[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, VA., OHIO, CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 17



TEXAS----female to face death penalty

Hundreds of jurors skip out on capital murder case leading to new delay



The jury selection process in the state's capital murder case against Sabrina 
Vielma came to a halt Thursday after 75 % of summoned jurors failed to appear. 
Vielma faces the death penalty for the Dec. 11, 2011, death of her 4-year-old 
son Davaughn Rodriguez.

Visiting Judge Stephen Ables told the crowd of 124 potential jurors that 500 
people were asked to appear. Before hearing potential jurors who asked to be 
excused for various reasons, Ables said the court hoped to leave for the day 
with 125 potential jurors eligible to return Friday.

Instead, after listening to excuses and taking a brief recess, Ables announced 
at about 11:30 a.m. that everyone would be dismissed because too many of the 
summoned people failed to appear. The judge said a turnout of 215-220 people is 
needed to select a jury.

(source: Uvalde Leader-News)

**************

3 teens have charges upgraded to capital murder in connection to alleged drug 
deal killing



3 teens face capital murder charges after an October drug deal gone wrong in 
Bexar County.

3 teenagers suspected of killing a man during a drug deal gone bad could face 
the death penalty after their charges were upgraded to capital murder.

Michael Aguilar, 19, Emmanuel Herrera, 18, and Charles Robnett, 18, had 
previously been arrested on murder charges in connection to the shooting death 
of Gary Barnhardt, 20.

Robnett was still in custody but Aguilar and Herrera were re-arrested Friday 
afternoon. All 3 had upgraded charges.

The killing occurred Oct. 16, when Barnhart and his friend met up with the 3 
near Lake Bend East and Fountain Lake to sell them marijuana, Sheriff Javier 
Salazar said.

"They arrived not with the intention of buying the drugs, but robbing the 
victims of the drugs," Salazar said.

Things didn't go as planned, and Barnhardt and his friend were shot. Though his 
friend survived, Barnhardt died at the scene.

Neither Aguilar nor Herrera had anything to say as deputies brought them into 
custody.

"You have 5 young lives who are ruined forever over something as senseless as 
drugs," Salazar said.

The 3 suspects' bail amounts were set at $500,000 each.

(source: mysanantonio.com)








VIRGINIA:

Death Penalty for Mentally Ill Defendants?----That's not justice, argue mental 
health professionals



In recent years, policymakers have begun taking important steps in addressing 
how our criminal justice system approaches individuals with mental illness who 
commit crimes. As our understanding of the factors which lead people with 
mental illness to commit crime grows, "jail diversion" (http://bit.ly/2BeX3UB) 
and other programs designed to divert people with mental illness into treatment 
instead of incarceration are being implemented nationwide, as well as in 
communities across the commonwealth (http://bit.ly/2ATmq1a). However, much more 
remains to be done to reform Virginia's approach to the way it treats 
individuals with severe mental illness in its criminal justice system.

An important proposal that would contribute to this reform has been considered 
by the General Assembly during its last two sessions: a bill to ban the use of 
the death penalty for people with severe mental illness. The bill would replace 
the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of parole for 
individuals who had active symptoms of a severe mental illness at the time of 
their offense. This is a much-needed reform, since, surprisingly, individuals 
with severe mental illness can still be sentenced to death and executed under 
Virginia law.

Severe mental illness is a subset of mental illness that includes the most 
serious disorders, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. To be considered 
a severe mental illness, the condition must last for extended periods of time 
and significantly interfere with a person's major life activities, such as 
working, interacting with others or caring for oneself. The National Institute 
of Mental Health estimates that 4.2 % of U.S. adults live with a severe mental 
illness (http://bit.ly/2vnQGcN); this equates to more than 300,000 adults with 
severe mental illness in the commonwealth.

