Michael Peterson

This guys been out of the national news for a while so I thought I'd update you a bit on his case.

Last you probably heard he was convicted in October 2003 of the death of his wife Kathleen. Jurors said evidence  the defense is concerned about did not play a roll in their decision. They say the verdict boiled down to what happened inside the stairwell. The physical evidence.

Of course there is an appeal, and the focus of said appeal is based on his sexuality and the death of a family friend which were irrelevant and shouldn't have been heard by jury. Prosecutors never connected Peterson to Ratliff. The jury said Ratliff nor the issue of his sexual preference were ever discussed in deliberations. The never based their decision on Mrs. Ratliff during the murder trial impairing the efforts of defense attorneys to argue that an intruder had killed Kathleen Peterson.

The day after the death, a neighbor a few blocks away found a tire iron in his yard. Police & prosecutors didn't follow up on the discovery until part way through the trial, & didn't share any information about the tire iron with Peterson's former attorneys.

Check after the jump to see how he earned a new trial... actually he didn't... someone gave it to him!



District Attorney David Saacks previously said the tire iron wasn't connected to the case & that rules of discovery in effect at the time of the trial didn't require prosecutors to turn over info it had to the defense. Prosecutors argued during the trial that the murder weapon was a fire place blow poke.

SBI agent Duane Deaver whose testimony of blood splatters in the home was key evidence for prosecutors to convict Peterson was investigated & fired after it was found he fabricated evidence, falsely described his observations, & provided false, misleading, & scientifically unreliable testimony regarding the analysis of the blood stains found in the stairway, the hallway, next to the stairway, & on Michael Peterson's shorts and sneakers. He was granted a new trial on 12/13/2011. Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson set a $300,000 secured bond & ordered him to remain at a friends home under electronic monitoring until his new trial.

The case for a new trial was based on the argument that Deaver provided false & misleading testimony about blood evidence found in the home in the 2003 trial. Prosecutors will be handicapped at the 2nd trial because all the evidence connected to former SBI analyst Duane Deaver has been tainted and is not allowed in the trial.

Peterson walked out of jail on 12/15/2011. His first wife & son put up 2 properties in Durham to meet the $300,000 secured bond set for his release. He's staying in a friends home in the Colony Park neighborhood in Durham. This trial will be different because things like the sexuality question, the Germany issue- some of that isn't coming in as evidence this time.

The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that a search warrant that led to the discovery of the emails b/w Michael Peterson & a male escort was "woefully inadequate" because investigators didn't present any probable cause to search Peterson's computers although the search warrant wasn't enough to overturn the conviction, it would preclude all testimony about the escort & any other evidence taken from the computers to be introduced in a new trial.

On July 15, 2013 the new trial grant was upheld.

On July 8, 2014 Superior Court Judge agreed to end bond restrictions on Michael Peterson that have had him under house arrest & electronic monitoring for more than 2 years waiting for his new trial which should be sometime later this year.