The California Supreme Court has ordered a trial judge to consider whether to overturn Scott Peterson’s conviction for killing his wife and unborn son, just two months after overturning his death penalty.
The court announced on Thursday that it had sent the case to San Mateo County Superior Court for a judge there to determine whether Peterson, 47, should have a new trial following claims of misconduct from a juror, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The court said that a juror committed “prejudicial misconduct” by failing to disclose that she had filed a lawsuit in 2000 to obtain a restraining order, after her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend allegedly harassed her while she was pregnant.
The juror was initially an alternate for the trial, but replaced another member who was discharged during deliberations.
As part of the process to become a juror for the trial, she was asked if she had ever been a victim of a crime or involved in a lawsuit, but said she had not, according to the New York Post.
The juror said she feared for her unborn child while she was harassed. Her harasser was convicted and spent a week in prison.
Peterson’s case made headlines worldwide when he was convicted in 2004 of the first degree murder of his 27-year-old wife, Laci Peterson, who was eight months pregnant at the time.
He was also convicted of second degree murder of his unborn son, but has always maintained his innocence with both convictions.
Laci Peterson disappeared on Christmas Eve in 2002, and her husband, who lived with her in Modesto, said he had gone on a fishing trip to Berkeley that morning.
Prosecutors claimed that Peterson dumped the bodies of his wife and unborn son from his fishing boat in the San Francisco Bay. Their bodies were found washed ashore four months later near where Peterson had claimed to have been fishing in Berkeley.
Investigators followed up on more than 1,000 leads, but eventually arrested Peterson, after Amber Frey, a massage therapist living in Fresno, told police that she started dating him a month before his wife’s death, and said that he had told her that she was dead.
The California Supreme Court overturned Peterson’s death penalty in August, citing that there were “significant errors” in the trial’s jury selection.