Despite our growing understanding of severe mental illness and its 
consequences, there are no protections from the death penalty for those 
individuals whose disorder was pre-sent at the time of the offense. As a 
result, they continue to be sentenced to death and executed. One such 
individual was Adam Ward, who was executed by the State of Texas in 2016 
despite recognition by Texas state courts that he had lived with severe mental 
illness "his entire life" and "was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and placed 
on lithium as early as age 4" (http://bit.ly/2odSlDH).

As mental health professionals, we strongly believe that individuals like Adam 
Ward should not be sentenced to death. We know firsthand that individuals with 
severe mental illness may, when experiencing a crisis, have difficulty using 
rational judgment; operate under strong paranoid and delusional thoughts that 
prevent them from fully understanding what is real and what isn't; or be unable 
to fully control their impulses. This is all relevant when deciding whether 
someone should receive society's ultimate punishment.

That these defendants continue to be sentenced to death is even more surprising 
considering that individuals with intellectual disability and juveniles were 
exempted from the death penalty by the U.S. Supreme Court more than a decade 
ago. The Court said that intellectual disability and youth are characterized by 
impairments that diminish a person???s culpability even though they "do not 
warrant an exemption from criminal sanctions." Although intellectual disability 
and severe mental illness are different conditions, they bring very similar 
impairments, and we must treat equally those who live with either of these 
conditions.

This reform is all the more necessary because misconceptions about severe 
mental illness and violence cloud our approach to criminal defendants with 
these diagnoses. Instead of recognizing their conditions for what they are - 
impairments - juries, judges, and the general public often exhibit an 
"irrational prejudice against people with mental illness," a phenomenon that 
New York Law School Professor Michael Perlin has labeled "sanism" 
(http://bit.ly/1FjhDiI ).

These prejudices may include the idea - unsupported by empirical evidence - 
that people with mental illness are inherently dangerous. This belief is 
particularly concerning in death penalty cases. Indeed, studies have shown 
(http://bit.ly/2gRS694) that capital jurors sometimes erroneously - and 
troublingly - consider evidence of mental illness aggravating instead of 
mitigating. This means that juries may confuse the legal standard and think 
mental illness should increase someone's punishment when it really is only 
supposed to be considered to decrease punishment. This should trouble all of 
us, and make clear that the only remedy is a categorical exclusion from the 
death penalty.

We urge the General Assembly to revisit this issue in its 2018 session. We must 
provide to individuals with severe mental illness the same protections we 
afford those with intellectual disability, and we need to recognize that their 
impairments make them undeserving of the ultimate punishment."

(source: Damien Cabezas is CEO of Horizon Behavioral Health and Rhonda Thissen 
is executive director the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Virginia (NAMI 
Virginia), on whose board of directors Cabezas serves. They wrote this column 
for The News & Advance)








OHIO:

Ohio politicians vying to abolish death penalty



A local lawmaker said she would like to abolish the death penalty.

Nickie Antonio introduced House Bill 389 hoping to sway her fellow lawmakers to 
join her in the effort to kill the death penalty in Ohio.

Representative Antonio said taking someone's life, for taking someone's life, 
is a bad practice and she wants Ohio "not" to do it anymore.

"It's wrong," Antonio said.

Antonio said if one does the crime, they should do the time, not die at the 
hand of the state.

"But if they committed this most heinous crime, our worst criminals, we as the 
state of Ohio and taxpayers should be better than them and so a sentence of 
life without parole I think is a very just punishment," Antonio said.

Antonio, who's from Lakewood, introduced the legislation to abolish capital 
punishment in Ohio.

She said minorities and the poor get hit the hardest.

Justice Pfeiffer has called capital punishment a death lottery because of how 
disproportionately people of color are impacted by it.

Cuyahoga County, while it has a small percentage of capital crimes, when 
compared to the other counties, it's sending the most people to death row.

"Currently, our criminals justice is not equal," Pfeiffer said.

Her colleague, fellow State Representative Stephanie Howse, co-signed the bill 
to get rid of the death penalty in Ohio.

"I do believe that we can find a way to administer justice, but do it in a way 
that is humane and right now I just don't think or believe that's it's a humane 
way to do it and a way to really try to help people make up for what they've 
done," Howse said.

