For the uninitiated, the reason Scott Peterson’s death penalty was re-examined in the first place boiled down to a legal question. As NBC News reported in August, Judge Anne-Christine Massullo was ordered to review the case over the possibility that jury misconduct had affected the possibility of a fair and unbiased sentence. Richelle Nice was selected as a juror, but she failed to disclose her history of being a victim of intimate partner violence. Nice was pregnant during the two domestic violence incidents.
The question of Nice’s jury placement being sufficient to change Peterson’s sentencing was enough to have Massullo review it and to open the door to a retrial. From 2020 onwards, Peterson’s sister-in-law and biggest public advocate Janey Peterson consistently made headlines in her mission to fight for a new trial entirely, touting alternative theories as to who else could have possibly murdered Laci Peterson, who was eight months pregnant at the time of her death. While the ruling could leave open the possibility of the prosecution pursuing the death penalty in the future, per People
, it seems to have put a kibosh on an all-out retrial.
