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CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports

Scott Peterson Found Guilty

Aired November 12, 2004 - 17:00   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.


WOLF BLITZER, HOST: Happening now. As we've just been watching over the past hour, Scott Peterson is guilty of murder, first-degree murder for killing his wife Laci. And he's guilty of second-degree murder for killing their unborn son Conner. We're standing by this hour for reaction from the prosecution, the defense, the families and the community.
ANNOUNCER: This is WOLF BLITZER REPORTS for Friday, November 12, 2004.

Thanks very much for joining us. After more than the five months of testimony and troubled, twice halted jury deliberations, the verdict in the Scott Peterson murder trial is finally in.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: State of California versus Scott Peterson. We, the jury, in the above entitled cause find the defendant, Scott Lee Peterson, guilty of the crime of murder of Laci Peterson. We, the jury, in the above entitled cause find the defendant Scott Lee Peterson guilty of the crime of murder of baby Conner Peterson.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BLITZER: It was a Christmas time crime that shocked America. Now, Peterson could face the death penalty. The 32-year-old former fertilizer salesman was found guilty of the first degree murder of his pregnant wife, Laci, with special circumstances. He was also found guilty of the second degree murder of their unborn son. CNN's Rusty Dornin standing by in Redwood City. She has been covering this trial for us in California from the start. Set the scene, Rusty. You were inside. How did it go down?

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the courtroom was packed, of course, with family members, press, even some of the public that you see behind me were allowed in the courtroom. Sort of an electric current in the atmosphere before that verdict was read. The family and friends of Laci Peterson in there. Some of her friends even crying before the jury came in, just in anticipation.

Many of the reporters in the room very nervous about how this was all going to come down and wondering, really, what was going to happen. To the end, this was really a cliffhanger for everyone. No one knew which way this was going to go. The jury came filing in very somberfaced. They sat down. The clerk read those verdicts. Immediately, there was not a gasp from the courtroom, but the members from the Rocha family and Laci's family, you could hear them begin to sob in the courtroom. Scott Peterson was smiling, talking with his attorneys, appeared very confident when he came into the courtroom today. Upon reading of that verdict he was stonefaced, looking ahead, didn't look to side to side, didn't talk to his attorneys until after the jury had left.

The Peterson family, his father, was not in the courtroom, Lee Peterson. We do not know where he was. His mother, Jackie Peterson, his brother, his sister-in-law all in the front row. They did not move. Quickly, there were six or seven bailiffs standing by the Peterson family, just standing there and they just did not express any emotion throughout that trial, even through the polling of the jurors and that sort of thing. By the time we had left, still nothing from Scott Peterson or his family -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Rusty, it was pretty quick, considering that two jurors had been dismissed, the judge had instructed all the jurors, all 12 of them, six men and six women, they had to start from scratch, in effect, yesterday and today, only a few hours of actual deliberations. Was this much of a surprise that it came down this quickly?

DORNIN: We were very surprised. On one hand, of course, there was the idea that they had been sequestered in the hotel yesterday, were facing sequestration this weekend. They had been through five months of testimony. On the other hand, they just -- we understand there had been a battle in the jury room early on, a lot of contention that was allegedly with juror number 5, the doctor, the lawyer, the foreman that was kicked off the jury. Apparently when he was removed, it removed a lot of that contention and they were able to take a vote and perhaps this is the way most of these people in the room felt from the very beginning, but were not allowed to express their vote because of this foreman. We just don't know.

BLITZER: Rusty, stand by for a second. Ted Rowlands has been covering this story for us also from the very beginning. He is at the courthouse in Redwood City with you. Ted, explain to our viewers this juror number 5, a medical doctor, an attorney. He was the foreman. He was removed. Is there any reason to believe, do we know that he was inclined to vote not guilty against Scott Peterson?

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No, we don't know that at all. Of course, that will be the subject of a possible appeal, if there's any evidence that he was indeed, leaning that way and he was removed from the panel. What we do know is that after his removal, this jury seemed to change dramatically. People that saw the jury actually leave the courthouse following deliberations on Wednesday say that they were upbeat, different from the days before, where they were sort of down and, clearly, they only needed six hours, this new panel to come to a verdict. So, the foreman that was in place before, the doctor/lawyer was, at best, stalling the process. That is what we have heard, unconfirmed, and from sources that the thought was that this foreman, because of his background, was going through methodically the evidence that has trickled out over the five months and the jury was not able to take a vote, see where everybody was. It wasn't true deliberations. With him out of the equation, it is believed and obviously it's true, this jury came together very quickly, surprisingly quickly and came back with a verdict of guilty, sending Scott Peterson to jail for the rest of his life.

BLITZER: Ted, walk us through what happens now. The immediate days and weeks ahead as far as Scott Peterson and the sentencing is concerned.

ROWLANDS: Well, Peterson stays here in San Mateo County. He is back in his cell, presumably, at this hour. And he will remain here until the penalty phase is over. The judge told the jury that they are going to take next week off so that the lawyers can assemble their witnesses for the penalty phase. Then this same jury will deliberate Peterson's fate in terms of life and death.

There's only one question to answer. Will he face the death penalty or will he spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole? If they choose death, he will be taken to San Quentin and be put on to death row. Of course that will trigger an automatic appeal here in California. If they vote against the death penalty, he will then be taken back to Stanislaus County for a finite amount of time and then put in to the California prison system. Because of the nature of the crime, he will be put into a level three or level four maximum security system and remain there for the rest of his days, if this jury spares his life after they deliberate the penalty phase.

BLITZER: Ted, one quick question. The other juror who was dismissed in recent days, do we have any indication whatsoever which way she was leaning? She was the one who was supposedly going to the Internet to do her own independent research on the case.

ROWLANDS: Yes. Juror number 7, Fran Gorman, who was removed from the panel earlier last week is still under the gag order. She is prohibited to talk about the case and she has done a good job of staying silent. She has not talked to the media, none of her family or friends that I have heard has surfaced as to which way she was leaning. This will be very important for a possible appeal. If she was leaning towards not guilty and the juror number 5, the doctor/lawyer was leaning towards not guilty, you can bet that that will be the basis for an appeal from the defense. But we'll have to wait and see. You can bet, actually, the state of California, that there will be an appeal of some sort coming after the penalty phase.

BLITZER: All right. Ted Rowlands, stand by. Our senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin is joining us now with a little bit of perspective. That sounds -- and I want to be very careful here, Jeff. If these two jurors, and we do know that the judge knew in which direction they seemed to be moving, because he questioned them in recent days. If, in fact, they were moving towards not guilty, it sort of sounds a little suspicious, wouldn't you think?

JEFF TOOBIN, CNN SR. LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Wolf, you're absolutely right, particularly the issue of removing jurors during deliberations is something that appeals courts take very seriously and worry a lot about. That will be a focus of a great deal of attention. However, you know, the judge and the prosecutors are no dummies here. They knew that they had to make a record as to why these two people had to be thrown off the jury. They knew that they were going to be scrutinized very carefully about that. So, presumably, they did their best to show on the record that the reason for this removal was something legitimate, not simply that they were holdouts for the defense. That issue, undoubtedly, was right at the center of the issue -- of the controversy regarding these people being thrown out. Whether the judge resolved it satisfactorily, I have no idea. That is something an appeals court will look very closely at.

BLITZER: Explain to our viewers why he is convicted of first degree murder for killing Laci, second degree murder for killing their unborn child, Conner.

TOOBIN: That is something I've been wondering about as I've been sitting here thinking about the jury. The jury verdict. It's going to have to be the jurors who really answer that question as to why they did one, not the other. My thought is that the jurors thought Scott went out intentionally to kill Laci. He wanted to kill her. He wanted her out of his life. He wanted to continue carrying on with Amber Frey or whatever extramarital life he wanted. He wanted Laci dead and he killed her. That is intentional, first degree murder. The jury may have thought that the -- he intended to kill Conner only in the sense of as a byproduct. He didn't really set out to kill Conner. He set out to kill Laci and his death was a natural occurrence that flowed inevitably from that but that was not his intention. My guess is that was the thought process of the jury, but we'll only know when they talk about their verdict after it's all over.

BLITZER: All right. Jeffrey, stand by. Rusty Dornin has some additional information. Rusty, tell our viewers what you know.

DORNIN: We were just talking about which way these jurors were going to go. I think in some ways it was telling that juror number 7, Fran Gorman, her removal was not objected to by defense attorney Mark Geragos. However, the removal of the foreman juror number 5, Mark Geragos did lodge an objection to him being dismissed from that jury. So, whether he had a sense, that perhaps, he was that one roadblock that could have -- if he kept going, maybe he could have convinced more people that Scott Peterson was not guilty or at least lodge some reasonable doubt in their minds. But I think he felt he had a much better chance with juror number six. I do want to ask Jeffrey about the fact that we're hearing this anonymous tip about the new foreman, juror number 6, the firefighter. Is there a possibility that Geragos could come back and also lodge an appeal based on the fact that someone was claiming that he had talked to people beforehand?

TOOBIN: Absolutely. Any issue relating to the conduct of the jury, bias in the jury is something an appeals court will look at carefully. However, it does seem, based on what we know about this incident that the judge proceeded very cautiously and very appropriately.

BLITZER: Jeffrey, hold on.

