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Judge Grants Tentative Change of Venue in Scott Peterson Trial

Aired January 08, 2004 - 15:21   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.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Reports out of Modesto, California, today that a judge there has made a tentative ruling to change the venue, move the trial of Scott Peterson, who's accused of killing his wife and unborn child. But there's more to this than that.
And CNN's Rusty Dornin is here to give us some more details.

Hello, Dornin.

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, we still don't know the final decision. They're actually in a lunch break right now.

But the judge wasted no time in announcing his tentative ruling. And then he allowed prosecutors to try to convince him otherwise. And they cross-examined a witness who wrote a study, a jury study, for the defense, and he was -- the prosecutors were trying to blow holes in that and trying to convince the judge that it should stay here.

But it's unlikely enough to sway this judge's mind, if that's all they're going to do, because he claimed the most outstanding reason for his decision was the massive news coverage, some 8,000 articles worldwide, 150 articles in "The Modesto Bee" alone. He also talked about the nature and gravity of the crime, the fact that it was a double homicide and the death penalty case. He said those are also issues in influencing his decision to want to move it outside of Stanislaus County.

The size of the county, there's 450,000 people here. It's the 16th largest county in California. But he said, there's 15 other places that are bigger, that have more people. Of course, Mark Geragos wants to have it moved to Los Angeles. With a population of nine million in the county of Los Angeles, he claims that you're bound to find potential jurors that have no intimate knowledge of this case.

After lunch, they're going to be arguments and then the judge is going to issue his final decision. Following that, the judicial council will be notified and they will start polling places, or polling courthouses, really, throughout the state, to find out, what are your facilities? What is your court staff? What are your witnesses -- excuse me -- what are your accommodations for the media, what kind of demographics?

Because they want something that's similar here to this Stanislaus County. It will take about two or three weeks, and then that will mean that they will make a decision then, this judge will make his final decision. One last thing that was interesting in the court that didn't have anything to do with this, really, was, the prosecution did subpoena from all of the journalists who personally interviewed Scott Peterson. They've subpoenaed all those tapes for the trial. Now, the defense wants what we call the raw tapes, the entire interview. And the broadcasters are fighting to have only the edited portions of those tapes to be used, so yet to see what's going to happen with that -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Rusty Dornin, watching all the aspects of that case in Modesto, thank you very much.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com




Trial>


Aired January 8, 2004 - 15:21   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Reports out of Modesto, California, today that a judge there has made a tentative ruling to change the venue, move the trial of Scott Peterson, who's accused of killing his wife and unborn child. But there's more to this than that.
And CNN's Rusty Dornin is here to give us some more details.

Hello, Dornin.

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, we still don't know the final decision. They're actually in a lunch break right now.

But the judge wasted no time in announcing his tentative ruling. And then he allowed prosecutors to try to convince him otherwise. And they cross-examined a witness who wrote a study, a jury study, for the defense, and he was -- the prosecutors were trying to blow holes in that and trying to convince the judge that it should stay here.

But it's unlikely enough to sway this judge's mind, if that's all they're going to do, because he claimed the most outstanding reason for his decision was the massive news coverage, some 8,000 articles worldwide, 150 articles in "The Modesto Bee" alone. He also talked about the nature and gravity of the crime, the fact that it was a double homicide and the death penalty case. He said those are also issues in influencing his decision to want to move it outside of Stanislaus County.

The size of the county, there's 450,000 people here. It's the 16th largest county in California. But he said, there's 15 other places that are bigger, that have more people. Of course, Mark Geragos wants to have it moved to Los Angeles. With a population of nine million in the county of Los Angeles, he claims that you're bound to find potential jurors that have no intimate knowledge of this case.

After lunch, they're going to be arguments and then the judge is going to issue his final decision. Following that, the judicial council will be notified and they will start polling places, or polling courthouses, really, throughout the state, to find out, what are your facilities? What is your court staff? What are your witnesses -- excuse me -- what are your accommodations for the media, what kind of demographics?

Because they want something that's similar here to this Stanislaus County. It will take about two or three weeks, and then that will mean that they will make a decision then, this judge will make his final decision. One last thing that was interesting in the court that didn't have anything to do with this, really, was, the prosecution did subpoena from all of the journalists who personally interviewed Scott Peterson. They've subpoenaed all those tapes for the trial. Now, the defense wants what we call the raw tapes, the entire interview. And the broadcasters are fighting to have only the edited portions of those tapes to be used, so yet to see what's going to happen with that -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Rusty Dornin, watching all the aspects of that case in Modesto, thank you very much.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com




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