before she ordered all this discovery of all this extra stuff, like the van and things around the van, we'll get to the specifics. She did say, you can go back and do DNA testing on the duct tape that was found on Lacey's pants when they found her body. There was still some duct tape wrapped around her from whoever wrapped her and connected her to anchors. That could be one of those situations that the results of that are under seal, but that could be one of those exact situations you just mentioned where maybe they won't find Scott's DNA on that, but maybe they'll find the DNA of the guy who worked at the Lowe's from whom Scott Peterson bought the duct tape. Now, if they found DNA that matches the DNA of one of the two burglars, although they're saying it wasn't them, it was their network. But let's just say they found DNA that matches one of the two burglars that she allegedly caught in the act. Now you're talking, right? Now, okay, now you've got our attention. So far, he's still sitting in prison and there's no retrial. So I'm guessing they didn't get that on the DNA return. Okay. And then the second thing I wanted to point out is you mentioned the absurdity of him going to take his boat, his brand new boat. He'd never taken out before. He wasn't really a fisherman. He takes his boat out on the, on the water Christmas day, um, just for the very first time on Christmas day. And, uh, he initially when asked, where were you while your wife went missing and the dogs running around the neighborhood and all this, he's initially said he was golfing and then he changed his story, right. To make it fishing, presumably because he realized they had something that could prove he was in the area of the marina.

That's right. And not only not only did he say he's golfing to he said that in front of neighbors, whoever heard it. He said that about a dozen times. So it's not like one person might have misrecollected. He said it over and over and over again. And that was his story. He didn't want anybody knowing that he was there, apparently. And, you know, I mean, look, this is, you know, when you see enough of these, it's like he he did everything that you expect to see. And that's one of them. Like when when the truth is you didn't do it. OK, and not like in any murder case, there's a quality of the way people behave. And if the truth is you didn't do it, you don't build a ladder to the truth with a bunch of lies. And yeah, he said he was golfing. You know, he bought the boat two weeks before. And here's another thing that, again, it's like I shout at my TV when I see this come on. They found her hair in pliers inside the boat. They matched it with mitochondrial DNA. That's hair, teeth, bones, things like that. So the numbers aren't overwhelming. It's not like one in octillions. But it's Lacey Peterson's hair in a pair of pliers in the boat, which is totally consistent with him dumping her body and using that tool as he's affixing her to these homemade anchors. There's so many individual small points of corroboration with the prosecution's theory that just nobody wants to talk about. You know, it's when you when you put it together, every one of these cases, Megan, is like a collage. You know, each piece, it's like, where does this fit in the picture? And sometimes like a mattress down the street, probably has no part of it in any way. But, but when you start putting little pieces together, you start to see the big picture and here, you know, you've got Amber Frey saying his wife is already dead. He buys the boat two weeks before he's actually in the Marina, you know, in this, in this place and left her a voicemail saying, Hey, beautiful, I'm back from the arena, which is also odd because he left his house where they live, which is not super close to the arena. And he leaves at 930. 90 miles away. Right. It's 90 miles away. And he's calling her at 230. He leaves at 930. He's calling her at 230 saying, hey, beautiful, I'm on my way back. So he goes fishing by himself on Christmas Day. And how much time is there to launch a boat that he probably isn't that skilled with at that point? He goes and fishes for 30 minutes. And

he never uses a single lure.

No, give me a break. There's so many problems with that. And then when he's arrested, he's in San Diego. He's changed his appearance. He's got $15,000 in cash. And he's got survival gear in a car. And he's got two different IDs. He's in possession of his brother's ID. Like, I mean, those are the types of things. Each one of those things is something that a jury gets to weigh and consider and on determining whether or not he's the guy. And so you have these, there's always a burglary down the street. There's always some, somebody got, okay.

Okay.. But now now this is where I'm going to try to defend the defense theory is it's really Scott Peterson's sister in law who has been his biggest advocate. law school much later, long after he was convicted, not necessarily to try this case for him or to, you know, pursue, but because she was so immersed in the legalities around it. So then they get Innocence Project involved or LA Innocence. So here are some of what they say are the facts that suggest he didn't do it, that they should have been able to argue all of this to a jury and that they weren't given full disclosure by the prosecution of what the prosecution had done on some of these leads. All right. I'll give you a couple of them. First of all, there's a neighbor, a neighbor named Diane Jackson, who claims she saw three men and a van in the neighborhood at the time Lacey went missing. So Diane can presumably place a van and three men in the neighborhood when she went missing. Okay, that's a piece that the defense would like to argue. Then there is this guy named Tom Harshman who claims he saw a pregnant woman being forced into a van, Matt, and called in a tip, but it was never followed up in on. He called back to say, I'm telling you, I saw, I think it was this guy who called back in any event that he had seen this. And in this discovery, I'm sorry, in this Peacock channel show called Face to Face with Scott Peterson, where they got Scott Peterson on camera and doing an interview from the jail. Very well done. They have a clip of this guy. Do we have it, team? Tom Harshman. All right, we'll drop it in. But he sounds a little drunk, to be perfectly honest. His words are kind of slurry, Matt, but he does say he saw a pregnant woman being forced into a van. I mean, those two things alone, you got to admit, as a defense attorney, you'd like to know about those, and you would certainly be arguing to the jury. Let Let me tell you what that van did to Lacey Peterson. We