TOOBIN: Sure.

BLITZER: Because Gloria Allred, the attorney for Amber Frey, the mistress, the girlfriend of Scott Peterson is speaking now. Let's listen in.

GLORIA ALLRED, AMBER FREY'S ATTORNEY: For so long, there have been defense critics. For so long, there actually have been defense supporters standing outside this courthouse criticizing this prosecution and I want to give credit to this prosecution, to the district attorney of Jim Brazelton, the district attorney of Stanislaus County, to Rick Distaso, who did an outstanding final argument, to Dave Harris, who did one of the best cross examinations I have ever seen of an expert witness in the defense case and totally destroyed him on the witness stand, and also to the Brigitte Flattiger (ph) the supervising deputy district attorney who did an outstanding job with Detective Grogan, 41 reasons why they decided to search in the bay, showing there was no rush to judgment for Scott Peterson.

Before I went in to hear the verdict, I said I was praying for justice. I know that millions of people in this country were praying for justice. My guess is that the family of Laci Peterson, most of all, was praying for justice. I think there was justice today with the jury's verdict. First degree murder for the murder of Laci Peterson, second degree murder for the murder of Conner Peterson, because as a first and a second, there are special circumstances. It's multiple killings and that means he qualifies for the death penalty. That's why we'll go into the death penalty phase.

I want to give enormous credit to my client, Amber Frey, who is a true woman of courage, a hero in this case. She voluntarily called the police and offered information when she found out that Scott Peterson was not only married, but that his wife was missing, and then they asked her to assist by taping all those telephone calls between Scott and herself after Laci went missing, which she did. I think that was an enormous help in this case.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What was her reaction? Does she know about the verdict? What was her reaction?

ALLRED: I did notify Amber about the verdict. I mean, it's an emotional time for her. Her feelings are very complicated. She has always said that this is a matter for the jury to decide and that God would be the ultimate judge.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did she cry?

ALLRED: I'm going to let her have her privacy about how she feels today. I think it all has to settle in. But I know she has had confidence that the jury would do whatever they thought was the right thing based on the evidence. And I think that they have.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gloria, is there a possibility she will be called back to the stand during the penalty phase?

ALLRED: I don't know whether she will be called. For that reason, I'm going to have her assume that she is still under the gag order until I can check that out, but she has conducted herself with such dignity throughout this case. She didn't give interviews to the press. She resisted the offers being made to her, even financial offers, in order to preserve the dignity and the integrity of her testimony. And when she went on the witness stand, she was ready to tell the truth. That's what she did. I think she came across very credibly and very sympathetically. When she agreed to tape those phone calls with Scott, she was really placing herself at possible risk of harm if, in fact, he did commit this double murder or had anything to do with the disappearance of Laci, but she did it anyway, because she has a moral center and she knew what her duty was, and she did it. So, I'm proud of her.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you think her testimony was in any way decisive in the trial? What do you think it accomplished? How did it lead the jury to their verdict?

ALLRED: That will be for the jury to decide or that is, to disclose what importance, if any, they placed on Amber's testimony. In my view, because she taped those telephone calls, it was impossible to put Scott Peterson on the witness stand. I don't think the jury could ever have looked at Scott Peterson the same way after they heard those tape recordings. Lie after lie after lie. This is a man who lied to Amber about whether he was married, lied to the police about whether he was having a relationship with anyone other than his wife, Laci. May she rest in peace. Lied to Diane Sawyer about whether he told the police about Amber, lied to his own mother about where he was. Those are just some of his lies.

I think it made it impossible for him to take the witness stand, because I don't think he would have been believed if he had taken the witness stand and said I didn't do it. Of course, we also have on the tapes his acknowledgement that he said, I lost my wife and these will be the first holidays without her before Laci ever went missing. We have on the tapes, his saying to Amber that he wanted a future with Amber, that he wanted to be with her forever, that if he were with her, he wouldn't need to have a biological child. We know he left her a birthday gift on February 10 under the bushes and among those gifts he left was a Norah Jones' CD, "Come Away With Me."

Amber was part of the motive in this case as far as the prosecution was concerned. They said he was obsessed with Amber. In my opinion, I believe he was as well.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Was this a normal...

ALLRED: He never trusted her to do the right thing, to talk to the police. I guess he underestimated her. But I always knew she would, and she did.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Was this a moment (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for her? Was she working or at home? Can you just give us some sense of how this news reached her and what's going on in her life?

ALLRED: I contacted her. And she was with her children.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How old are they? ALLRED: She has darling children, and she is one of the best mothers I have ever seen.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How old are they?

ALLRED: She's very involved like with her baby she's nursing. She nursed her way right through all of this testimony. Every break we went upstairs and there she was nursing her baby, mid morning break, lunch break, afternoon break, the end of the day, nursing the baby. The baby is, I think, born in April. And then the other one is about three and a half. Darling little children. Beautiful, bright.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The baby is a boy?

ALLRED: Yes, Justin.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Were you surprised at all? There had been so much speculation it could go either way. When you heard the verdict, were you surprised or shocked at all?

ALLRED: I never know what a jury is going to do. But I was so happy they reached a verdict. I think that's really important, and that they weren't hung. When I came out of the courthouse, there were all these people from the community there, maybe from other states, and they all let out a yell and were all basically saying justice to each other. I think that the prosecution was right when they said this is a common sense case. It was. It is a common sense case. You don't have to be a lawyer to figure out what happened. All you have to do is use your common sense. I think that most people thought that he was guilty. But of course, they can't know all of the evidence unless they were in the courtroom or following every moment of it. And the jury did its job. And I'm very, very proud of this jury.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was Amber surprised at the outcome?

ALLRED: I wouldn't give it a say one way or the other, frankly. Sorry. OK. Thank you.

BLITZER: All right. Gloria Allred, the attorney representing Amber Frey, the girlfriend of Scott Peterson who testified against him for the prosecution. Scott Peterson convicted of first degree murder for killing his wife Laci, convicted, second degree murder for killing their unborn son, Connor.

We're standing by for additional reaction from defense attorneys, from prosecution, from family members, from community leaders. Much more coverage of this story and other news when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back. We're continuing to cover the fallout of the guilty verdict for Scott Peterson, first degree murder for killing his wife, Laci, second degree murder for killing their unborn son, Connor.

Rusty Dornin has been our reporter out there in Redwood City from the very beginning watching all of this unfold. We just saw the news conference from Gloria Allred who's the attorney, as we all of us know, for Amber Frey. How important was the testimony of Amber Frey in convicting Scott Peterson?

DORNIN: You know, a lot of people here think she was key in just showing that Scott Peterson would lie about absolutely everything. Now, of course, the prosecution in the end, did not try to show that she was the only motive, but certainly she was some kind of motive.

And to see him talking to her in just the few days after his wife was missing, the police had wire taps on the phones, or were secretly recording the conversations between Amber Frey and Scott Peterson 6 days after Laci Peterson disappeared, and he is still wooing this woman. He's lying to her. He's telling her he is in Brussels, he's in Paris, he's in all of these place.

He talks to her 45 minutes before his wife, the vigil for his missing wife, there are hundreds of people there. Her family is tearful and crying. 45 minutes beforehand, he calls Amber Frey and he starts telling her he is in Paris. And that kind of thing. So, it definitely could have had an impact.

But I do want to show you something her. You can see from behind me, a lot of the folks were just getting the first -- from the Redwood City Daily News, Scott Peterson Guilty, Crowds Cheer The Victory. This was written by Richard Cole, of course a frequent guest of Larry King here, and has been through the trial from the beginning. But literally hot off the presses. A lot of the folks here, hundreds of people here still, a lot of them, of course, you can see, have the papers here.

So, the community reacting to this. And their reaction was one of cheering -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right. Rusty, stand by. I'll get back to you.

Marcia Clark was the prosecutor against O.J. Simpson in that famous trial a decade or so ago. She's joining us now live from the studios of ET, Entertainment Tonight. Marcia, Marcia Clark, what went through your mind as you were awaiting the verdict, before you knew what the eventual verdict would be? What did you think would happen?

MARCIA CLARK, ATTORNEY: Well, when I first arrived here at the lot, ET, to tape the show, we were talking about what do you think is going to happen? I was very curious to find out how people felt about the verdict. And I was really interesting, Wolf, because they were saying I think he is guilty, but I don't think the jury is going to find him guilty. So many people said that. Which says something about how people feel about of our system nowadays.

I did think he was going to be convicted. And when I heard the last juror being replaced, I thought we're very close to a verdict. And indeed, we were. And I knew if there was a verdict, at least I believed if there was a verdict, it would be a guilty one.

BLITZER: When the last juror was replaced and the two had been replaced only in the last few days, why did you think that all of us would be getting closer to a guilty verdict as opposed to A, either a hung jury or a not guilty verdict?

CLARK: Because when you start replacing jurors, it means to me that there is at least a body of the jurors, a majority that is feeling one way, they're having trouble with these few jurors that are getting excused. Excused because possibly they were refusing to deliberate, at least, that would be their position. And as they excuse each of these jurors, they come closer and closer to their verdict. My feeling about the evidence, as I saw it unfold in this case was, that if there was a verdict, it would be a guilty verdict.

