REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Dec. 13 -- A jury recommended Monday that Modesto salesman Scott Peterson be put to death for the murders of his pregnant wife and their unborn child, in the soap-opera case of adultery and deception that has captured the nation's attention.
As the verdict was announced, at least one juror broke into tears while hundreds of onlookers gathered outside the courthouse cheered and exchanged high-fives. It was a scene similar to the one that played out Nov. 12, when Peterson was convicted of the first-degree murder of his wife, Laci, and the second-degree murder of their near-term son.
Outside the courthouse in Redwood City, Calif., hundreds gathered to hear the jury's sentencing verdict.
(Justin Sullivan -- AP)
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Peterson himself, though, showed no emotion, staring straight ahead as the jurors filed out.
At a news conference later, three of the jurors said they were unnerved by the methodical nature of Peterson's crime and the cool stoicism he showed throughout the six-month trial.
"This wasn't an act [in which] he flipped out and went and did something," Greg Beratlis said. "I could have understood that, but this was planned."
San Mateo Superior Court Judge Alfred A. Delucchi can reject the jury's recommendation for death and sentence Peterson to life in prison instead. Delucchi will formally sentence Peterson on Feb. 25.
The jury spent 2 1/2 days deliberating over Peterson's fate, longer than it spent last month determining his guilt. In deciding whether he deserved execution, jurors had to grapple with the dueling portraits of the 32-year-old fertilizer salesman that also fueled much of the national fascination with a case that might otherwise have been viewed as a sad but ordinary homicide.
Peterson had dozens of friends to vouch for his charitable nature and no record of crime or violence before his wife was reported missing on Christmas Eve 2002. Yet courtroom testimony as reported in news accounts in recent days showed a man who misled his family about his whereabouts, who sneaked away from the search for his wife to place phone calls to an unwitting girlfriend.
Stanislaus County Deputy District Attorney Dave Harris called him "the worst kind of monster."
"Scott Peterson is the worst of the worst, because he's the kind of person . . . you trust, who's manipulative," Harris said during closing arguments last week. "No one ever sees it coming."
Harris argued that Peterson purposefully deceived everyone in his life to escape a lackluster marriage and return to a carefree bachelor lifestyle. The prosecutor alluded graphically to the way investigators believe Peterson disposed of his wife's body -- by wrapping her body with concrete weights and dumping her in San Francisco Bay.
"Laci was an anchor around his neck, so he put one around hers," Harris said.
Laci Peterson's mother, Sharon Rocha, delivered testimony that brought at least eight jurors to tears. Sobbing, she turned to her son-in-law and screamed, "Divorce was always an option -- not murder!"
But defense attorney Mark Geragos argued that sending Peterson to die would not bring the victims back to life.