Antonio added this reason to her argument.

"We have more than 6 folks in the state of Ohio who have been exonerated. 
That's means they were found not guilty but they were sitting on death row. 
They're free today, but if we had executed them we would have executed people 
who are innocent," Antonio said.

Actually, there have been nine people freed since 1976 for crimes they didn't 
commit and for which they were sentenced to die.

Another local politician, Republican, Nathan Manning from North Ridgeville, 
will decide if Antonio's bill will get any more hearings or stay in committee 
without further action.

(source: cleveland19.com)








CALIFORNIA:

An L.A. court mistakenly destroyed evidence a death row inmate says would free 
him. Now what?



>From his small cell on California???s death row, Scott Pinholster swore he 
could prove his innocence. The proof, he said, was in the dried blood on a work 
boot and a pink towel recovered from his home years ago.

The condemned inmate insisted that modern DNA testing - nonexistent when he was 
convicted of a double murder in 1984 - would show the blood belonged to him, 
not the victims, as the prosecution argued at his trial.

But a recent search for the items has led to a disturbing discovery that could 
throw the case into jeopardy: The Los Angeles County courts mistakenly 
destroyed the evidence.

A judge must now determine what, if anything, should be done to remedy the 
high-stakes error.

Pinholster's attorney has asked for a hearing on how the destruction happened 
and says he will eventually ask for a new trial. Prosecutors, however, argue 
that a killer's life shouldn't be spared simply because of an innocent mistake 
by court staff.

How evidence once thought destroyed helped free a man after 39 years behind 
bars for murder he didn't commit

1 of the jurors who voted to send Pinholster to death row more than 3 decades 
ago was shocked to hear that the man convicted of fatally stabbing and beating 
2 men might get a 2nd chance.

"Oh my God!" said the juror, who spoke on condition of anonymity, when recently 
contacted by The Times. "He's liable to get off then?"

Pinholster is 1 of 744 people awaiting execution in California - the largest 
death row population in the country. Although the state hasn't put anyone to 
death since 2006, that could soon change, as voters passed a measure last year 
to speed up the process. Of the state's condemned inmates, about 20 have 
exhausted their appeals, putting them at the front of the line. Among them is 
Pinholster.

California law requires that courts keep evidence until after a death row 
inmate is executed or dies behind bars - a safeguard put in place to preserve 
evidence for future testing. Mary Hearn, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles 
Superior Court, said the court's procedure for destroying evidence, which was 
updated last year, now requires that staff first contact California's Supreme 
Court to confirm a death row inmate has died. The court, Hearn said, began a 
review of its procedure before learning of Pinholster's case.

Hearn said Pinholster, 58, is the only known example of evidence destruction in 
a case of a living death row inmate convicted in L.A. County. But a small 
number of cases around the country have raised similar legal problems.

On the eve of an execution in 2005, Virginia's governor reduced a condemned 
death row inmate's sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole 
after learning that a court clerk had destroyed evidence in his murder case 
despite being warned by subordinates not to do so. 2 years later, a man on 
death row in Oklahoma was released from prison after a judge ruled that a 
police lab analyst had intentionally destroyed hair evidence that could have 
pointed to the inmate's innocence.

Elisabeth Semel, a UC Berkeley law professor who directs the school's clinic 
that defends condemned inmates facing execution, said destruction of physical 
evidence cripples the ability to examine an inmate's innocence claim.

"If the very evidence you need is gone ... how do you make justice happen for 
these individuals?" she said, describing the scenario as "terribly, terribly 
devastating."

The importance of such tests was highlighted last month when Gov. Jerry Brown 
pardoned a prisoner who spent 39 years behind bars for the 1978 killing of a 
young woman and her 4-year-old son in Simi Valley. After the prisoner, Craig 
Coley, exhausted his appeals years ago, a judge authorized the destruction of 
the crime-scene evidence. But a cold-case detective recently found the evidence 
and when tested, it helped clear Coley of the murders.