So, as I saw the jurors being excused and saw them kind of squeezing out what I think were the holdouts, I knew that the verdict was imminent. And I did believe it would be a guilty verdict.

BLITZER: But Marcia, you're a lawyer, you're a former prosecutor. You understand that a judge simply can't start removing jurors because they're, either by themselves or with somebody else standing in the way of a verdict. That's a no-no as far as I know.

CLARK: That's exactly right, Wolf. But that's not what they say. In essence, what they say is look, these jurors are not listening to us, these jurors are refusing to deliberate, they won't talk, they won't listen. They are fixed in their opinions. And they're not listening to the evidence. And that is a no-no. And that's a really good reason to excuse a juror.

If they can persuade the judge that that's what's going on. And that they're not just getting rid of holdouts who have a reasonable position, who have listened to the evidence and decided, no, this is what I think. If they can convince the judge that that is not the case, that the jurors are being unreasonable, not listening to the majority jury, not paying attention to the evidence and just holding to a fixed position without cause, then they can be excused and it's a justifiable excuse.

BLITZER: Well, you don't think there's an opening now for Mark Geragos to file an appeal?

CLARK: Sure, of course. But he is going to appeal no matter what. I mean, this is going to be one, probably, very large aspect of his appeal, among many other arguments he's going to make concerning everything that happened during the trial. But this will certainly be featured in his appeal. And I think that he will probably be unsuccessful, because all the juries have to say when they are interviewed, and all the lawyers have to say is, hey, look, they weren't deliberating. They weren't paying attention to the evidence. They were adopting a fixed position and that is what a juror is not permitted to do.

After a certain amount of debate, a juror can say, look, I have reviewed the evidence, I am listening to you, I just don't agree with you. And then it will depend on whether the court of appeals believes that juror or the balance of the arguments, which will be no, they were not deliberating and they were not being fair. BLITZER: Do you think that looking down the road, he will get this life sentence without the possibility of parole or the death sentence?

CLARK: I really believe they're going to vote for life without the possibility of parole. Generally speaking, juries do not go for the death penalty when someone does not have a criminal past of some significance. Now, this was a horrific crime. And this community may have had their conscious so shocked and be so morally offended by all that happened that they could vote for death. I consider the greatest likelihood to be that it will be a verdict for life without the possibility of parole, though.

BLITZER: All right. Marcia Clark, I'm going to have you stand by, because there are other questions I want to ask you, including how unusual is it to see two of the 12 jurors removed only in the final days before the verdict comes forward.

Marcia Clark stand by. All of our reporters are standing by, our other analysts as well. Much more coming up. The fallout, the reaction from the guilty verdict against Scott Peterson. We'll also check other headlines of the day. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: The crowd gathered outside the Redwood City courthouse broke into a cheer, an enthusiastic cheer, when the guilty verdicts against Scott Peterson were announced only within the past hour or so.

CNN's Ted Rowlands has been covering the story from the very beginning.

Set the seen once again for our viewers who may just be tuning in, Ted. Tell our viewers what has happened.

ROWLANDS: Well, at just after 1:00, Pacific time -- the jury came back with a verdict about 11:30 a.m. Pacific time. And then just after 1:00, it was read.

And it was carried via audio only from the courtroom. And outside the courthouse here, as you mentioned, there were hundreds of people that had gathered to hear this announcement. And when the verdict was read, the verdict of guilty in the first degree, hundreds of people broke out in cheer.

It is believed -- it is fact that the court of public opinion has been one-sided from the very beginning. The real question here is, what would this jury feel after they analyzed the evidence? It was a circumstantial case, very little to go on in terms of physical evidence against Scott Peterson. But the fact his wife and unborn son's remains washed up in the same place he had gone fishing, he is the husband -- who else would have done it, asked the prosecutor, Rick Distaso, in closing arguments.

This is a common sense case, he said. Obviously, the jury connected with that. The people outside the courthouse are still milling about here. They seem to have connected with it. They're holding up these guilty headlines from "The Redwood City Daily News," which is being circulated here. It's a carnival-like atmosphere. You can hear a chopper overhead.

Really, it's almost disconcerting on one end. At some point, the Peterson family walked out and these folks started cheering to them, which is the last thing this family needed. But the bottom line is that there is so much emotion around this, because people have been following it from the beginning. They really -- that emotion came out in full force today when this verdict was read.

BLITZER: Ted Rowlands, stand by for a minute.

Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor, also an expert in California legal procedure, a professor at the Loyola Law School out in Los Angeles, is joining us now.

Laurie, first of all, give us your reaction to the guilty verdicts.

LAURIE LEVENSON, LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL: Well, I think the most surprising thing about it, Wolf, was the split verdict, the first degree on Laci and the second degree on Conner.

But, frankly, we didn't know what to expect from this jury. My reaction, it wasn't so much poring over the evidence that had them come to a verdict. It was a gut check. They talked to each other and they had this firm conviction that he was guilty and they were willing to say it together.

BLITZER: Is a gut check enough? Isn't it supposed to be a little bit more than a gut check when you're talking about a man's life, potentially?

LEVENSON: Oh, absolutely.

But their reaction is, we sat through five months of evidence. It's not like we have to hear the tapes all over again or see every piece of paper. We just need to talk to each other and see if our interpretation of it, our inferences from it, make the same sense as they do to the other jurors. And they did have enough time to do that.

BLITZER: This trial had been going on for four or five months. The prosecution had brought more than 170 witnesses before the jury. There was jury deliberations, what, for about a week. Then, all of a sudden, two jurors are dismissed amid indications they were having trouble, there could have a hung jury. The two jurors are dismissed and all of the sudden, they get a guilty verdict. How unusual is this out in California, to see jurors removed at that stage, new jurors, alternates, come in and then, within a few hours, there's a guilty verdict?

LEVENSON: Well, it's not unprecedented. But it certainly is unusual. I think, frankly, in the second Menendez case, they had some jurors replaced during deliberations. But this combination is unusual and, frankly, I think will be an issue for appeal. If there's any suggestion in the record that the jurors who were excused were holdout jurors who wanted to vote for acquittal for Scott Peterson, then you can bet Mark Geragos on appeal is going to raise the issue of whether it was right for the judge to dismiss those jurors or whether he was really stacking the deck against the defense.

BLITZER: Because I remember, once the first juror was dismissed, then the super juror, the foreman, the lawyer, the doctor, who had all these notebooks, copious notes he had taken, was dismissed. There's a lot of speculation there could be a hung jury or no verdict, a mistrial, if you will.

And that would have put enormous political pressure on the judge and the prosecution. It would have been deeply, deeply embarrassing at that point. And I'm sure that Mark Geragos is going to be looking precisely at those issues to see if there was pressure brought to bring away, to remove the jurors who may have had questions about these guilty verdicts.

LEVENSON: You're absolutely correct.

That is going to be perhaps one of the prime issues for an appeal. We also can expect issues about whether the judge was right to not allow the defense to bring in their recreation of the boat tipping over and even things done earlier in the trial.

But when it comes to deliberations, that's a hot point. And the judges on the Supreme Court look very carefully at that issue. In California, about three years ago, we had a couple of cases where the Supreme Court tried to make it clear, you cannot throw off jurors just because they disagree with the other jurors. You can only throw them off if they are not following the rules, if they are not really deliberating.

BLITZER: Laurie, stand by.

Ron Kuby is standing by in New York for us, a criminal defense attorney well known to many of our viewers.

What do you think of these verdicts, Ron?

RON KUBY, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: The only surprise was, it took as long as it did. And I'm a defense lawyer, but let's face it. There was a mountain of evidence against Scott Peterson, so many different pieces coming together in a painstaking fashion in the course of the entire trial.

The only real surprise was the jury spent as much time as they did. And apparently the reason they did that, there were some very serious problems in the jury room itself.

BLITZER: When you say a mountain of evidence, was it all circumstantial evidence? LEVENSON: It was all circumstantial evidence.

But, Wolf, circumstantial evidence gets a bad rap on television. Circumstantial evidence is perfectly fine evidence. The example they use in law school, it's wintertime. You go to bed at night. The ground is bare. You wake up, there's snow on the ground. That's circumstantial evidence that it snowed in the middle of the night while you were asleep, perfectly good evidence. People get convicted of that all the time.

BLITZER: Well, as certain as it snows in my hometown of Buffalo, New York, it's certain that Mark Geragos will file an appeal. But does he have a -- really, a good basis to file an appeal?

KUBY: You know, the problem is, Wolf, we don't know.

Clearly, the issue that we've all been talking about is the removal of the two jurors. One report indicated that one juror was removed because she was conducting her own Internet research. If that's true, that's clear, blatant, obvious juror misconduct. That juror had to go. There won't be a sustained appeal on that.

We don't know why the foreperson was removed in this case. There's been various speculation. But we have to assume that the judge and the prosecutor and the defense lawyer knew the reasons that that juror was removed. And if he was removed for misconduct, refusing to deliberate, not simply because he didn't agree -- you're entitled to a jury that's contentious. But if he violated his oath by violating the judge's instructions, then he has to go. And an alternate gets inserted.

BLITZER: What do you think he is going to get as far as the special circumstance? Will he be facing a death sentence or life without the possibility of parole, based on what you know?

KUBY: The death penalty is so personal and so idiosyncratic, I don't want to speculate.

