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Scott Peterson's 'Choice' 12/14/2004 The sentence of death leaves no doubt about the jury's perception of Conner. Jury sentences Peterson to death for double homicide of wife and unborn child.
"Conner" is the name Laci Peterson chose for her unborn son. Scott Peterson, husband and father, murdered Laci and Conner around Christmas Eve 2002.
The jury that convicted Peterson of two counts of capital murder with "special circumstances" has sentenced Peterson to death. The presiding judge has the statutory authority to convert the death sentence into life without the possibility of parole, but that is unlikely.
One of the several statutory means of finding "special circumstances" for capital murder in California is murder of two or more victims. Conner, who was at least seven-and-a-half months gestation, was just as much a victim of murder as his mother. The fact that the jury found Peterson guilty of second-degree rather than first-degree murder for his death defies logic. Nonetheless, the sentence of death leaves no doubt about their perception of Conner.
California enacted its fetal homicide law in 1970. Penal Code § 187 (a) states: "Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought." The statute distinguishes between a human being and a fetus while providing as much legal protection for the unborn as possible under Roe v. Wade. For Scott Peterson, it's a distinction without a difference.
Subsection (3) of section 187 provides an exemption if "[t]he act was solicited, aided, abetted, or consented to by the mother of the fetus." Simply put, the status of the unborn under the law and his right to life turns on whether the mother has him killed or someone else does so without her consent. It is the most egregious example of an incongruity in law that one can imagine.
Subsection (3), references to Conner by media, who are overwhelmingly "pro-choice," and the jurors who've spoken publicly since concluding deliberations expose the ironic double standard concerning the unborn.
In 1988, the California Supreme Court, in People v. Bunyard, unanimously upheld the death penalty in a double homicide where one victim was unborn: "It is clear that the multiple-murder special circumstance is applicable to the killing by a single act of a pregnant woman and her viable fetus." In 1989, the court again unanimously upheld the death penalty in a similar case, People v. Hamilton. The court stated: "The Courts of Appeal have inferred a viability limitation in light of the subsequent abortion cases, which first recognized a woman's constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy before the fetus becomes viable."
In 1994, in People v. Davis, the court affirmed a lower court ruling that eliminated the viability requirement: "We conclude that viability is not an element of fetal homicide under section 187, subdivision (a). The third party killing of a fetus with malice aforethought is murder under section 187, subdivision (a), as long as the state can show that the fetus has progressed beyond the embryonic stage of seven to eight weeks."
There would have been no murder charge if Laci Peterson had ended Conner's life by abortion on Christmas Eve, and Scott Peterson would have been powerless to stop it. The same statutes and Supreme Court decisions that would have prevented Peterson from saving Conner's life permitted him to be convicted of Conner's murder and sentenced to death.
Does how he died and who killed him change the facts about Conner? Did it matter for Conner?
Some have suggested that Scott Peterson's motive for murdering Laci and Connor may have been that he didn't want to be a father. He was already a father-an evil one-but a father nonetheless. |
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