The Prosecutor's Case .. Continued

Let's talk about the defendant's financial status for a minute. His business, by everyone's imagination, I mean even their expert, was doing poorly. Their expert's testimony was basically it was a startup company and was going to be funded by, you know, ad nauseam, or at least four years, I guess. Whatever. So it was supposed to lose money.
But they didn't show their expert, you know, a real critical e-mail where this is, looks like it's written in November, 4 November, 4 November, 2000 and 2, and this is People's 298. And what his boss is telling him: Dear Scott, thanks for your report. The sales in October are only 50 percent of your revised targets, and the question to be done is why. I think we should be able to see now concrete signals of an inversion, you know, a switching, of the trend we established for 2003, a break-even principle.
I mean, they're telling him, What's going on here? You're less than 50 percent of your revised goals. You know, what's the deal here? The story's not that the company is just going to just give money away to Scott Peterson to spend as he wants to. The company is saying Hey, you need to get on the ball.

And what is the point? Estimates are just that. Some start-ups are run away successes, others are hard to get off the ground. Consider two, Google.com and Pets.com. Who would have predicted that Google would succeed and Pets would fail, both so spectacularly?
Sometimes it takes trying different approaches until you find the one that works. None of this has any bearing at all on the alleged homicide. Is his argument that wealthy men commit no murders? If so he is, as always, spectacularly wrong.
The company, in the email, is asking him for his advice. The US market is notoriously hard to break in to and foreign companies have to have persistence to achieve this. Even the Japanese made many missteps in selling autos in the USA. Scott's employers knew that Scott is their best hope to find their way in. What is the connection with an alleged homicide? An email from his bosses? This is truly desperate nonsense.

But that e-mail, you heard his testimony, from the defense expert, was never shown to him. And remember also, you know, the People's expert testified the defendant and Laci had a high debt to credit ratio. They, I'm not arguing to you they were on the verge of bankruptcy or they were near the end, or anything like that. But they were living kind of at the upper end of where they could handle it.
And what their expert said is No, he had all this money, he had tons of money to spend, look at this chart. Remember they put this chart up where it looked like he had two thousand dollars a month, you know, of free money just to spend away.
And all of a sudden we asked him Is that gross or net? You know, we all got to pay taxes.
Oh, well, yeah, that's, that's gross, so, you know, immediately cut, cut that down by a third, cut this down, cut that down.
It was not an accurate portrayal of these people's finance. What the defense expert presented to you was just not correct.

On the contrary, it was very accurate and they were doing very well. They were in a good place financially, and Laci’s inheritance would have helped them even more. Many, many people are far worse off. Even Distaso's dissembling cannot hide the fact that $2,000 per month, even pre-tax, is very comfortable indeed.

Let's talk about the dog tracking evidence. Remember Eloise Anderson testified that her tracking dog, Trimble, her tracking dog, Trimble, tracked, she checked both of these choke points here at the marina. She checked the bathroom area. She ran it through the parking lot. It was a she. And then the dog hit along the vegetation line, where you heard from the experts that's where the scent collects. Went down to the end of the dock and gave end of trail signal for Laci Peterson.
And remember there was a whole discussion about what scent article she used and whether it was the appropriate one and was it better than a slipper and whatnot.
Well, they kept talking about the glass case, and that's not what the testimony was. What the testimony was was that she scented her dog on the glasses inside the case. This is the best scent article that there is. Anybody, look, I can take my glasses off right now. Around your nose pad you sweat, around your ears you sweat. Of course Laci's scent is going to be on this.
Not only that, it doesn't matter who handled the outside of this thing. Scott Peterson, the detectives. You know, you didn't hear any evidence that anybody did, but let's just pretend they did. It doesn't matter at all because there's nothing the matter with the scent article at all because it's scented on what's inside.

Nonsense. Laci and Scott slept together. No dog could separate their scents. This is a complete fraud.

Now, Mr. Seitz came and, you know, I don't have a whole lot of contentions with Mr. Seitz. He basically agreed with everything that, that Captain Boyer and Eloise Anderson said. He said that, he said that they can track scent in vehicles. And remember, I don't think Laci Peterson, I'm not arguing Laci Peterson was in Scott Peterson's truck. I'm arguing she was in the back of the boat.
So we're not talking about a sealed-up container. We're talking about a boat that, you know, when you drive it is going to get some air flapping out and going to get scent spraying out all over the place. But he said, and he agreed, he said Yeah, my dog's tracked scent in vehicles before. And he basically agreed with everything, scent theory, that the experts said. He said Yeah, you know, people have a live scent and the dogs can track it. If somebody dies there's a residual live scent that is going to stay on them for a period of time.
It's not like as soon as we're dead, bang, our scent changes. I mean that's just, I mean that's just common sense.
Alls he testified to was I ran my dog across this boat ramp for a minute to a minute and a half.
Now, what sort of search was that? 60 to 90 seconds. Ran the dog, you know, one pass maybe, I don't know how long it takes the dog to work. Maybe two passes, didn't find anything, put the dog in the truck.
I'm not saying, I'm not arguing to you Ron Seitz was lying. I don't think he was. I don't think he's a bad guy. It was just an insufficient search.

Once again, an evidence free statement. Where is the proof? Why is this all Distaso’s opinions and no facts?

He even said when Mr. Harris was questioning him, Mr. Harris said Shouldn't you have checked these choke points? Yeah, I should have.
You heard from all the experts that scent collects along the vegetation line, and he didn't check there. He checked across the concrete ramp.
And finally, at the end remember what he said? He said Yeah, either I or Eloise could be right. He wasn't saying It's my way or the highway. He just came here and told us what his dog found, not what hers found.
Let's talk about the hair in the pliers. John, pull up that picture for me, would you?
Here's the pliers at the, as they were at the search warrant. And when they were pulled out of the boat. Need my laser pointer.
Here's, this is when they were just picked up, and I put this box, and you know what, you really can't see it, but I'm going to talk about it anyway because you can go back there and you'll be able to see it yourself when you look at the actual photograph. But here's where the pliers were. There's really no dispute that Laci Peterson's hair was found in those pliers. It matches microscopically. You heard that from Rod Oswalt and from the FBI expert. I think her name was Karen Reubush. It matches her mitochondrial DNA.
GERAGOS: Objection. There's a stipulation, there's already been an admonition that he cannot say that matches mitochondrial DNA. Same issue –
JUDGE: I don't believe he said he matched. It was consistent.

Clearly he DID say it matched, despite stipulations and admonitions, continuing his practice of deceiving the jury repeatedly.

DISTASO: That's fine. I apologize.
JUDGE: That's all right. I already admonished the jury this could happen.
DISTASO: Yeah. Well, it was consistent with her mitochondrial DNA. I'm arguing to you that that is more than proof beyond a reasonable doubt that that's Laci Peterson's hair in those pliers.
So the question is how did it get there. Is it, was it a shed hair? Did it just fall off and magically appear into the pliers, where they were? Well, let's look at that.

No. When the MPD shook Scott’s jacket out in the boat, a jacket that Laci wore to walk the dog, it fell off on top of the pliers. Other wise you have to believe that it stayed in place in the boat during a 90 mile highway trip with the boat juddering up and down all the way and with the wind buffeting through the boat all the way home. Apparently Mr Distaso has forgotten all of his lectures about what is reasonable.