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Technology on Trial in Scott Peterson Case

Aired February 17, 2004 - 15:06   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: Let's talk about another legal case that we've been spending a lot of time on, Scott Peterson, specifically. Authorities tracked him by satellite. We know that now. Can that information be used in his murder trial? That's an important point right now in the courtroom there, more testimony. And then there's a possible decision forthcoming by the judge on all that.
Now, just to give you a little backstory here, in case you missed it, tracking devices were placed on three vehicles owned by Peterson after his wife, Laci, disappeared Christmas a year ago. At tissue is the reliability of the global positioning system, GPS, technology.

Let's talk about this with CNN's Mike Brooks, law enforcement expert and correspondent for us.

Mike, good to have you with us.

(CROSSTALK)

MIKE BROOKS, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Good to be with you, Miles, again.

O'BRIEN: GPS, we know it's incredibly accurate. It's used to fight wars and guide weapons very precisely. I use it on my airport to land safely in bad weather. How could it be possibly called into question as far as its accuracy?

BROOKS: Well, GPS is just another investigative tool, if you will, Miles.

It is good, but it's only good if you have an eyeball on the person you're tracking. Now, someone can say, well, yes, I went from point A to point B, but if there's no investigator there to see you go from point A to point B, they really can't say for sure that you were behind the wheel. You could say, well, my car was in the garage at that particular time. I stopped to get gas. Now, I know, in the Peterson case, when I was in Modesto covering the case that there was testimony by detectives that they did follow him to the Berkeley marina and back again.

But along the way, they did lose him. They said that he pulled over. He stopped for certain times to let them go past, just to see if someone was following him. Law enforcement calls it dry-cleaned themselves. But, again, it's good technology, but it's only good if you can keep an eyeball on the subject.

O'BRIEN: All right, so supporting evidence. Let's bring in one more player into all this.

Chris Darden, our legal analyst, joining us now.

Chris, tell us a little bit about the legal precedent involving GPS in criminal cases. GPS is relatively new technology, so it's obviously relatively new in the courtroom.

CHRISTOPHER DARDEN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It is relatively new technology and extremely new in California courtrooms and in courtrooms across the country.

A number of courts have struggled with certain issues involving GPS. However, for the most part, in just about every state where the issue arose, GPS has essentially been admitted as evidence in criminal cases.

O'BRIEN: And, in those cases, Chris, were you able to determine if attorneys questioned the validity of the technology or whether it was just inadmissible for perhaps some other reasons?

DARDEN: Well, Mark Geragos is questioning the legitimacy of the technology. He's questioning the ability of the police and their experts to download the technology and interpret it. And he's challenging their qualifications to interpret this data. There were occasion where the GPS system failed.

O'BRIEN: All right.

DARDEN: And so, you know, he wants it thrown out altogether because of those failures.

O'BRIEN: And Mike is reminding us -- let's bring this point in. We didn't talk about this, that, you know, when you look at these things, we tend to focus on them in isolation. It's the whole body of things that are -- whether somebody has a eyewitness to GPS, but also, in this case, they have cell phone records which would link the cell phone to a tower nearby. And, thus, you once again have another piece of evidence potentially.

BROOKS: Right.

What you do is, they're trying to see if they can triangulate the location of where he was when he was using the cell phone at a certain time. And while he was using his cell phone, at certain times, he was in the car, also. Again, it's great technology. And there's ways you can also, while you are triangulating these cell phones, you can also listen to them live.

Whether they did this or not, to listen to them live, it has not come out in court as of yet.

O'BRIEN: Chris Darden, what you have found in a somewhat painful way is that sometimes juries, presented with tremendous amount of technological and scientific evidence to the contrary, say, I don't believe this, in the case of -- it was the case of DNA in the O.J. case; 99.99 something percent accuracy, and they said, we don't believe it.

So what happens to juries? Do they forget that we live in an age of miracles and wonders here?

DARDEN: Assuming that this evidence is allowed in, in the prosecution's case, they have to be very careful in terms of how they present this evidence.

If jurors find it too complicated, the technology not on a level where they can understand it, they could very easily dismiss it. And I've got to tell you, lost in all of this discussion is, what does this really mean? That is, the fact that Scott Peterson returned to the Berkeley marina.

O'BRIEN: Well, that is a good point. I mean, and that is something that is -- could be spun in any number of ways, right?

BROOKS: That's exactly right, Miles, because, in this particular case, there was allegedly an article that was in the local Modesto newspaper that morning, the first day he went to the marina, that says that the divers were there looking for the body of Laci and Conner.

Now, you know, he said that he -- the reason he went there was because he wanted to see what was going on in that. So, again, all this -- they're going to try to put all this together to try to put a little bit of reasonable doubt into the jury's mind.

O'BRIEN: Chris Darden, you get the sense that Geragos is going to throw the kitchen sink in this one, and I guess that's safe to say, huh?

DARDEN: Oh, absolutely. He's filing every piece of paper possible in a criminal case in California. He's really going to put the prosecution to the test.

O'BRIEN: All right, all the technology we have and you still got to file a lot of pieces of paper in these case.

All right, Chris Darden, Mike Brooks, thanks very much. Appreciate both of you joining us and shedding some light on all of that.