For Pinholster, prosecutors point to a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision that 
makes it difficult for prisoners to reverse convictions or reduce sentences 
unless they can show that evidence was destroyed in "bad faith." In 
Pinholster's case, prosecutors argue, the destruction was the result of "at 
most negligence, incompetency, recklessness," but not "bad faith."

At his trial, a prosecutor argued that the blood on the boot and towel found in 
the defendant's Van Nuys apartment belonged to at least 1 of the 2 victims - 
Thomas Johnson, 25, and Robert Beckett, 29. The men were stabbed and beaten to 
death at the Tarzana home of a marijuana dealer on Jan. 9, 1982.

The state's key witness, Art Corona, told police that he, Pinholster and a 
third man, Paul Brown, were all armed with buck knives when they barreled into 
the home looking to steal drugs and cash. Minutes later, Corona said, the 2 
victims showed up. Pinholster attacked the men with a knife, his fists and his 
feet, Corona said, adding that Brown also stabbed 1 of the men.

Their loot: $23 and a quarter-ounce of pot.

Pinholster said he had stolen drugs from the home a few hours before the 
killings but never harmed anyone. When he took the stand, he seemed to revel in 
his criminal record. Asked for his occupation, he smirked and responded, "a 
crook," according to court documents. He also boasted to jurors of having 
committed hundreds of robberies, but insisted he'd always carried guns, not 
knives.

He was absolutely guilty. No question. - One of the jurors who decided Scott 
Pinholster should be executed for a double murder

A Sheriff's Department criminalist told jurors that he'd tested the right work 
boot and towel collected from Pinholster's home and found they came back 
positive for human blood, but technology at the time couldn't narrow down whose 
blood it was. The prosecutor suggested that Pinholster had stepped in a pool of 
blood at the Tarzana home and used the towel to wipe off the murder weapon.

Neither Pinholster nor his attorney argued at trial that the blood was from him 
- an omission the district attorney's office said undercuts his current claim. 
His new attorney said Pinholster was never asked during the trial who the blood 
belonged to.

Contacted recently, another juror who asked to be identified only as a 
76-year-old woman said she was confident in the verdict.

"He was absolutely guilty," she said. "No question."

Even after 3 decades, she said, she can conjure a haunting memory of an image 
painted at trial by the prosecutor - Pinholster, wearing boots, kicking in the 
skull of one of the victims.

After his conviction, state courts rejected appeals from Pinholster, but a 
federal judge overturned the death sentence in 2003, ruling that his trial 
counsel had failed to tell jurors about the extent of Pinholster's mental 
health problems. In 2011, however, the U.S. Supreme Court restored Pinholster's 
death sentence.

After 11-year hiatus, could death penalty soon be carried out again in 
California?

"He's been very discouraged," said Sean Kennedy, Pinholster's current lawyer.

But months after having his death penalty restored, the inmate got good news. A 
judge had finally approved his request to have DNA testing done on the towel 
and boot. Pinholster contends that the bloodstains came from his repeated 
intravenous use of heroin.

A Los Angeles police officer was assigned to scour an LAPD storage room for the 
items in case the court had returned them after the trial. The search came up 
empty, so officers checked inside another police storage facility. Still 
nothing. As the hunt stretched into a 4th year, Kennedy grew suspicious. 
Finally, a prosecutor stepped in to help speed up the process.

"And that," Kennedy said, with a shake of his head, "is when they finally 
fessed up."

Court documents from January 1998 show that People vs. Pinholster was 
mistakenly listed among more than a dozen cases deemed eligible for evidence 
destruction. The trial exhibits, records show, were destroyed that summer. 2 
top Los Angeles County Superior Court officials signed the destruction order - 
Judge John Reid and Ty Colgrove, an administrator who helped run the court's 
criminal operations. Both men have since retired.

Reached for comment, Colgrove said he didn't recall the case, as he'd signed 
hundreds of destruction orders over the years, but added that he relied on 
lower-level employees to properly sort through the cases.

