Scott did it - why all the fuss?
by Joe Pulcinella
Maybe this jackass doesnt understand the judicial system in this great country. It doesnt matter if you think or "know" he did it. If its not proven you dont get convicted. What the fuss is about is that in light of evidence that was weak at best, and a verdict only hours after some "trouble makers" (read, people that wouldnt go along with others) were ejected form the jury, the thing stinks.
--------------------
Tom Ferrick Jr. | Scott did it - why all the fuss?
Inquirer Columnist
Poor Scott Peterson.
The guy goes on a fishing trip one Christmas Eve, returns home to find his pregnant wife has disappeared, and what happens?
The police suspect him of foul play.
They think he murdered his wife and dumped her body somewhere.
Despite Scott's repeated denials, it turns out the cops were right, or so found a jury in California last week.
Next in the chutes: the sentencing stage, which - we are told - most of America will catch on cable.
Should Scott get life in prison or the death penalty? Tune in for the exciting conclusion, but excuse me if I don't join you.
Of all the oddities in popular culture, the fascination with these murder trials eludes me.
I can't help myself. It's my training as a reporter.
The Peterson case is what we call "a domestic."
A domestic is a murder involving a spouse, lover or close relative. Usually it is born of passion - a spontaneous act, aided by proximity to a weapon.
Sometimes it involves calculation: husband plots to kill wife so he can run off with his girlfriend, a floozie, an exotic dancer. Pick one - or all.
Domestics can be tawdry, bloody, lurid and - always - sad. But one thing they cannot be is mysterious.
Guess who did it?
Because there is no mystery.
Because the spouse did it.
He may hide the body. He may point to "mysterious strangers" he saw lurking about the neighborhood. He may get a friend to swear he wasn't home the night it happened.
But, 99 times out of 100, the spouse did it.
The cops know it. The reporters know it. Anyone with experience with domestics knows it.
This makes domestics predictable - and thus less newsworthy. A rule of thumb: three paragraphs.
I obtained this estimate from an expert: Bo Terry, who worked at this paper for 40-plus years as a police reporter.
Bo told me that it was only in recent years that these homicides came to be known as "domestics." In the old days, reporters called them, more simply, "Mommy and Poppy jobs."
I asked: Would they get big play?
Bo replied: Let me put it this way. Maybe a brief, maybe two to three paragraphs. If it's after midnight and the early deadline has passed, forget it.
Exceptions: if the victim or perp was rich or famous or, in a pinch, suburban. Then the coverage ramps up.
These crimes often result in immediate remorse by the perpetrators, who sometimes call police themselves or at least readily confess.
The knife did it
The enormity of what they did - the destruction of a loved one - weighs upon their souls. Judges often show mercy on these defendants, since they have already entered their own private hell.
Others try to disassociate themselves from the action. It is the gun that shot her. It is the knife that stabbed her. It wasn't me.
I covered a murder trial once where the defendant described how she was standing in the kitchen, cooking dinner and arguing with her boyfriend, when he suddenly ran into the knife she was holding.
In fact, he ran into it about a dozen times, she said.
Among a certain class of men, though, there is a belief that they can figure their way out of this mess.
After all, aren't they smarter than some cop? So they hide the bodies, destroy the evidence, conjure up alibis, and, in tearful interviews with police, plead innocence.
Remember Fred Neulander's talk about his "open marriage" and how his wife didn't care if he ran around?
Remember Tom Capano's line of how it was really his mistress who killed his ex-girlfriend?
Remember Ira Einhorn's discourse on how it was the CIA who killed his girlfriend?
Finally, there was Peterson's assertion that his wife knew of his affair with a massage therapist and was "OK" with it.
They weave their web of lies and the police sit there, nodding silently, thinking:
It's a domestic. He did it.