I do know this, though. Mark Geragos tried his entire case telling the jury what a dirtbag Scott Peterson was, but that doesn't make him a killer. Now that the jury has found he's a killer, it's going to be hard to go back and argue that he's not a dirtbag.

BLITZER: Well, the whole point, though, is, there are specific criteria, I take it, in California for the death sentence. And the question is, by killing the unborn child, does that rise to that level?

KUBY: Well, that certainly is what makes him eligible for the death sentence, the fact that there were two murders, a first-degree murder and a second-degree murder. Ultimately, there will be a mini- trial, probably about a week, maybe a little bit shorter, in which the prosecution will introduce evidence of all the terrible things that Scott Peterson has done in his life and the terrible way he has engaged in misconduct in this case. The defense will try to portray him as a person who has done a terrible thing, but there's some redeeming spark in Scott Peterson that says he is not the worst of the very worst. Please don't kill him.

BLITZER: Let me bring Laurie Levenson in -- she knows a lot about California law -- back for a moment.

Laurie, the whole notion he was convicted of one count, first- degree murder, a second count of second-degree murder, I assume, if both of those had been first-degree murder, convicted on two counts of first-degree murder, there would have been a better chance that he would get the death sentence, as opposed to life without the possibility of parole, even though California law says he could still get the death sentence even though the second count was second-degree murder.

LEVENSON: I think there's some logic in that.

And I'm wondering if there's some kind of message by the jury in sending the first degree and the second degree, indicating that they're willing to show some type of leniency towards Scott Peterson. So, he may be looking for a silver lining to today's verdicts, and there's not much of one. But the fact that they didn't come back with two first degrees may be a better sign for the penalty phase.

Once again, however, we do have to wait and see what's actually presented and how convincing the witnesses are who testified for the family, the victim's family and then for Scott Peterson.

BLITZER: Ron Kuby, the whole notion of Mark Geragos, the way he handled this trial from the beginning -- in his opening statement, he made all sorts of bombastic promises about the real killers and bringing the evidence forward. Many of those promises, he could not deliver on. How much do you believe that hurt Scott Peterson, if, in fact, that did hurt him?

KUBY: Honestly, Wolf, I don't think it hurt him very much at all. I was very critical of the way Mark Geragos conducted his case. But we have a tendency to second-guess our colleagues.

The reality is, it's been my experience -- and this is probably a good thing -- the vast majority of criminal cases are decided not on the skills of the lawyers, but on the strength of the evidence. I think that this case was decided on the strength of the evidence, and I think that the strength of that evidence will carry the case through appeal.

BLITZER: Are there a lot of cases, Laurie Levenson in California, where it's all circumstantial evidence that convicts someone of murder and that murder gets -- eventually winds up getting the death penalty?

LEVENSON: Well, I don't know that they end up getting the death penalty. We certainly have a lot of cases where people are convicted on circumstantial evidence. On the death penalty, it is idiosyncratic. And it often depends where the case is tried. That's bad news for Scott Peterson here, because the record in that area is very good for the prosecutors getting the death penalty. But then again, you don't see a lot of defendants who look like Scott Peterson, have the clean background that he has, get the death penalty.

So, you know, that works in his favor. And, really, it depends once again on that gut check of that jury. They may believe he is a killer, that it's a horrible crime. The issue is, what do they want from him, life in prison without parole or an actual death penalty?

BLITZER: Laurie Levenson, as usual, thanks very much for joining us.

Ron Kuby, thanks to you as well.

We'll continue to cover the fallout from the Scott Peterson guilty verdicts. We're standing by for additional reaction out in Redwood City, California. We'll go there once it happens.

We're also following other important news on this day, including what's happening in Iraq. And Israel, the Middle East, the death of Yasser Arafat, his burial in Ramallah, all very much on the minds of George Bush and Tony Blair. They met earlier today at the White House. We'll have a complete report, what happened in the Middle East and in Washington.

And the bloody battle for Falluja, U.S. forces gaining ground, but at a price, the civilian population.

We're following all those developments, plus the fallout, once again, from the verdicts in the Scott Peterson murder trial.

Much more coverage after this short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: We'll continue to monitor reaction in the guilty verdicts against Scott Peterson for murdering his wife and their unborn son. We'll get to more of that reaction. That's coming up.

But there's important news elsewhere around the world today, including an extraordinary outpouring of emotion built into a frenzy, which led to utter chaos, as Palestinians said goodbye to the only leader they have known.

CNN's John Vause standing by live in Ramallah on the West Bank -- John.

JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, officials here had planned a formal service for the late Palestinian leader, but, in hindsight, it seems that was never really going to happen.

Thousands of mourners simply took over the West Bank compound for an emotional and passionate goodbye. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE (voice-over): For Yasser Arafat one final, triumphant return. Thousands climbs walls, rushed security guards and pushed their way into the Ramallah compound, desperate to touch his coffin, to get close to the leader they called "The Old Man."

It was chaos. Police and soldiers fired wildly into the air. The crowd barely flinched. Palestinian officials pleaded unsuccessfully from the helicopter door for the mob to back off. Thirty minutes later, the coffin appeared. It was loaded on to a jeep and Arafat's personal bodyguards, the men who protected him in life, clung to the casket while the crowd surged forward.

Slowly, they moved towards the marble and concrete burial site. Officials had planned a formal service, marching bands and parading soldiers. None of it happened.

On this day, the Palestinian people claimed their leader for themselves. The funeral took on a life of its own.

Militants from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade made a show of force, while the Palestinian flag was ripped away, replaced by a kaffiyeh similar to the one which was Arafat's trademark. As the coffin was lowered, it was covered with soil from the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the place where Arafat wanted to be buried and where Palestinians hope one day he will be when there is a Palestinian state.

Amid all the chaos there was still ceremony, verses from the Koran and prayers. And finally, Yasser Arafat was laid to rest. A chapter in history had come to an end.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: And when Yasser Arafat left his West Bank compound two weeks ago, he said, I'll be back. And after his life slipped away in a Paris hospital, those who knew him best said today, this was the kind of homecoming he would have wanted -- Wolf.

BLITZER: John Vause reporting for us from Ramallah -- thank you, John, very much.

Just hours after Yasser Arafat was laid to rest, President Bush and his closest ally, the British prime minister, Tony Blair, pledged to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and to try to bring it to a successful conclusion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think it is fair to say that I believe we've got a great chance to establish a Palestinian state. And I intend to use the next four years to spend the capital of the United States on such a state.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: The president stressed that a new Palestinian leadership must be committed to fighting terror and must be committed to the cause of democracy.

Prime Minister Blair said the two will go, in his words, flat- out, to achieve a vision of a Palestinian state living alongside Israel in peace.

We'll take another quick break.

The fight for Falluja, what's happening there? Important developments. Also, more reaction to the Scott Peterson guilty verdict.

Much more coverage after this short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Guilty verdicts for Scott Peterson, in the case of his wife, first-degree murder, in the case of their unborn son, Conner, second-degree murder. We're standing by for more reaction from Redwood City, California.

But there's other important news, including the battle for Falluja. Control of that city is clearly at stake, the battle now entering its sixth day. U.S. forces are gaining more ground, but at a price. What will a coalition victory in Falluja mean for efforts to stabilize all of Iraq?

Let's go live to our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr -- Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, after nearly, indeed, a week of fighting in Falluja, some commanders are looking ahead to what is next.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STARR (voice-over): After one week of fighting, the question now, what has the Falluja campaign really meant for achieving stability across Iraq?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, get that driver out!

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: The government of Iraq understands that it is not acceptable to have a safe haven within their country, where people who oppose the government of Iraq are free to attack innocent Iraqis.

STARR: Pentagon officials say the primary objective in Falluja is not defeating the insurgency, but instead terrain, getting the city under control.

Insurgents got the message. Many fled and hundreds who stayed were killed. No U.S. official believes the insurgency itself is defeated. In fact, they say, new attacks across Iraq indicate insurgents are trying to send their own message.

COL. THOMAS HAMMES, U.S. MARINES CORPS: The enemy is pretty savvy, and I don't want to underestimate their capability. They look for weakness and they try to strike that.

STARR: In Baghdad, new car bomb attacks, a nighttime curfew and relatives of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi kidnapped.

In Ramadi, U.S. troops clash with insurgents, explosions rocking the city. And, in Mosul, airstrikes and U.S. and Iraqi forces moving in after insurgents attacked and overran police stations. The entire Sunni Triangle is a problem, says one official, and Baghdad, he says, remains on the negative side of the ledger.

U.S. officials say former members of Saddam Hussein's regime who fled Iraq have set up shop in nearby countries and are directing attacks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You cannot defeat an insurgent by using sheer firepower. As I have said, it's a political battle.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STARR: Wolf, here at the Pentagon, officials still say they believe there will be elections in Iraq in January -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Barbara Starr at the Pentagon, thanks very much.

One more quick break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: A reminder, you can always catch WOLF BLITZER REPORTS weekdays at this time, 5:00 p.m. Eastern.

This Sunday on "LATE EDITION," the last word in Sunday talk, among my guests, Lynne Cheney, the wife of the vice president. Lynne Cheney, she's out with a new book. We'll talk about that and more. Lynne Cheney, Sunday, noon Eastern.

Until then, thanks very much for joining us. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

"LOU DOBBS TONIGHT" starts right now.