It's almost like the judiciary is facilitating wrongful executions. - Attorney 
Sean Kennedy on the L.A. court's destruction of evidence in a death penalty 
case

Hearn, the court spokeswoman, said Reid could not comment, as he still 
sometimes fills in on the bench. In a recently signed declaration, Reid wrote 
that if he'd known the evidence from a capital case was going to be destroyed, 
he "would not have signed the order."

Kennedy, an associate clinical professor at Loyola Law School whose work on 
Pinholster's case carried over from his days as the federal public defender for 
the Central District of California, bristled at the rationale.

"It's almost like the judiciary is facilitating wrongful executions," he said.

Life on death row has worn on Pinholster. Last year, as California voters 
weighed 2 options - speeding up executions or banning the death penalty - 
Pinholster was quoted in a Times article, expressing apathy.

"After 30 years," he said, "you don't care 1 way or the other."

But there's still some hope for his exoneration, Kennedy said, pointing to 
trial exhibit 29 - a pair of bloodstained jeans also recovered from 
Pinholster's home years ago. While court employees have said they presume the 
jeans are lost or destroyed, they haven't found any documents showing they 
were, in fact, discarded.

Kennedy has asked for a special hearing so he can question the court officials 
who approved the destruction. A judge is expected to rule on that request early 
next year.

For Michael Kumar, the former marijuana dealer who lived at the home where the 
killings took place, the mention of Pinholster brings a rush of memories. 
Although he'd been out of town the weekend of the murders, the pain is still 
raw over the loss of Johnson, his best friend - a gentle giant who loved to 
play classical piano. When asked about the possibility of a new trial, Kumar 
sighed.

"It's preposterous to me.... It's completely a joke if this guy says he's 
innocent," said Kumar, 58, who now sells parts for and restores classic cars. 
"I'm not going to say he doesn't have the right, because I'm not sure what the 
technicalities are, but it's just that - a technicality."

(source: Los Angeles Times)

****************

Death penalty trial for Palm Springs double cop killing suspect: Mental stuff 
fails



A 27-year-old ex-con charged with the ambush killings of 2 Palm Springs police 
officers at his home last year was ordered Friday to stand trial on charges 
that could land him on death row.

John Hernandez Felix, 27, is accused of fatally shooting veteran training 
Officer Jose Gilbert Vega, 63, and rookie Officer Lesley Zerebny, 27, on Oct. 
8, 2016, after the officers responded to a family disturbance call. Testimony 
earlier this year indicated the 911 call that preceded the gunfire was sparked 
by a fight between Felix and his sister over a remote control.

The preliminary hearing was originally scheduled 7 months ago but was delayed 
when defense attorney John Dolan declared doubts regarding Felix's competence 
to stand trial.

With criminal proceedings suspended, Felix underwent a 2-day mental competency 
bench trial in September, featuring testimony from 3 psychologists, after Dolan 
alleged that "traumatic amnesia" prevented his client from remembering much of 
the day of the shooting. The defense team said Felix remembered the argument 
with his sister that triggered the 911 call and police response, then has no 
memory of the day until law enforcement launched tear gas into the home and 
shot him with non-lethal beanbag guns about 12 hours later.

Criminal proceedings were reinstated after Riverside County Superior Court 
Judge Anthony R. Villalobos ruled that even if such amnesia was genuine, it 
would not prevent Felix from contributing to an adequate defense.

So Villalobos, following Friday's 2-hour preliminary hearing, ordered Felix to 
proceed to trial on 2 counts of murder, 6 counts of attempted murder - 3 of 
which were newly added and pertain to officers who were fired on in front of 
the defendant's Cypress Avenue home - and special circumstance allegations of 
killing a peace officer and committing multiple murders.

The hearing featured testimony from sheriff's investigators who interviewed 
Palm Springs officers involved in the firefight, as well as a sheriff's SWAT 
member who took Felix into custody following a 12-hour standoff, in which he 
barricaded himself inside the house.

