(Reuters) – A convicted killer whose death sentence for the murder of his wife and unborn son was overturned last year by the California Supreme Court is scheduled to be re-sentenced on Wednesday, most likely to life in prison.
Scott Peterson, 49, had been held on death row at San Quentin State prison since 2005 after being convicted a year earlier of murdering his wife, Laci, who was seven months pregnant with their unborn son, Conner.
His new sentence is set to be handed down by San Mateo County Superior Court in Redwood City, California.
Stanislaus County District Attorney Birgit Fladager, whose office prosecuted the case, said in a May court filing she would not seek another death sentence, saying the victim’s family had decided the process was “too painful to endure once again.”
Laci Peterson was reported missing from the couple’s home in Modesto, California, on Christmas Eve, 2002, touching off a months-long search and investigation. Her partial remains and those of her unborn son washed ashore along San Francisco Bay the following April.
California’s Supreme Court threw out Peterson’s death sentence in August 2020 on the grounds that the presiding San Mateo County Superior Court judge wrongly dismissed 13 potential jurors because, in filling out an initial questionnaire, they expressed opposition to the death penalty.
Separately, the state Supreme Court in October 2020 ordered the trial court to review Peterson’s conviction based on his contention that his two counts of murder should be set aside because of prejudicial misconduct by a member of the jury.
(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York; editing by John Stonestreet)
