Peterson Defense Begins Fight for His Life

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — The defense launched its effort Wednesday to persuade a jury to spare the life of Scott Peterson, with relatives, friends and colleagues remembering the convicted murderer as a sunny infant who grew into a perfect gentleman.

The portrait of Peterson contrasted sharply with comments delivered Tuesday, when Sharon Rocha cried out in anger at Peterson while she testified about the death of her daughter Laci Peterson and her unborn son, Conner. Rocha’s searing comments had left many in the courtroom in tears.

Defense lawyer Pat Harris set a different tone in his opening remarks Wednesday by calmly urging the jury to show mercy to the former fertilizer salesman from Modesto.

“We’ve dealt with five months of this man’s life,” Harris told the stone-faced jurors. “Now we’re going to show you the 30 years that preceded it. You will see that it’s a life worth saving.”

“You don’t know who Scott Peterson is, and it’s going to be our job to show you,” Harris said.

The witnesses, he added, will create themes that will be “repeated over and over again.” Among those themes is the idea that “this is a man who constantly put others first,” Harris said.

The defense strategy is to call about 20 witnesses, including relatives, friends, co-workers, employers, teachers and neighbors to humanize Peterson -- a man prosecutors have vilified as a liar, philanderer and brutal murderer of his 27-year-old pregnant wife.

“I think the defense is trying to put as much time as possible between the retelling of this horrific crime and yesterday’s testimony,” legal expert Jim Hammer said.

Other trial watchers suggested that the testimony had another aim: to generate sympathy for Peterson’s relatives, if not for him.

Witnesses characterized Peterson as taciturn and uncomfortable displaying emotions, which might explain Peterson’s stoic demeanor throughout the case.

The jury on Nov. 12 convicted Peterson, 32, of first-degree murder in his wife’s death and second-degree murder for killing the fetus she was carrying. The penalty phase of the trial, which will determine whether Peterson should be executed or sent to prison for life without parole, began Tuesday.

“Clearly, the verdict you came back with is not something we agree with,” Harris said. “But we respect that that’s what you’ve come up with and it’s time to move forward.”

His first witness was Lee Peterson, Scott’s father, who owns a successful custom shipping crate company in San Diego. In the first 90 minutes that the elder Peterson testified, he told, among other things, the story of his ancestors’ arrival in the United States.

He also recounted his son’s coming of age. As a child, Scott Peterson showed “quite an aptitude and a lot of persistence,” and kept a menagerie of pets including three dogs, rabbits, finches, a goldfish and “a cockatiel named Willie Nelson because he sang a lot.”

As a little boy, Peterson saved a rabbit from drowning in the family swimming pool. As a teenager, he accidentally wrecked a vehicle after swerving to avoid hitting an animal in the road.

In high school Peterson “was a good student and a leader,” his father said, doing charity work in Tijuana and singing to seniors in local retirement homes on Sundays.

Through it all, he was never reprimanded by his teachers or arrested by law enforcement authorities, and devoted almost all of his free time to sharpening his golf game, his father said.

Asked how he feels toward his son today, Lee Peterson said, “I love him very much, and have great respect for him. I have wonderful memories of him as a little guy and growing up. I just love him very much.”

Asked how he feels about the murder conviction, he answered in clipped phrases.

“Frightened. Depressed,” he said. “I guess you could say deeply saddened. Just all the emotions you might associate with losing someone we loved and now having our son in this kind of jeopardy. It’s beyond belief. Something I never thought I’d have to go through.”

Harris apologized to the jurors for the length of what they were about to hear over several days and said several times, “Please be patient with us.”

Jurors took few notes during the testimony, and some fidgeted. A day earlier, at least eight of them wiped away tears as Rocha testified.

“I miss her. I want to know my grandson,” Rocha had said. “I want Laci to be a mother. I want to hear her called ‘Mom.’ ”

On Wednesday, the focus switched to Scott Peterson’s mother. In contrast to Peterson’s seemingly contented and well-adjusted upper-middle-class family life, his mother’s life was filled with tragedy, according to testimony by the second defense witness.

Joanne Farmer, a lifelong friend of Jackie Peterson, Scott’s mother, said on the stand that Jackie’s father was murdered when she was 3 years old. Jackie Peterson spent the next 10 years in an orphanage because her mother was an invalid.

Jurors had been expected to begin deliberating as early as Friday.

That now seems unlikely, because the defense presentation could take a week.

Laci Peterson disappeared Dec. 24, 2002, about a month after her husband began an affair with Fresno massage therapist Amber Frey.

Her body washed ashore in San Francisco Bay about four months later, about a mile from where Peterson claims he went fishing the day she disappeared.