Jury calls for Peterson's execution

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- A jury recommended yesterday that Scott Peterson be put to death for the murders of his pregnant wife and their unborn child, in a 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 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.

Peterson displayed no emotion, staring straight ahead as the jurors filed out.

At a news conference later, three jurors said they were unnerved by the methodical nature of Peterson's crime and his impassive demeanor 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 Delucchi can reject the jury's recommendation for death and sentence Peterson to life in prison instead. Delucchi will formally sentence him Feb. 25.

The jury deliberated on Peterson's fate over 2 days, 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 from Modesto that also fueled much of the national fascination with the case.

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.

But courtroom testimony as reported in news accounts in recent days showed a man who misled his family about his whereabouts and 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 his closing argument last week. ''No one ever sees it coming."

Harris argued that Peterson 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 think 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 lawyer Mark Geragos argued that sending Peterson to die would not bring the victims back to life.

''There does not need to be any more death in this case," Geragos told jurors.

Jurors were directed not to consider their sentence's emotional effect on Peterson's family.

His mother, Jackie, looking frail and using an oxygen tank, had implored the jury to save her son's life and her family from further heartbreak.

''He's an exceptional young man, and he's my son," she said.

''I know he's not perfect . . . but he is genuinely a loving, caring, nurturing, kind, gentle person."

After remaining sequestered through the weekend, jurors reconvened yesterday morning and requested to see several pieces of evidence, including photos of the beach where Laci Peterson's badly decomposed body and that of her unborn child washed ashore four months after her disappearance. Coroners were not able to determine how they died.

If sentenced to death, Peterson will be sent to San Quentin State Prison. His execution probably would not occur for several years, as he works through a lengthy appeals process. Ten people have been put to death since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978; 641 people are sitting on death row in the state.

Stan Goldman, a law professor at Loyola University in Los Angeles, said the Peterson case ''is an appellate lawyer's petri dish," offering a variety of issues on which to build future appeals. Among them, he said, are the circumstances that led two jurors to be dismissed during deliberations and the judge's refusal to instruct the jury to consider manslaughter charges.

Geragos requested a new jury and location for the penalty phase after jurors were exposed to the crowds that cheered Peterson's conviction. The denial of that request could provide another route to appeal, Goldman said.