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Aired November 12, 2004 - 17:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WOLF BLITZER, HOST: Happening now. As we've just been watching over the past hour, Scott Peterson is guilty of murder, first-degree murder for killing his wife Laci. And he's guilty of second-degree murder for killing their unborn son Conner. We're standing by this hour for reaction from the prosecution, the defense, the families and the community.
ANNOUNCER: This is WOLF BLITZER REPORTS for Friday, November 12, 2004.

Thanks very much for joining us. After more than the five months of testimony and troubled, twice halted jury deliberations, the verdict in the Scott Peterson murder trial is finally in.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: State of California versus Scott Peterson. We, the jury, in the above entitled cause find the defendant, Scott Lee Peterson, guilty of the crime of murder of Laci Peterson. We, the jury, in the above entitled cause find the defendant Scott Lee Peterson guilty of the crime of murder of baby Conner Peterson.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BLITZER: It was a Christmas time crime that shocked America. Now, Peterson could face the death penalty. The 32-year-old former fertilizer salesman was found guilty of the first degree murder of his pregnant wife, Laci, with special circumstances. He was also found guilty of the second degree murder of their unborn son. CNN's Rusty Dornin standing by in Redwood City. She has been covering this trial for us in California from the start. Set the scene, Rusty. You were inside. How did it go down?

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the courtroom was packed, of course, with family members, press, even some of the public that you see behind me were allowed in the courtroom. Sort of an electric current in the atmosphere before that verdict was read. The family and friends of Laci Peterson in there. Some of her friends even crying before the jury came in, just in anticipation.

Many of the reporters in the room very nervous about how this was all going to come down and wondering, really, what was going to happen. To the end, this was really a cliffhanger for everyone. No one knew which way this was going to go. The jury came filing in very somberfaced. They sat down. The clerk read those verdicts. Immediately, there was not a gasp from the courtroom, but the members from the Rocha family and Laci's family, you could hear them begin to sob in the courtroom. Scott Peterson was smiling, talking with his attorneys, appeared very confident when he came into the courtroom today. Upon reading of that verdict he was stonefaced, looking ahead, didn't look to side to side, didn't talk to his attorneys until after the jury had left.

The Peterson family, his father, was not in the courtroom, Lee Peterson. We do not know where he was. His mother, Jackie Peterson, his brother, his sister-in-law all in the front row. They did not move. Quickly, there were six or seven bailiffs standing by the Peterson family, just standing there and they just did not express any emotion throughout that trial, even through the polling of the jurors and that sort of thing. By the time we had left, still nothing from Scott Peterson or his family -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Rusty, it was pretty quick, considering that two jurors had been dismissed, the judge had instructed all the jurors, all 12 of them, six men and six women, they had to start from scratch, in effect, yesterday and today, only a few hours of actual deliberations. Was this much of a surprise that it came down this quickly?

DORNIN: We were very surprised. On one hand, of course, there was the idea that they had been sequestered in the hotel yesterday, were facing sequestration this weekend. They had been through five months of testimony. On the other hand, they just -- we understand there had been a battle in the jury room early on, a lot of contention that was allegedly with juror number 5, the doctor, the lawyer, the foreman that was kicked off the jury. Apparently when he was removed, it removed a lot of that contention and they were able to take a vote and perhaps this is the way most of these people in the room felt from the very beginning, but were not allowed to express their vote because of this foreman. We just don't know.

BLITZER: Rusty, stand by for a second. Ted Rowlands has been covering this story for us also from the very beginning. He is at the courthouse in Redwood City with you. Ted, explain to our viewers this juror number 5, a medical doctor, an attorney. He was the foreman. He was removed. Is there any reason to believe, do we know that he was inclined to vote not guilty against Scott Peterson?

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No, we don't know that at all. Of course, that will be the subject of a possible appeal, if there's any evidence that he was indeed, leaning that way and he was removed from the panel. What we do know is that after his removal, this jury seemed to change dramatically. People that saw the jury actually leave the courthouse following deliberations on Wednesday say that they were upbeat, different from the days before, where they were sort of down and, clearly, they only needed six hours, this new panel to come to a verdict. So, the foreman that was in place before, the doctor/lawyer was, at best, stalling the process. That is what we have heard, unconfirmed, and from sources that the thought was that this foreman, because of his background, was going through methodically the evidence that has trickled out over the five months and the jury was not able to take a vote, see where everybody was. It wasn't true deliberations. With him out of the equation, it is believed and obviously it's true, this jury came together very quickly, surprisingly quickly and came back with a verdict of guilty, sending Scott Peterson to jail for the rest of his life.

BLITZER: Ted, walk us through what happens now. The immediate days and weeks ahead as far as Scott Peterson and the sentencing is concerned.

ROWLANDS: Well, Peterson stays here in San Mateo County. He is back in his cell, presumably, at this hour. And he will remain here until the penalty phase is over. The judge told the jury that they are going to take next week off so that the lawyers can assemble their witnesses for the penalty phase. Then this same jury will deliberate Peterson's fate in terms of life and death.

There's only one question to answer. Will he face the death penalty or will he spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole? If they choose death, he will be taken to San Quentin and be put on to death row. Of course that will trigger an automatic appeal here in California. If they vote against the death penalty, he will then be taken back to Stanislaus County for a finite amount of time and then put in to the California prison system. Because of the nature of the crime, he will be put into a level three or level four maximum security system and remain there for the rest of his days, if this jury spares his life after they deliberate the penalty phase.

BLITZER: Ted, one quick question. The other juror who was dismissed in recent days, do we have any indication whatsoever which way she was leaning? She was the one who was supposedly going to the Internet to do her own independent research on the case.

ROWLANDS: Yes. Juror number 7, Fran Gorman, who was removed from the panel earlier last week is still under the gag order. She is prohibited to talk about the case and she has done a good job of staying silent. She has not talked to the media, none of her family or friends that I have heard has surfaced as to which way she was leaning. This will be very important for a possible appeal. If she was leaning towards not guilty and the juror number 5, the doctor/lawyer was leaning towards not guilty, you can bet that that will be the basis for an appeal from the defense. But we'll have to wait and see. You can bet, actually, the state of California, that there will be an appeal of some sort coming after the penalty phase.

BLITZER: All right. Ted Rowlands, stand by. Our senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin is joining us now with a little bit of perspective. That sounds -- and I want to be very careful here, Jeff. If these two jurors, and we do know that the judge knew in which direction they seemed to be moving, because he questioned them in recent days. If, in fact, they were moving towards not guilty, it sort of sounds a little suspicious, wouldn't you think?

JEFF TOOBIN, CNN SR. LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Wolf, you're absolutely right, particularly the issue of removing jurors during deliberations is something that appeals courts take very seriously and worry a lot about. That will be a focus of a great deal of attention. However, you know, the judge and the prosecutors are no dummies here. They knew that they had to make a record as to why these two people had to be thrown off the jury. They knew that they were going to be scrutinized very carefully about that. So, presumably, they did their best to show on the record that the reason for this removal was something legitimate, not simply that they were holdouts for the defense. That issue, undoubtedly, was right at the center of the issue -- of the controversy regarding these people being thrown out. Whether the judge resolved it satisfactorily, I have no idea. That is something an appeals court will look very closely at.

BLITZER: Explain to our viewers why he is convicted of first degree murder for killing Laci, second degree murder for killing their unborn child, Conner.

TOOBIN: That is something I've been wondering about as I've been sitting here thinking about the jury. The jury verdict. It's going to have to be the jurors who really answer that question as to why they did one, not the other. My thought is that the jurors thought Scott went out intentionally to kill Laci. He wanted to kill her. He wanted her out of his life. He wanted to continue carrying on with Amber Frey or whatever extramarital life he wanted. He wanted Laci dead and he killed her. That is intentional, first degree murder. The jury may have thought that the -- he intended to kill Conner only in the sense of as a byproduct. He didn't really set out to kill Conner. He set out to kill Laci and his death was a natural occurrence that flowed inevitably from that but that was not his intention. My guess is that was the thought process of the jury, but we'll only know when they talk about their verdict after it's all over.

BLITZER: All right. Jeffrey, stand by. Rusty Dornin has some additional information. Rusty, tell our viewers what you know.

DORNIN: We were just talking about which way these jurors were going to go. I think in some ways it was telling that juror number 7, Fran Gorman, her removal was not objected to by defense attorney Mark Geragos. However, the removal of the foreman juror number 5, Mark Geragos did lodge an objection to him being dismissed from that jury. So, whether he had a sense, that perhaps, he was that one roadblock that could have -- if he kept going, maybe he could have convinced more people that Scott Peterson was not guilty or at least lodge some reasonable doubt in their minds. But I think he felt he had a much better chance with juror number six. I do want to ask Jeffrey about the fact that we're hearing this anonymous tip about the new foreman, juror number 6, the firefighter. Is there a possibility that Geragos could come back and also lodge an appeal based on the fact that someone was claiming that he had talked to people beforehand?

TOOBIN: Absolutely. Any issue relating to the conduct of the jury, bias in the jury is something an appeals court will look at carefully. However, it does seem, based on what we know about this incident that the judge proceeded very cautiously and very appropriately.

BLITZER: Jeffrey, hold on.

TOOBIN: Sure.