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 February 17, 2004 - 15:06   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's talk about another legal case that we've been spending a lot of time on, Scott Peterson, specifically. Authorities tracked him by satellite. We know that now. Can that information be used in his murder trial? That's an important point right now in the courtroom there, more testimony. And then there's a possible decision forthcoming by the judge on all that.
Now, just to give you a little backstory here, in case you missed it, tracking devices were placed on three vehicles owned by Peterson after his wife, Laci, disappeared Christmas a year ago. At tissue is the reliability of the global positioning system, GPS, technology.

Let's talk about this with CNN's Mike Brooks, law enforcement expert and correspondent for us.

Mike, good to have you with us.

(CROSSTALK)

MIKE BROOKS, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Good to be with you, Miles, again.

O'BRIEN: GPS, we know it's incredibly accurate. It's used to fight wars and guide weapons very precisely. I use it on my airport to land safely in bad weather. How could it be possibly called into question as far as its accuracy?

BROOKS: Well, GPS is just another investigative tool, if you will, Miles.

It is good, but it's only good if you have an eyeball on the person you're tracking. Now, someone can say, well, yes, I went from point A to point B, but if there's no investigator there to see you go from point A to point B, they really can't say for sure that you were behind the wheel. You could say, well, my car was in the garage at that particular time. I stopped to get gas. Now, I know, in the Peterson case, when I was in Modesto covering the case that there was testimony by detectives that they did follow him to the Berkeley marina and back again.

But along the way, they did lose him. They said that he pulled over. He stopped for certain times to let them go past, just to see if someone was following him. Law enforcement calls it dry-cleaned themselves. But, again, it's good technology, but it's only good if you can keep an eyeball on the subject.

O'BRIEN: All right, so supporting evidence. Let's bring in one more player into all this.

Chris Darden, our legal analyst, joining us now.

Chris, tell us a little bit about the legal precedent involving GPS in criminal cases. GPS is relatively new technology, so it's obviously relatively new in the courtroom.

CHRISTOPHER DARDEN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It is relatively new technology and extremely new in California courtrooms and in courtrooms across the country.

A number of courts have struggled with certain issues involving GPS. However, for the most part, in just about every state where the issue arose, GPS has essentially been admitted as evidence in criminal cases.

O'BRIEN: And, in those cases, Chris, were you able to determine if attorneys questioned the validity of the technology or whether it was just inadmissible for perhaps some other reasons?

DARDEN: Well, Mark Geragos is questioning the legitimacy of the technology. He's questioning the ability of the police and their experts to download the technology and interpret it. And he's challenging their qualifications to interpret this data. There were occasion where the GPS system failed.

O'BRIEN: All right.

DARDEN: And so, you know, he wants it thrown out altogether because of those failures.

O'BRIEN: And Mike is reminding us -- let's bring this point in. We didn't talk about this, that, you know, when you look at these things, we tend to focus on them in isolation. It's the whole body of things that are -- whether somebody has a eyewitness to GPS, but also, in this case, they have cell phone records which would link the cell phone to a tower nearby. And, thus, you once again have another piece of evidence potentially.

BROOKS: Right.

What you do is, they're trying to see if they can triangulate the location of where he was when he was using the cell phone at a certain time. And while he was using his cell phone, at certain times, he was in the car, also. Again, it's great technology. And there's ways you can also, while you are triangulating these cell phones, you can also listen to them live.

Whether they did this or not, to listen to them live, it has not come out in court as of yet.

O'BRIEN: Chris Darden, what you have found in a somewhat painful way is that sometimes juries, presented with tremendous amount of technological and scientific evidence to the contrary, say, I don't believe this, in the case of -- it was the case of DNA in the O.J. case; 99.99 something percent accuracy, and they said, we don't believe it.

So what happens to juries? Do they forget that we live in an age of miracles and wonders here?

DARDEN: Assuming that this evidence is allowed in, in the prosecution's case, they have to be very careful in terms of how they present this evidence.

If jurors find it too complicated, the technology not on a level where they can understand it, they could very easily dismiss it. And I've got to tell you, lost in all of this discussion is, what does this really mean? That is, the fact that Scott Peterson returned to the Berkeley marina.

O'BRIEN: Well, that is a good point. I mean, and that is something that is -- could be spun in any number of ways, right?

BROOKS: That's exactly right, Miles, because, in this particular case, there was allegedly an article that was in the local Modesto newspaper that morning, the first day he went to the marina, that says that the divers were there looking for the body of Laci and Conner.

Now, you know, he said that he -- the reason he went there was because he wanted to see what was going on in that. So, again, all this -- they're going to try to put all this together to try to put a little bit of reasonable doubt into the jury's mind.

O'BRIEN: Chris Darden, you get the sense that Geragos is going to throw the kitchen sink in this one, and I guess that's safe to say, huh?

DARDEN: Oh, absolutely. He's filing every piece of paper possible in a criminal case in California. He's really going to put the prosecution to the test.

O'BRIEN: All right, all the technology we have and you still got to file a lot of pieces of paper in these case.

All right, Chris Darden, Mike Brooks, thanks very much. Appreciate both of you joining us and shedding some light on all of that.

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