Scott Peterson juror to be granted immunity if she pleads the Fifth
The juror at the heart of misconduct claims by Scott Peterson in his quest for a new trial will be granted immunity before she testifies on Feb. 25.
Stanislaus County District Attorney Birgit Fladager said Monday she intends to grant immunity and will have a document ready should Richelle Nice invoke the Fifth Amendment, as her lawyer said she would.
The issue was one of about 20 discussed at a motion hearing in advance of an evidentiary hearing starting Feb. 25 and running through early March. Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo will decide within 90 days of the hearing’s conclusion whether to overturn Peterson’s conviction for the murders of his wife Laci and their unborn son Conner.
Peterson’s attorney alleges Nice — identified in court documents as Juror 7 — lied during the jury selection process for Peterson’s trial in 2004 when she wrote on a questionnaire that she had never been the victim of a crime or involved in a lawsuit.
They claim she wanted so badly to sit in judgment of him, “in part to punish him for a crime of harming his unborn child – a crime that she personally experienced when (an assailant) threatened her life and the life of her unborn child.”
Nice was pregnant in 2001 when she obtained a restraining order — a type of lawsuit — against her then-boyfriend’s former girlfriend for stalking and threatening them. Also, the year before, the same boyfriend was arrested on charges that included domestic violence in an incident that named her as a victim.
Prosecutors argue that the questionnaire asked if she’d ever been the subject of a lawsuit and Nice did not understand that a restraining order is a type of lawsuit. Regarding the domestic violence incident, Nice filed a declaration describing the incident as a “heated argument.” She said it was her then-boyfriend, not she, who called the police and she did not consider herself a victim.
It is that declaration, if her testimony were to deviate from it, that makes her vulnerable to a possible perjury charge, according to her attorney.
Also discussed during Monday’s hearings was whether a book co-authored by Nice, letters she wrote to Peterson on death row, or things she said to other people, all after the trial, could be offered as evidence of her alleged bias.
“Events occurring after the verdict in this matter are not useful to this inquiry and are irrelevant,” the prosecution wrote in its motion. They asked the court to “exclude all attempts by (Peterson’s attorneys) to elicit post-verdict media interviews, pseudo-documentaries, alleged re-enactments, letters post-verdict allegedly written by Juror 7, etc.”
Peterson’s attorney’s responded that Nice “participated in literally scores of media interviews about her participation in the case. She took the extraordinary step of beginning a long correspondence with Mr. Peterson while he was on death row ... (and) made numerous statements about her role in the case.”
They said the District Attorney “has the heavy burden of proving the absence of prejudice ... the question is not when these statements were made, but what these statements are.”
Judge Massullo said there may be valid reasons Peterson’s attorneys want to present certain information that came out after juror Number 7 filled out her questionnaire.
She said it would be premature to exclude anything now and that the prosecution could raise objections during the evidentiary hearing.
Additional issues were trailed to a hearing scheduled for Feb. 17, like who can testify remotely or wear a face shield instead of a mask and who can be present at the hearing. Many of those issues could change as the state’s current mask mandate is scheduled to expire on Feb. 15.