Testimony detailed the shootings of Vega, Zerebny and Officer Jeffrey Burton, 
who was hit in the hip and leg. Sheriff's Investigator Alberto Loureiro 
testified that Burton stated Felix screamed "Don't do it!" several times before 
firing on them through the metal screen door of his home with an AR-15 
semi-automatic rifle.

The investigator testified that Officer Abraham Vargas heard Felix's mother 
pleading with Vega in Spanish not to approach the front door. Following the 
shooting, Vargas took cover near the house, saw Vega bleeding and told him to 
stay put. Instead, Vega moved back into the line of fire to get a rifle from 
his patrol vehicle and was shot again, Loureiro testified.

The court also heard of officers' efforts to remove Vega and Zerebny from the 
scene, which included driving patrol cars into the line of fire while loading 
the officers into vehicles, all while providing cover fire on the home.

Sgt. Shawn Flinn and Officer Mario Serrano, a trainee who graduated from the 
police academy just months prior to the shooting, were credited with helping 
load Vega into a patrol car that was spirited away to nearby paramedics. 
Serrano heard Vega softly saying "I can't breathe" while lying in the backseat 
of the patrol car, and was with Vega at a hospital when he was pronounced dead, 
according to testimony.

Officer David Etchason took charge of driving vehicles into the line of fire to 
retrieve both Vega and Zerebny, as other officers exchanged gunfire with Felix, 
investigators testified.

Zerebny was already dead when officers reached her, though Loureiro testified 
that Serrano and Officer Byron Farley opted not to leave her behind and loaded 
her into the open trunk of a patrol car, manned again by Etchason.

Felix barricaded himself inside the home until past midnight, when he emerged 
from the back of the home in a ballistic vest, T-shirt, shorts, according to 
Deputy Geoffrey Likins of the SWAT unit.

Likins said Felix was initially cooperative, but kept backing up until he 
reached an armored SWAT vehicle parked in the backyard and made a move to enter 
the "Bearcat." He was shot with non-lethal bean bag rounds and taken into 
custody, at which point Likins said he told arresting officers "You're all 
next," several times.

In addition to his vest, he was found in possession of a magazine for an AR-15 
and a glass pipe. Additional magazines totaling about 50 rounds were found in 
the backyard. The rifle used in the killings was found inside a bedroom closet, 
loaded with another 30-round magazine, according to Investigator Steven Paixao. 
The rifle's serial number was "obliterated," Paixao said, indicating it was 
likely stolen.

Felix will return to court Jan. 19 for a post-preliminary hearing arraignment.

Vega and Zerebny were the 1st Palm Springs police officers to be killed in the 
line of duty since Jan. 1, 1962, when Officer Lyle Wayne Larrabee died during a 
vehicle pursuit. The only other death in the department was that of Officer 
Gale Gene Eldridge, fatally shot Jan. 18, 1961, while investigating an armed 
robbery.

Vega had been with the department 35 years - 5 years past his retirement 
eligibility - and had planned to finish his career last December. He had 8 
children, 11 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren. Zerebny had been with the 
department for a year and a half and had just returned to duty from maternity 
leave after the birth of a daughter, Cora, 4 months earlier.

(source: mynewsla.com)

****************

Scott Peterson: 15 years later, a look back at a case that gripped a 
nation----The Laci Peterson case, 15 years later

Laura Ingle takes a look back at the murder case that captivated the country.

15 years ago this Christmas Eve, the nation turned its eyes and attention to 
Modesto, Calif., where 27-year old Laci Peterson, 8 months pregnant and ready 
to welcome her unborn son she had named Conner, had seemingly vanished.

It was 2002, and while many people were going about their plans for the 
holiday, family members and friends of Laci Peterson began a frantic search to 
find her, after her husband, Scott, said she was "missing".

He called Laci's mother Sharon Rocha in the early evening to ask if she was at 
their home, saying when he got home from a day of fishing Laci's car was in the 
driveway and their dog was in the backyard with his leash on, and that Laci 
wasn???t home.

