The Art of Politics

Regular Or Extra Crispy?

Scott Peterson gets his wife's dying wish...

A California jury did what few California juries ever do - get it right - in both convincting Scott Peterson for the death of his wife and son and sentencing same miscreant to death for his crimes.

Yes, the same state that brought us the Menendez brothers trial, the Rodney King case, and the OJ Simpson spectacle, finally managed to get it's head out of it's terminally impacted posterior position and find a guilty man guilty, and punish him suitably.

I've been amazed recently speaking to people before the sentence, who almost uniformly speculated that Peterson would get life in prison, that there was no way he'd get the death sentence. This was a near ubiquitous response. I was certain this man was going to get the death sentence - everything about the trial and conviction pointed to this jury wanting to sentence him to death. I was wavering, but when famed defense attorney Geoffrey Fieger said the same thing on Greta Van Susteren's show, I felt another candle of sanity had been lit in the woods.

When encountering someone who personally didn't know how they would sentence him, I asked a simple question:

"What do you suppose was Laci's last thought? Was it about herself, or her baby?"

I scored a perfect 100% conversion rate with that rhetorical question.

I understand why people doubted the death sentence - it's California, and there wasn't a grainy black-and-white security video showing the crime. People like to have absolute certainty, the kind that normally comes from knowing exactly what happened. In this case, we don't have the play by play. But we know the final score - Scott 2, Laci 0.

Thankfully, the nightcap of that doubleheader has the final score California 1, Scott 0.

Posted by MEC2 at December 13, 2004 08:21 PM