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American Morning
Peterson Murder Case
Aired May 28, 2003 - 07:08 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: To California now, Leon, for the latest in the Scott Peterson murder case. Defense attorney Mark Geragos will be getting records from dozens of phone calls made by his client. The calls were monitored and in some cases recorded by investigators.
David Mattingly has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Five months and two days since the murder of Laci Peterson, defense attorneys for Scott Peterson are focused on 69 calls, phone calls between Scott and his attorney and investigator that were intercepted in police wiretaps.
JOHN GOOLD PROSECUTOR: Sixty-nine calls were intercepted. I don't believe 69 calls were monitored. So there's a difference in wiretap when all of the calls are being intercepted versus what's actually monitored.
MATTINGLY: A California judge ruled that prosecutors have to turn over all information from those calls, so the defense can decide for themselves if Peterson's rights have been violated.
MARK GERAGOS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Once we've seen exactly what was taped, then we'll file whatever appropriate motions. Until we see what's there, we really don't know what we're going to do.
MATTINGLY: Scott Peterson appeared in court in a coat and tie, not the bright red jumpsuit he wears in jail. The blond highlights he had at the time of his arrest now gone, thanks to a fresh hair cut.
Outside, there were dozens of cameras and reporters from across the country, and the abundance of national pre-trial publicity is clearly a concern, with both sides arguing against making public arrest warrants and autopsy results.
GERAGOS: We're pleased. We think that the judge protected the integrity of the investigation, and that's what we were looking to do.
MATTINGLY: The judge in the case raised the possibility of a gag order on all participants. Also an issue: the courtroom camera. Will it be allowed to stay for Peterson's preliminary hearing?
(END VIDEOTAPE) That hearing scheduled for mid-July could be the public's first chance to hear what kind of evidence police have gathered against Scott Peterson. In the meantime, the defense team will continue to pursue its own leads with the idea that the killer of Laci Peterson is still at-large -- Heidi.
COLLINS: David Mattingly live this morning for the very latest on the Scott Peterson case. Thanks so much, David.
We want to go ahead and turn now to our legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, for his take on the Peterson proceedings.
Thanks for being here once again, Jeffrey.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Good morning.
COLLINS: Now, we know that the judge ordered that prosecutors give Scott's attorney, Mark Geragos, as we've been saying, these wiretap records of the phone calls that Scott made with his former attorney, and that would be Kirk McAllister. What will Geragos be looking for when he actually reviews those records?
TOOBIN: Well, a couple of things. First of all, this is not any sort of surprise. In any criminal prosecution, the defendant has a right to his own statements. These wiretaps are his own statements; he gets them.
What he will be looking for is whether the prosecution recorded any attorney-client conversations, privileged material that the prosecution should not have done. The way these things work is the police are instructed to listen to the phone calls, and then decide based on the content whether to record them or not. That's a process called "minimization." If they improperly recorded a phone call, those tapes could be suppressed and potentially other evidence could be kept out of the trial as well.
But it seems like the cops and the prosecutors were aware of this problem and avoided it before anything bad happened.
COLLINS: And this isn't even uncommon to be doing this wiretapping, right?
TOOBIN: Well, not at all. They got a warrant, which is the appropriate way to proceed. And now, it's just a question of whether attorney-client phone calls were recorded, and they seemed to have been aware of that problem in advance.
COLLINS: Let's talk for a minute, if we could. We're looking at some video right now, of course, of the proceeding, and we see Scott Peterson there on the right.
TOOBIN: With yet another hairdo.
COLLINS: Well, this is what I want to ask you about.
TOOBIN: That's right. COLLINS: I mean, the appearance has yet again changed. He lost the facial hair and what we were calling kind of orange hair there for a while. What do you make of that?
TOOBIN: Well, I think he's trying to look sort of like a fine, upstanding citizen. I think also when you're in custody it's hard to get highlights. They don't offer that kind of service in prison. So, he's -- I think we're at the final hairdo that he will be at for the rest of his period in custody, because it's short, easy to maintain, and I think that's about all they offer in stir.
COLLINS: All right, let's get back to some of the other rulings now -- or actually ones that the judge didn't make which include two, the search warrants and the autopsy results still being held. But there was a lawyer there representing the media saying that these are presumptively already open to the public. Is she right about that?
TOOBIN: Well, yes. See, California law says these decisions about whether to open documents to the public, it's not simply up to the prosecution and the defense, the parties in the case, who, in this case, both of them want these things to remain secret. The lawyer for the newspapers made a very good argument saying, look, the public has a right to this, the public is a player in this proceeding, and we collectively have a right to those documents.
And California law says moreover that you have to have an awfully good reason not to release things. And the judge, in the best California tradition, said I'm going to think about it for a while.
COLLINS: All right.
TOOBIN: No decision yet.
