Twenty years after he was convicted for the murder of his wife and unborn child, Scott Peterson hopes that further DNA testing of evidence could win him a retrial — but a former California prosecutor with knowledge of the case said his chances are "unlikely."
In an order filed on July 24, a judge decided that a 15.5-inch piece of duct tape recovered from Laci Peterson's pants at her autopsy on April 13, 2003, must undergo DNA testing.
Pure Gold Forensics, Inc. will conduct the test on the tape, along with more than a dozen physical pieces of evidence for which the judge granted testing. The order also states that "the DNA testing shall be conducted within 45 days of this order or as soon as practical."
The LA Innocence Project, which provides attorneys to exonerate the wrongfully convicted, announced earlier this year that it is picking up Peterson's case. On Aug. 20, Peterson will speak out for the first time since his conviction in a new Peacock documentary, "Face to Face with Scott Peterson."
Although Peterson's attorneys have succeeded in having his death penalty overturned in favor of life imprisonment without parole, they have tried and failed multiple times to appeal his conviction.
Prosecutors disagreed with the latest appeal, taken up by the LA Innocence Project, and put together a 337-page court filing opposing his motion for DNA testing in May.
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Attorney Neama Rahmani, the president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, said that although a judge has now signed off on the additional DNA testing, it is "unlikely" that the 51-year-old will get a new trial.
Rahmani explained that another person's DNA would have to show up on the duct tape or other pieces of evidence.
Peterson's sister-in-law Janey Peterson, who will be featured in the upcoming Peacock documentary, believes that Laci had a fatal run-in with burglars after she witnessed their crime across the street from her Modesto home and confronted them, Fox News Digital previously reported.
Laci vanished on Christmas Eve 2002, and her body washed up in the San Francisco Bay months later, not far from the body of her unborn son, Conner. Two strands of Laci's hair collected from a pair of pliers on Peterson's boat were a key piece of evidence used to convict him of her murder.
Police alleged Peterson used the boat to dispose of her body.
Peterson had claimed that he was fishing in the bay on the day Laci went missing — not far from where her badly decomposed body washed up onshore.
"Peterson admitted to fishing [near] where the body was found — what are the chances unless he’s the unluckiest guy in the world?" Rahmani told Fox News Digital.
"You go fishing, Laci stumbles upon some burglars. They kill her, they somehow know where Scott Peterson is, they drive 100 miles away to dump the body where he happens to be fishing — anything is possible, but that strikes me as very unlikely," he continued.
At the time Peterson's wife disappeared, the then-30-year-old was carrying out an affair with massage therapist Amber Frey.
"A lot of it was ‘were his actions the actions of someone who lost his wife and unborn child,'" Rahmani recalled of the case. "The guy shows no remorse when she disappears, doesn’t help in the search, doesn’t participate in any of the visuals. He’s trying to get out of his marriage, he’s having an affair, he’s racked up debt — I feel that there is plenty of evidence that implicates Scott Peterson."
That said, Rahmani said that for the LA Innocence Project to be picking up Peterson's case, they must "believe there is something here."
The LA Innocence Project did not respond to Fox News Digital's requests for comment, but provided the following statement earlier this year:
"The Los Angeles Innocence Project filed motions in January asking the Court to order further discovery of evidence and allow new DNA testing to support our investigation into Mr. Peterson’s claim of actual innocence… We have not commented on our motions, and we will continue to present our case in court — where it should be adjudicated."
Rahmani also remarked that Peterson's trial lawyers who defended his case "still believe he's innocent."
"I’m not saying that it’s impossible that Scott Peterson was wrongfully convicted," he conceded. "[But] there’s a ton of circumstantial evidence."
"PR matters a lot," he said. "Scott Peterson, for a while, was one of the most hated men in this country… [But] public opinion can make a difference one way or another — [the documentary] could sway things potentially in his favor."
"R. Kelly went down because of a documentary, Britney Spears came out of a conservatorship because of a documentary," Rahmani continued. "The court of public opinion matters a lot. Every prosecutor in this country is elected or appointed by someone who was elected."