BLITZER: Because Gloria Allred, the attorney for Amber Frey, the mistress, the girlfriend of Scott Peterson is speaking now. Let's listen in.

GLORIA ALLRED, AMBER FREY'S ATTORNEY: For so long, there have been defense critics. For so long, there actually have been defense supporters standing outside this courthouse criticizing this prosecution and I want to give credit to this prosecution, to the district attorney of Jim Brazelton, the district attorney of Stanislaus County, to Rick Distaso, who did an outstanding final argument, to Dave Harris, who did one of the best cross examinations I have ever seen of an expert witness in the defense case and totally destroyed him on the witness stand, and also to the Brigitte Flattiger (ph) the supervising deputy district attorney who did an outstanding job with Detective Grogan, 41 reasons why they decided to search in the bay, showing there was no rush to judgment for Scott Peterson.

Before I went in to hear the verdict, I said I was praying for justice. I know that millions of people in this country were praying for justice. My guess is that the family of Laci Peterson, most of all, was praying for justice. I think there was justice today with the jury's verdict. First degree murder for the murder of Laci Peterson, second degree murder for the murder of Conner Peterson, because as a first and a second, there are special circumstances. It's multiple killings and that means he qualifies for the death penalty. That's why we'll go into the death penalty phase.

I want to give enormous credit to my client, Amber Frey, who is a true woman of courage, a hero in this case. She voluntarily called the police and offered information when she found out that Scott Peterson was not only married, but that his wife was missing, and then they asked her to assist by taping all those telephone calls between Scott and herself after Laci went missing, which she did. I think that was an enormous help in this case.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What was her reaction? Does she know about the verdict? What was her reaction?

ALLRED: I did notify Amber about the verdict. I mean, it's an emotional time for her. Her feelings are very complicated. She has always said that this is a matter for the jury to decide and that God would be the ultimate judge.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did she cry?

ALLRED: I'm going to let her have her privacy about how she feels today. I think it all has to settle in. But I know she has had confidence that the jury would do whatever they thought was the right thing based on the evidence. And I think that they have.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gloria, is there a possibility she will be called back to the stand during the penalty phase?

ALLRED: I don't know whether she will be called. For that reason, I'm going to have her assume that she is still under the gag order until I can check that out, but she has conducted herself with such dignity throughout this case. She didn't give interviews to the press. She resisted the offers being made to her, even financial offers, in order to preserve the dignity and the integrity of her testimony. And when she went on the witness stand, she was ready to tell the truth. That's what she did. I think she came across very credibly and very sympathetically. When she agreed to tape those phone calls with Scott, she was really placing herself at possible risk of harm if, in fact, he did commit this double murder or had anything to do with the disappearance of Laci, but she did it anyway, because she has a moral center and she knew what her duty was, and she did it. So, I'm proud of her.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you think her testimony was in any way decisive in the trial? What do you think it accomplished? How did it lead the jury to their verdict?

ALLRED: That will be for the jury to decide or that is, to disclose what importance, if any, they placed on Amber's testimony. In my view, because she taped those telephone calls, it was impossible to put Scott Peterson on the witness stand. I don't think the jury could ever have looked at Scott Peterson the same way after they heard those tape recordings. Lie after lie after lie. This is a man who lied to Amber about whether he was married, lied to the police about whether he was having a relationship with anyone other than his wife, Laci. May she rest in peace. Lied to Diane Sawyer about whether he told the police about Amber, lied to his own mother about where he was. Those are just some of his lies.

I think it made it impossible for him to take the witness stand, because I don't think he would have been believed if he had taken the witness stand and said I didn't do it. Of course, we also have on the tapes his acknowledgement that he said, I lost my wife and these will be the first holidays without her before Laci ever went missing. We have on the tapes, his saying to Amber that he wanted a future with Amber, that he wanted to be with her forever, that if he were with her, he wouldn't need to have a biological child. We know he left her a birthday gift on February 10 under the bushes and among those gifts he left was a Norah Jones' CD, "Come Away With Me."

Amber was part of the motive in this case as far as the prosecution was concerned. They said he was obsessed with Amber. In my opinion, I believe he was as well.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Was this a normal...

ALLRED: He never trusted her to do the right thing, to talk to the police. I guess he underestimated her. But I always knew she would, and she did.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Was this a moment (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for her? Was she working or at home? Can you just give us some sense of how this news reached her and what's going on in her life?

ALLRED: I contacted her. And she was with her children.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How old are they? ALLRED: She has darling children, and she is one of the best mothers I have ever seen.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How old are they?

ALLRED: She's very involved like with her baby she's nursing. She nursed her way right through all of this testimony. Every break we went upstairs and there she was nursing her baby, mid morning break, lunch break, afternoon break, the end of the day, nursing the baby. The baby is, I think, born in April. And then the other one is about three and a half. Darling little children. Beautiful, bright.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The baby is a boy?

ALLRED: Yes, Justin.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Were you surprised at all? There had been so much speculation it could go either way. When you heard the verdict, were you surprised or shocked at all?

ALLRED: I never know what a jury is going to do. But I was so happy they reached a verdict. I think that's really important, and that they weren't hung. When I came out of the courthouse, there were all these people from the community there, maybe from other states, and they all let out a yell and were all basically saying justice to each other. I think that the prosecution was right when they said this is a common sense case. It was. It is a common sense case. You don't have to be a lawyer to figure out what happened. All you have to do is use your common sense. I think that most people thought that he was guilty. But of course, they can't know all of the evidence unless they were in the courtroom or following every moment of it. And the jury did its job. And I'm very, very proud of this jury.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was Amber surprised at the outcome?

ALLRED: I wouldn't give it a say one way or the other, frankly. Sorry. OK. Thank you.

BLITZER: All right. Gloria Allred, the attorney representing Amber Frey, the girlfriend of Scott Peterson who testified against him for the prosecution. Scott Peterson convicted of first degree murder for killing his wife Laci, convicted, second degree murder for killing their unborn son, Connor.

We're standing by for additional reaction from defense attorneys, from prosecution, from family members, from community leaders. Much more coverage of this story and other news when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back. We're continuing to cover the fallout of the guilty verdict for Scott Peterson, first degree murder for killing his wife, Laci, second degree murder for killing their unborn son, Connor.

Rusty Dornin has been our reporter out there in Redwood City from the very beginning watching all of this unfold. We just saw the news conference from Gloria Allred who's the attorney, as we all of us know, for Amber Frey. How important was the testimony of Amber Frey in convicting Scott Peterson?

DORNIN: You know, a lot of people here think she was key in just showing that Scott Peterson would lie about absolutely everything. Now, of course, the prosecution in the end, did not try to show that she was the only motive, but certainly she was some kind of motive.

And to see him talking to her in just the few days after his wife was missing, the police had wire taps on the phones, or were secretly recording the conversations between Amber Frey and Scott Peterson 6 days after Laci Peterson disappeared, and he is still wooing this woman. He's lying to her. He's telling her he is in Brussels, he's in Paris, he's in all of these place.

He talks to her 45 minutes before his wife, the vigil for his missing wife, there are hundreds of people there. Her family is tearful and crying. 45 minutes beforehand, he calls Amber Frey and he starts telling her he is in Paris. And that kind of thing. So, it definitely could have had an impact.

But I do want to show you something her. You can see from behind me, a lot of the folks were just getting the first -- from the Redwood City Daily News, Scott Peterson Guilty, Crowds Cheer The Victory. This was written by Richard Cole, of course a frequent guest of Larry King here, and has been through the trial from the beginning. But literally hot off the presses. A lot of the folks here, hundreds of people here still, a lot of them, of course, you can see, have the papers here.

So, the community reacting to this. And their reaction was one of cheering -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right. Rusty, stand by. I'll get back to you.

Marcia Clark was the prosecutor against O.J. Simpson in that famous trial a decade or so ago. She's joining us now live from the studios of ET, Entertainment Tonight. Marcia, Marcia Clark, what went through your mind as you were awaiting the verdict, before you knew what the eventual verdict would be? What did you think would happen?

MARCIA CLARK, ATTORNEY: Well, when I first arrived here at the lot, ET, to tape the show, we were talking about what do you think is going to happen? I was very curious to find out how people felt about the verdict. And I was really interesting, Wolf, because they were saying I think he is guilty, but I don't think the jury is going to find him guilty. So many people said that. Which says something about how people feel about of our system nowadays.

I did think he was going to be convicted. And when I heard the last juror being replaced, I thought we're very close to a verdict. And indeed, we were. And I knew if there was a verdict, at least I believed if there was a verdict, it would be a guilty one.

BLITZER: When the last juror was replaced and the two had been replaced only in the last few days, why did you think that all of us would be getting closer to a guilty verdict as opposed to A, either a hung jury or a not guilty verdict?

CLARK: Because when you start replacing jurors, it means to me that there is at least a body of the jurors, a majority that is feeling one way, they're having trouble with these few jurors that are getting excused. Excused because possibly they were refusing to deliberate, at least, that would be their position. And as they excuse each of these jurors, they come closer and closer to their verdict. My feeling about the evidence, as I saw it unfold in this case was, that if there was a verdict, it would be a guilty verdict.

So, as I saw the jurors being excused and saw them kind of squeezing out what I think were the holdouts, I knew that the verdict was imminent. And I did believe it would be a guilty verdict.