COLLINS: Then he will be doing just that. Jeffrey Toobin, CNN analyst, thanks so much for your insights on that this morning. We appreciate it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Aired May 28, 2003 - 07:08 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: To California now, Leon, for the latest in the Scott Peterson murder case. Defense attorney Mark Geragos will be getting records from dozens of phone calls made by his client. The calls were monitored and in some cases recorded by investigators.
David Mattingly has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Five months and two days since the murder of Laci Peterson, defense attorneys for Scott Peterson are focused on 69 calls, phone calls between Scott and his attorney and investigator that were intercepted in police wiretaps.
JOHN GOOLD PROSECUTOR: Sixty-nine calls were intercepted. I don't believe 69 calls were monitored. So there's a difference in wiretap when all of the calls are being intercepted versus what's actually monitored.
MATTINGLY: A California judge ruled that prosecutors have to turn over all information from those calls, so the defense can decide for themselves if Peterson's rights have been violated.
MARK GERAGOS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Once we've seen exactly what was taped, then we'll file whatever appropriate motions. Until we see what's there, we really don't know what we're going to do.
MATTINGLY: Scott Peterson appeared in court in a coat and tie, not the bright red jumpsuit he wears in jail. The blond highlights he had at the time of his arrest now gone, thanks to a fresh hair cut.
Outside, there were dozens of cameras and reporters from across the country, and the abundance of national pre-trial publicity is clearly a concern, with both sides arguing against making public arrest warrants and autopsy results.
GERAGOS: We're pleased. We think that the judge protected the integrity of the investigation, and that's what we were looking to do.
MATTINGLY: The judge in the case raised the possibility of a gag order on all participants. Also an issue: the courtroom camera. Will it be allowed to stay for Peterson's preliminary hearing?
(END VIDEOTAPE) That hearing scheduled for mid-July could be the public's first chance to hear what kind of evidence police have gathered against Scott Peterson. In the meantime, the defense team will continue to pursue its own leads with the idea that the killer of Laci Peterson is still at-large -- Heidi.
COLLINS: David Mattingly live this morning for the very latest on the Scott Peterson case. Thanks so much, David.
We want to go ahead and turn now to our legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, for his take on the Peterson proceedings.
Thanks for being here once again, Jeffrey.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Good morning.
COLLINS: Now, we know that the judge ordered that prosecutors give Scott's attorney, Mark Geragos, as we've been saying, these wiretap records of the phone calls that Scott made with his former attorney, and that would be Kirk McAllister. What will Geragos be looking for when he actually reviews those records?
TOOBIN: Well, a couple of things. First of all, this is not any sort of surprise. In any criminal prosecution, the defendant has a right to his own statements. These wiretaps are his own statements; he gets them.
What he will be looking for is whether the prosecution recorded any attorney-client conversations, privileged material that the prosecution should not have done. The way these things work is the police are instructed to listen to the phone calls, and then decide based on the content whether to record them or not. That's a process called "minimization." If they improperly recorded a phone call, those tapes could be suppressed and potentially other evidence could be kept out of the trial as well.
But it seems like the cops and the prosecutors were aware of this problem and avoided it before anything bad happened.
COLLINS: And this isn't even uncommon to be doing this wiretapping, right?
TOOBIN: Well, not at all. They got a warrant, which is the appropriate way to proceed. And now, it's just a question of whether attorney-client phone calls were recorded, and they seemed to have been aware of that problem in advance.
COLLINS: Let's talk for a minute, if we could. We're looking at some video right now, of course, of the proceeding, and we see Scott Peterson there on the right.
TOOBIN: With yet another hairdo.
COLLINS: Well, this is what I want to ask you about.
TOOBIN: That's right. COLLINS: I mean, the appearance has yet again changed. He lost the facial hair and what we were calling kind of orange hair there for a while. What do you make of that?
TOOBIN: Well, I think he's trying to look sort of like a fine, upstanding citizen. I think also when you're in custody it's hard to get highlights. They don't offer that kind of service in prison. So, he's -- I think we're at the final hairdo that he will be at for the rest of his period in custody, because it's short, easy to maintain, and I think that's about all they offer in stir.
COLLINS: All right, let's get back to some of the other rulings now -- or actually ones that the judge didn't make which include two, the search warrants and the autopsy results still being held. But there was a lawyer there representing the media saying that these are presumptively already open to the public. Is she right about that?
TOOBIN: Well, yes. See, California law says these decisions about whether to open documents to the public, it's not simply up to the prosecution and the defense, the parties in the case, who, in this case, both of them want these things to remain secret. The lawyer for the newspapers made a very good argument saying, look, the public has a right to this, the public is a player in this proceeding, and we collectively have a right to those documents.
And California law says moreover that you have to have an awfully good reason not to release things. And the judge, in the best California tradition, said I'm going to think about it for a while.
COLLINS: All right.
TOOBIN: No decision yet.
COLLINS: Then he will be doing just that. Jeffrey Toobin, CNN analyst, thanks so much for your insights on that this morning. We appreciate it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
