The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Thu, 2 Jan 2025
"True Crime Christmas" comes to an end as Megyn Kelly is joined by former prosecutor and district attorney Matt Murphy, to discuss the latest developments in the story of Scott Peterson, including whether Peterson could actually get a new trial, the truth about "circumstantial" evidence in most murder trials, the decision by the Los Angeles Innocence Project to take up the case, the significance of the dog in the Peterson case, the truth about the reliability of eyewitness testimony, the power of juries to detect human behavior and use common sense, the claim that a "burglary gang" could have been behind Laci Peterson's murder, Peterson's suspect behavior after his pregnant wife went missing, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow
Chapter 1: What new information has emerged in the Scott Peterson case?
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey, everyone. I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and the conclusion to our True Crime Christmas series. Today, we're looking at the Scott Peterson case, which we've covered on the show before, but there is new information this year. It's actually kind of unbelievable.
And an effort underway to get the man convicted of killing his pregnant wife, Lacey, and their unborn son, Connor, a new trial. Joining me today, our pal, Matt Murphy, former California prosecutor and district attorney. 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 about 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, it's look, I 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. Yeah, it happens all the time.
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Chapter 2: Could Scott Peterson actually get a new trial?
But that 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 going to they're going to 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 look, we see that all the time in a lot of cases. 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 what 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 19 1980s. 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.
OK, and that guy is convicted and maybe he's got some 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 or 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 is could a jury, could a reasonable jury have found differently? Essentially, could they have
could they have 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
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of the dog in the Peterson case?
Right, and look, people react to grief differently, but when you're cold about it, it's totally inconsistent with what we just watched.
Matt, remember that one interview Scott Peterson gave to a reporter? I don't think it was the Diane Sawyer one. I think it was the local reporter who got great stuff from him, and this was when the search was on for Lacey and Connor, and the phone rang, and he didn't even answer. Look at it. It was like didn't happen to your point, to exactly the point you're making.
Right. How would an innocent guy not know that that's that that's the police going? Great news. We found her. She was tied up in a warehouse or or like that's exactly what I'm talking about. The thing is, Megan, jury, when you take a jury, you have five hundred twelve deliberating jurors. You have about five hundred years of life experience.
You have five hundred years of collective common sense wisdom on that. And they might not be experts on DNA or on the forensic processing of cell phone data or whatever it is, but I'll tell you, juries are very, very good at human behavior and how somebody should act under certain circumstances and how they shouldn't. And that jury... They got all that evidence back then.
I don't think they ever introduced that interview, but you spotted it just like I did. How does he know if he's innocent that that's not them saying great news? Or, hey, she needs a blood transfusion. When your wife is missing, you pick up the frigging phone. Right.
Every time.
And that's that's the type of thing. And with Scott Peterson, when we're talking about the collage, that's one more piece of that of the collage. And then you look at, you know, you put all of that together and you compare that and the affair and saying that she was going to die.
And the fact that he, according to his own chain story, but later admission, he went from the Berkeley Marina, which is exactly consistent with They found her body. You add all that up. And the fact again, her hair was found on flyers in his boat. OK, you put all that together versus, oh, we've got a theory. There's a drunk guy who thinks he saw a pregnant woman getting into a van. right?
Like, well, the other thing is Matt, and I know this isn't like, this is just anecdotal between us, but his use of the term wonderful, we were going to have our wonderful Christmas together. I'm sorry, but that's just not how real people in love talk. And his message to her, Hey, beautiful. I think they'd been married. What?
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