seen a girl and she was pregnant and she was in a van. We were worried about it. She had to pee, so they took her over to a fence and then said forced her back in the van. It was

kind of manhandling her. She was kind of frightened. me My wife says, don't get into this. Stay out of it. She says, if they're bad people,

they don't hurt you. Yeah. Okay. So number one, passionate belief, Megan. and look, we see this all the time. We see this politically in our country on both sides. Passionate belief has no necessary connection to the truth. OK, just doesn't like you can you can have a sister in a lot who's banging the drum and absolutely. I'm sure she personally believes this, but that doesn't equal evidence. OK, so it's also very important to remember that Lacey Peterson and, you know, again, I don't want to age myself here, but I remember this case very well when it happened, as I'm sure you do, too. You're way younger than me, Megan. But look, she was missing. OK, and when it comes when you prosecute cases like this, when somebody is missing before the body is found, those are the ones that that get all of the national media. It's like my Samantha Runyon case back in the day, a little five year old girl that disappeared. We had international media attention. The president of the United States was talking about that because that catches the headlines. My Tom and Jackie Hawks case, that couple was missing. They were the ones tied to the anchor and thrown overboard. Right. Those get overwhelming media wise because it captures the public public's attention. This was an absolute run of the mill, bread and butter, domestic violence, murder in almost every way to be almost to the point of being boring. OK, this is so common. But for the fact that Lacey Peterson was pretty, she was pregnant and she was missing. OK, so we all saw that photo of her. So what happens that I can tell you this from personal experience? Good, you know, good hearted, well-meaning members of the community, people, neighbors, and complete strangers come out of the woodwork because they want to help. So when you talk about this guy, you know, Tom Harshman, you know, that is something that this was the biggest case in the world for the period of time that she was missing. And she was missing for a long time. This was Christmas Day. Her body wasn't discovered until April. So this was something. There's been movies made out of this. So well-meaning people come out of the woodwork. And I'll tell you what, you know, when you talk about another big thing that the defense has raised is one of the arguments they made in their court documents that I read was, look, if there are all these neighbors that say they saw her, you know, after she had died and all these people, and if even one of them is right, that means Scott Peterson couldn't have done it. Okay. That's, that's the way the argument goes. There were just,

just to be clear, just to be clear, that's because the defense would like to say Scott Peterson left the house early that morning to quote, go fishing. And so if Lacey Peterson was out and about walking around after Scott had left the house. Obviously, he didn't do it. Keep going, Matt. Right.

That's right. So it's essentially it's like a retroactive alibi. You know, hey, if that person. OK, so so here's here's something for you just to keep in mind. There were 74 officially reported sightings of Lacey Peterson in 26 different states and overseas during the time that she was missing. 74. Those are regular folks who are like, hey, I saw, I think I saw her. I think I saw her in, you know, Amagansett, New York. I think it's her, I'm sure. It's like Madeline McCann.

Right. No, 100%. Remember that case? Everybody's like, I saw her here. I saw her there. How

many people saw Elvis? You know, it's people. And the thing is, some people really want to help their well-meaning. And also, I can tell you again from personal experience, every wackadoo comes out of the woodwork saying, I'm certain of this. And what happens when you get like, like, and I don't want to criticize the defense too much. It's, it's their job to raise issues especially at the trial level. But my problem is sort of the public's willingness to indulge nonsense in something like this. This is a horrific double murder. This woman was seven and a half months pregnant. Scott Peterson did it. He's convicted of it. The California Supreme Court, which is absolutely not, I can also tell you, a rubber stamp for for criminal convictions the california supreme court upheld this seven to zero you know and they again they reversed the death penalty part for reasons unrelated to the guilt of scott peterson seven oh

it was because the judge on the jury selection said to the jury could you if he's found guilty could you impose a sentence of death potentially?