BLITZER: But Marcia, you're a lawyer, you're a former prosecutor. You understand that a judge simply can't start removing jurors because they're, either by themselves or with somebody else standing in the way of a verdict. That's a no-no as far as I know.

CLARK: That's exactly right, Wolf. But that's not what they say. In essence, what they say is look, these jurors are not listening to us, these jurors are refusing to deliberate, they won't talk, they won't listen. They are fixed in their opinions. And they're not listening to the evidence. And that is a no-no. And that's a really good reason to excuse a juror.

If they can persuade the judge that that's what's going on. And that they're not just getting rid of holdouts who have a reasonable position, who have listened to the evidence and decided, no, this is what I think. If they can convince the judge that that is not the case, that the jurors are being unreasonable, not listening to the majority jury, not paying attention to the evidence and just holding to a fixed position without cause, then they can be excused and it's a justifiable excuse.

BLITZER: Well, you don't think there's an opening now for Mark Geragos to file an appeal?

CLARK: Sure, of course. But he is going to appeal no matter what. I mean, this is going to be one, probably, very large aspect of his appeal, among many other arguments he's going to make concerning everything that happened during the trial. But this will certainly be featured in his appeal. And I think that he will probably be unsuccessful, because all the juries have to say when they are interviewed, and all the lawyers have to say is, hey, look, they weren't deliberating. They weren't paying attention to the evidence. They were adopting a fixed position and that is what a juror is not permitted to do.

After a certain amount of debate, a juror can say, look, I have reviewed the evidence, I am listening to you, I just don't agree with you. And then it will depend on whether the court of appeals believes that juror or the balance of the arguments, which will be no, they were not deliberating and they were not being fair. BLITZER: Do you think that looking down the road, he will get this life sentence without the possibility of parole or the death sentence?

CLARK: I really believe they're going to vote for life without the possibility of parole. Generally speaking, juries do not go for the death penalty when someone does not have a criminal past of some significance. Now, this was a horrific crime. And this community may have had their conscious so shocked and be so morally offended by all that happened that they could vote for death. I consider the greatest likelihood to be that it will be a verdict for life without the possibility of parole, though.

BLITZER: All right. Marcia Clark, I'm going to have you stand by, because there are other questions I want to ask you, including how unusual is it to see two of the 12 jurors removed only in the final days before the verdict comes forward.

Marcia Clark stand by. All of our reporters are standing by, our other analysts as well. Much more coming up. The fallout, the reaction from the guilty verdict against Scott Peterson. We'll also check other headlines of the day. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: The crowd gathered outside the Redwood City courthouse broke into a cheer, an enthusiastic cheer, when the guilty verdicts against Scott Peterson were announced only within the past hour or so.

CNN's Ted Rowlands has been covering the story from the very beginning.

Set the seen once again for our viewers who may just be tuning in, Ted. Tell our viewers what has happened.

ROWLANDS: Well, at just after 1:00, Pacific time -- the jury came back with a verdict about 11:30 a.m. Pacific time. And then just after 1:00, it was read.

And it was carried via audio only from the courtroom. And outside the courthouse here, as you mentioned, there were hundreds of people that had gathered to hear this announcement. And when the verdict was read, the verdict of guilty in the first degree, hundreds of people broke out in cheer.

It is believed -- it is fact that the court of public opinion has been one-sided from the very beginning. The real question here is, what would this jury feel after they analyzed the evidence? It was a circumstantial case, very little to go on in terms of physical evidence against Scott Peterson. But the fact his wife and unborn son's remains washed up in the same place he had gone fishing, he is the husband -- who else would have done it, asked the prosecutor, Rick Distaso, in closing arguments.

This is a common sense case, he said. Obviously, the jury connected with that. The people outside the courthouse are still milling about here. They seem to have connected with it. They're holding up these guilty headlines from "The Redwood City Daily News," which is being circulated here. It's a carnival-like atmosphere. You can hear a chopper overhead.

Really, it's almost disconcerting on one end. At some point, the Peterson family walked out and these folks started cheering to them, which is the last thing this family needed. But the bottom line is that there is so much emotion around this, because people have been following it from the beginning. They really -- that emotion came out in full force today when this verdict was read.

BLITZER: Ted Rowlands, stand by for a minute.

Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor, also an expert in California legal procedure, a professor at the Loyola Law School out in Los Angeles, is joining us now.

Laurie, first of all, give us your reaction to the guilty verdicts.

LAURIE LEVENSON, LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL: Well, I think the most surprising thing about it, Wolf, was the split verdict, the first degree on Laci and the second degree on Conner.

But, frankly, we didn't know what to expect from this jury. My reaction, it wasn't so much poring over the evidence that had them come to a verdict. It was a gut check. They talked to each other and they had this firm conviction that he was guilty and they were willing to say it together.

BLITZER: Is a gut check enough? Isn't it supposed to be a little bit more than a gut check when you're talking about a man's life, potentially?

LEVENSON: Oh, absolutely.

But their reaction is, we sat through five months of evidence. It's not like we have to hear the tapes all over again or see every piece of paper. We just need to talk to each other and see if our interpretation of it, our inferences from it, make the same sense as they do to the other jurors. And they did have enough time to do that.

BLITZER: This trial had been going on for four or five months. The prosecution had brought more than 170 witnesses before the jury. There was jury deliberations, what, for about a week. Then, all of a sudden, two jurors are dismissed amid indications they were having trouble, there could have a hung jury. The two jurors are dismissed and all of the sudden, they get a guilty verdict. How unusual is this out in California, to see jurors removed at that stage, new jurors, alternates, come in and then, within a few hours, there's a guilty verdict?

LEVENSON: Well, it's not unprecedented. But it certainly is unusual. I think, frankly, in the second Menendez case, they had some jurors replaced during deliberations. But this combination is unusual and, frankly, I think will be an issue for appeal. If there's any suggestion in the record that the jurors who were excused were holdout jurors who wanted to vote for acquittal for Scott Peterson, then you can bet Mark Geragos on appeal is going to raise the issue of whether it was right for the judge to dismiss those jurors or whether he was really stacking the deck against the defense.

BLITZER: Because I remember, once the first juror was dismissed, then the super juror, the foreman, the lawyer, the doctor, who had all these notebooks, copious notes he had taken, was dismissed. There's a lot of speculation there could be a hung jury or no verdict, a mistrial, if you will.

And that would have put enormous political pressure on the judge and the prosecution. It would have been deeply, deeply embarrassing at that point. And I'm sure that Mark Geragos is going to be looking precisely at those issues to see if there was pressure brought to bring away, to remove the jurors who may have had questions about these guilty verdicts.

LEVENSON: You're absolutely correct.

That is going to be perhaps one of the prime issues for an appeal. We also can expect issues about whether the judge was right to not allow the defense to bring in their recreation of the boat tipping over and even things done earlier in the trial.

But when it comes to deliberations, that's a hot point. And the judges on the Supreme Court look very carefully at that issue. In California, about three years ago, we had a couple of cases where the Supreme Court tried to make it clear, you cannot throw off jurors just because they disagree with the other jurors. You can only throw them off if they are not following the rules, if they are not really deliberating.

BLITZER: Laurie, stand by.

Ron Kuby is standing by in New York for us, a criminal defense attorney well known to many of our viewers.

What do you think of these verdicts, Ron?

RON KUBY, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: The only surprise was, it took as long as it did. And I'm a defense lawyer, but let's face it. There was a mountain of evidence against Scott Peterson, so many different pieces coming together in a painstaking fashion in the course of the entire trial.

The only real surprise was the jury spent as much time as they did. And apparently the reason they did that, there were some very serious problems in the jury room itself.

BLITZER: When you say a mountain of evidence, was it all circumstantial evidence? LEVENSON: It was all circumstantial evidence.

But, Wolf, circumstantial evidence gets a bad rap on television. Circumstantial evidence is perfectly fine evidence. The example they use in law school, it's wintertime. You go to bed at night. The ground is bare. You wake up, there's snow on the ground. That's circumstantial evidence that it snowed in the middle of the night while you were asleep, perfectly good evidence. People get convicted of that all the time.

BLITZER: Well, as certain as it snows in my hometown of Buffalo, New York, it's certain that Mark Geragos will file an appeal. But does he have a -- really, a good basis to file an appeal?

KUBY: You know, the problem is, Wolf, we don't know.

Clearly, the issue that we've all been talking about is the removal of the two jurors. One report indicated that one juror was removed because she was conducting her own Internet research. If that's true, that's clear, blatant, obvious juror misconduct. That juror had to go. There won't be a sustained appeal on that.

We don't know why the foreperson was removed in this case. There's been various speculation. But we have to assume that the judge and the prosecutor and the defense lawyer knew the reasons that that juror was removed. And if he was removed for misconduct, refusing to deliberate, not simply because he didn't agree -- you're entitled to a jury that's contentious. But if he violated his oath by violating the judge's instructions, then he has to go. And an alternate gets inserted.

BLITZER: What do you think he is going to get as far as the special circumstance? Will he be facing a death sentence or life without the possibility of parole, based on what you know?

KUBY: The death penalty is so personal and so idiosyncratic, I don't want to speculate.