The word "missing" immediately struck a chord with Laci's mom, who said it was 
a strange choice because Laci wasn't the type to go missing.

That call at about 5:15 p.m. would set off a chain of events that would move an 
entire community, which jumped into action to try to find her while the rest of 
the nation watched with anticipation, hoping for an outcome that would bring 
her home safely.

As the days and weeks went on, the search became more desperate, as there were 
no signs of Laci Peterson anywhere.

Her husband claimed she was at home in the morning when he left that Christmas 
Eve to go fishing in the San Francisco Bay and that was the last time he saw 
her. Her family members went on TV to ask for her safe return and for any 
information to help find her.

Rocha asked the public in one news conference: "We've been through so much 
these last days, that I'd like to make a plea to the person or persons who have 
my daughter. Please bring my daughter home."

Attention quickly turned to Scott Peterson, who told family members and 
investigators he had nothing to do with her disappearance, though many started 
to question his alibi that he had left for a fishing trip after 9 a.m. on 
Christmas Eve.

Peterson repeatedly said that it wasn't uncommon for them to do things on their 
own.

In a January 2003 interview, Peterson gave to Gloria Gomez, a reporter at the 
time for KOVR-TV in Sacramento, he said: "You know, being 7 1/2 months pregnant 
she's not going to want to go out in a boat, but it's simply a leisure activity 
to pursue that day, and you know it was what our plans were."

Prosecutors would later contend she did go out on a boat that day after 
Peterson had killed her and took her body out to the San Francisco Bay to 
dispose of her and their unborn child.

1 month after Peterson's disappearance, police revealed her husband was living 
a double life, having an affair with a massage therapist who was living in 
Fresno by the name of Amber Frey.

The single mother went to police once she became aware that the man she thought 
was her boyfriend was quickly becoming a prime suspect in a nationally 
televised case.

Frey went on to wear a wire and helped police record her conversations with 
Peterson, which would play a key role in the trial.

Suspicion continued to mount against the man some once stood behind, but on 
April 13 2003, the body of a baby boy in south Richmond was discovered along 
the shore of San Francisco Bay.

The next day, the body of an adult female wearing maternity clothes was found 
nearby.

Months of searching and hoping came to a crashing end when the bodies were 
positively identified as those of Laci Peterson and her unborn son Conner, 
confirming her family's worst fears.

Her mother spoke out in a tearful news conference soon after, promising justice 
for her daughter and unborn grandchild.

"Laci and Conner left us on Christmas Eve, I know that God has been watching 
over them, he sent them back to us on Good Friday. Now we can bring them home 
where they belong," she said. "Laci and her unborn child did not deserve to die 
this way, and they certainly didn't deserve to die and dumped in the bay and 
sent to a watery grave as though their lives were meaningless. We will seek 
justice for her and Conner and make sure that that person responsible for their 
deaths will be punished."

Scott Peterson was arrested in San Diego just days after the bodies were 
discovered.

He had dyed his hair blonde, grown a goatee, and had many items in his car 
which led investigators to believe he may have been ready to run.

A partial list of items includes camping gear,12 tablets of Viagra, 4 cell 
phones, double-edged dagger with a T-handle, a backpack, water purifier, 
climbing rope, filet knife, duct tape and over $10,000 in cash.

The double murder trial would take over a year to begin, but at the end of 2004 
Scott Peterson was found guilty of 1st-degree murder for killing his wife, and 
2nd-degree murder for killing their unborn son. In 2005, he received the death 
penalty.

He is challenging his death sentence and requesting a new trial. There are 
currently over 700 inmates on death row at California's San Quentin State 
Prison. No prisoner has been executed in California since January 2006.

This Sunday, Fox News looks back at the murder case that gripped the nation.

Tune in to "Interview With a Monster: The Scott Peterson Case" at 8 and 11 p.m. 
ET as our panel of experts reflects on the case and analyzes his 2003 interview 
with Gloria Gomez.

(source: Fox News)