Objection! Read Online Free PDF Page A

Frey about being single. His response? “Because he’s a cad. When guys commit adultery, guys lie to a single woman in order to get them into bed.”
    In the hours that followed, on April 29, Geragos met with Peterson in jail, and the next day he revealed he was considering signing on as Peterson’s lead counsel. On May 2 he announced he had taken the case. Once he was retained, he suddenly saw the light. He clearly had an epiphany: Scott Peterson was innocent. My head was spinning. Hadn’t Geragos practically finished the state’s closing argument for them on air? In retrospect, why was I surprised?
    I called him on it publicly just before he announced Peterson had hired him as his lead defense attorney. That evening, I noticed a sudden reversal in his previous opinion that Peterson would be convicted.
    I asked him on air, “What happened, Mark? What changed?” Geragos dodged the question—evasive as ever.
    Geragos employed many disturbing strategies in handling the Peterson case. Nothing was more offensive to me than the treatment Sharon Rocha and her family received at the hands of the defense in the early stages of the case. After Laci Peterson’s remains had washed up on the rocks in April 2003, her family was banned from Scott and Laci’s house. Although the defense team and its investigators had been swarming the couple’s Modesto, California, home for weeks and Peter-2 0
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    son’s family had been there during visits to their son, the defense still claimed with a straight face that it was a crime scene and couldn’t be tampered with or contaminated by Laci’s own family.
    By having people come and go as they pleased, the house had long lost its value as an untampered-with crime scene. That fact didn’t stop the defense from using it as a premise to prevent Laci’s family from getting into the house and retrieving some of her personal belongings as mementos. A long tug of war ensued between Scott’s camp and Laci’s camp.
    Finally, Laci’s family went over to the couple’s house and collected a few items, including her wedding dress, some of her plants, some watering cans and diplomas. Sharon Rocha went into Laci’s room simply to sit in Laci’s rocking chair, trying to feel her daughter’s presence.
    And you know what happened that afternoon?
    The Peterson defense team raced to the house and demanded police file a burglary report. As if the murder of their daughter weren’t enough. Is it legal? Yes. Is it moral? Absolutely not. After realizing they had created a public-relations disaster, the defense backed off their strident calls to have Laci’s mother arrested, and nothing more was said of it. For the defense, it was as if nothing had ever happened. For Laci’s mother, it was another wound that will never heal.
    With Geragos at the helm, Scott Peterson was transformed from an orange-jumpsuit-clad “Monster in Chains,” as described by the New York Post, into a well-groomed, upper-middle-class, college-educated young man in tastefully subdued suits. The defendant’s ill-advised dye job and facial hair were replaced with a close-cropped haircut, a clean-shaven face, and a thoughtful yet pensive look in court.
    But Geragos couldn’t whitewash Peterson’s image as a cheating cad, and he had his work cut out for him in order to erase the idea his client was a man on the run. When Peterson was arrested in San Diego, police searched the 1984 Mercedes-Benz 500SEC he was driving. He wasn’t traveling light. Among the items found in the car: $15,000 in cash, twelve Viagra tablets, several credit cards belonging to various members of the Peterson family, a water purifier, a knife, a fire starter, O B J E C T I O N !
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    and tons of survival gear. The few superficial changes Geragos instigated had somehow managed, virtually overnight, to erase the damaging image of Peterson as a fugitive.
    Unfortunately, the defense attorney couldn’t control Peterson completely. During one