I do know this, though. Mark Geragos tried his entire case telling the jury what a dirtbag Scott Peterson was, but that doesn't make him a killer. Now that the jury has found he's a killer, it's going to be hard to go back and argue that he's not a dirtbag.

BLITZER: Well, the whole point, though, is, there are specific criteria, I take it, in California for the death sentence. And the question is, by killing the unborn child, does that rise to that level?

KUBY: Well, that certainly is what makes him eligible for the death sentence, the fact that there were two murders, a first-degree murder and a second-degree murder. Ultimately, there will be a mini- trial, probably about a week, maybe a little bit shorter, in which the prosecution will introduce evidence of all the terrible things that Scott Peterson has done in his life and the terrible way he has engaged in misconduct in this case. The defense will try to portray him as a person who has done a terrible thing, but there's some redeeming spark in Scott Peterson that says he is not the worst of the very worst. Please don't kill him.

BLITZER: Let me bring Laurie Levenson in -- she knows a lot about California law -- back for a moment.

Laurie, the whole notion he was convicted of one count, first- degree murder, a second count of second-degree murder, I assume, if both of those had been first-degree murder, convicted on two counts of first-degree murder, there would have been a better chance that he would get the death sentence, as opposed to life without the possibility of parole, even though California law says he could still get the death sentence even though the second count was second-degree murder.

LEVENSON: I think there's some logic in that.

And I'm wondering if there's some kind of message by the jury in sending the first degree and the second degree, indicating that they're willing to show some type of leniency towards Scott Peterson. So, he may be looking for a silver lining to today's verdicts, and there's not much of one. But the fact that they didn't come back with two first degrees may be a better sign for the penalty phase.

Once again, however, we do have to wait and see what's actually presented and how convincing the witnesses are who testified for the family, the victim's family and then for Scott Peterson.

BLITZER: Ron Kuby, the whole notion of Mark Geragos, the way he handled this trial from the beginning -- in his opening statement, he made all sorts of bombastic promises about the real killers and bringing the evidence forward. Many of those promises, he could not deliver on. How much do you believe that hurt Scott Peterson, if, in fact, that did hurt him?

KUBY: Honestly, Wolf, I don't think it hurt him very much at all. I was very critical of the way Mark Geragos conducted his case. But we have a tendency to second-guess our colleagues.

The reality is, it's been my experience -- and this is probably a good thing -- the vast majority of criminal cases are decided not on the skills of the lawyers, but on the strength of the evidence. I think that this case was decided on the strength of the evidence, and I think that the strength of that evidence will carry the case through appeal.

BLITZER: Are there a lot of cases, Laurie Levenson in California, where it's all circumstantial evidence that convicts someone of murder and that murder gets -- eventually winds up getting the death penalty?

LEVENSON: Well, I don't know that they end up getting the death penalty. We certainly have a lot of cases where people are convicted on circumstantial evidence. On the death penalty, it is idiosyncratic. And it often depends where the case is tried. That's bad news for Scott Peterson here, because the record in that area is very good for the prosecutors getting the death penalty. But then again, you don't see a lot of defendants who look like Scott Peterson, have the clean background that he has, get the death penalty.

So, you know, that works in his favor. And, really, it depends once again on that gut check of that jury. They may believe he is a killer, that it's a horrible crime. The issue is, what do they want from him, life in prison without parole or an actual death penalty?

BLITZER: Laurie Levenson, as usual, thanks very much for joining us.

Ron Kuby, thanks to you as well.

We'll continue to cover the fallout from the Scott Peterson guilty verdicts. We're standing by for additional reaction out in Redwood City, California. We'll go there once it happens.

We're also following other important news on this day, including what's happening in Iraq. And Israel, the Middle East, the death of Yasser Arafat, his burial in Ramallah, all very much on the minds of George Bush and Tony Blair. They met earlier today at the White House. We'll have a complete report, what happened in the Middle East and in Washington.

And the bloody battle for Falluja, U.S. forces gaining ground, but at a price, the civilian population.

We're following all those developments, plus the fallout, once again, from the verdicts in the Scott Peterson murder trial.

Much more coverage after this short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: We'll continue to monitor reaction in the guilty verdicts against Scott Peterson for murdering his wife and their unborn son. We'll get to more of that reaction. That's coming up.

But there's important news elsewhere around the world today, including an extraordinary outpouring of emotion built into a frenzy, which led to utter chaos, as Palestinians said goodbye to the only leader they have known.

CNN's John Vause standing by live in Ramallah on the West Bank -- John.

JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, officials here had planned a formal service for the late Palestinian leader, but, in hindsight, it seems that was never really going to happen.

Thousands of mourners simply took over the West Bank compound for an emotional and passionate goodbye. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE (voice-over): For Yasser Arafat one final, triumphant return. Thousands climbs walls, rushed security guards and pushed their way into the Ramallah compound, desperate to touch his coffin, to get close to the leader they called "The Old Man."

It was chaos. Police and soldiers fired wildly into the air. The crowd barely flinched. Palestinian officials pleaded unsuccessfully from the helicopter door for the mob to back off. Thirty minutes later, the coffin appeared. It was loaded on to a jeep and Arafat's personal bodyguards, the men who protected him in life, clung to the casket while the crowd surged forward.

Slowly, they moved towards the marble and concrete burial site. Officials had planned a formal service, marching bands and parading soldiers. None of it happened.

On this day, the Palestinian people claimed their leader for themselves. The funeral took on a life of its own.

Militants from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade made a show of force, while the Palestinian flag was ripped away, replaced by a kaffiyeh similar to the one which was Arafat's trademark. As the coffin was lowered, it was covered with soil from the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the place where Arafat wanted to be buried and where Palestinians hope one day he will be when there is a Palestinian state.

Amid all the chaos there was still ceremony, verses from the Koran and prayers. And finally, Yasser Arafat was laid to rest. A chapter in history had come to an end.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: And when Yasser Arafat left his West Bank compound two weeks ago, he said, I'll be back. And after his life slipped away in a Paris hospital, those who knew him best said today, this was the kind of homecoming he would have wanted -- Wolf.

BLITZER: John Vause reporting for us from Ramallah -- thank you, John, very much.

Just hours after Yasser Arafat was laid to rest, President Bush and his closest ally, the British prime minister, Tony Blair, pledged to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and to try to bring it to a successful conclusion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think it is fair to say that I believe we've got a great chance to establish a Palestinian state. And I intend to use the next four years to spend the capital of the United States on such a state.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: The president stressed that a new Palestinian leadership must be committed to fighting terror and must be committed to the cause of democracy.

Prime Minister Blair said the two will go, in his words, flat- out, to achieve a vision of a Palestinian state living alongside Israel in peace.

We'll take another quick break.

The fight for Falluja, what's happening there? Important developments. Also, more reaction to the Scott Peterson guilty verdict.

Much more coverage after this short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Guilty verdicts for Scott Peterson, in the case of his wife, first-degree murder, in the case of their unborn son, Conner, second-degree murder. We're standing by for more reaction from Redwood City, California.

But there's other important news, including the battle for Falluja. Control of that city is clearly at stake, the battle now entering its sixth day. U.S. forces are gaining more ground, but at a price. What will a coalition victory in Falluja mean for efforts to stabilize all of Iraq?

Let's go live to our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr -- Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, after nearly, indeed, a week of fighting in Falluja, some commanders are looking ahead to what is next.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STARR (voice-over): After one week of fighting, the question now, what has the Falluja campaign really meant for achieving stability across Iraq?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, get that driver out!

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: The government of Iraq understands that it is not acceptable to have a safe haven within their country, where people who oppose the government of Iraq are free to attack innocent Iraqis.

STARR: Pentagon officials say the primary objective in Falluja is not defeating the insurgency, but instead terrain, getting the city under control.

Insurgents got the message. Many fled and hundreds who stayed were killed. No U.S. official believes the insurgency itself is defeated. In fact, they say, new attacks across Iraq indicate insurgents are trying to send their own message.

COL. THOMAS HAMMES, U.S. MARINES CORPS: The enemy is pretty savvy, and I don't want to underestimate their capability. They look for weakness and they try to strike that.

STARR: In Baghdad, new car bomb attacks, a nighttime curfew and relatives of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi kidnapped.

In Ramadi, U.S. troops clash with insurgents, explosions rocking the city. And, in Mosul, airstrikes and U.S. and Iraqi forces moving in after insurgents attacked and overran police stations. The entire Sunni Triangle is a problem, says one official, and Baghdad, he says, remains on the negative side of the ledger.

U.S. officials say former members of Saddam Hussein's regime who fled Iraq have set up shop in nearby countries and are directing attacks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You cannot defeat an insurgent by using sheer firepower. As I have said, it's a political battle.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STARR: Wolf, here at the Pentagon, officials still say they believe there will be elections in Iraq in January -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Barbara Starr at the Pentagon, thanks very much.

One more quick break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: A reminder, you can always catch WOLF BLITZER REPORTS weekdays at this time, 5:00 p.m. Eastern.

This Sunday on "LATE EDITION," the last word in Sunday talk, among my guests, Lynne Cheney, the wife of the vice president. Lynne Cheney, she's out with a new book. We'll talk about that and more. Lynne Cheney, Sunday, noon Eastern.

Until then, thanks very much for joining us. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

"LOU DOBBS TONIGHT" starts right now.

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