Judge Alfred A. Delucchi chastised the warring attorneys in the Scott Peterson murder trial on Tuesday, after a combative series of prosecutorial questions and defense objections that threatened to waylay testimony by Modesto police Detective Al Brocchini.
"I knew it was going to deteriorate to this," Delucchi sighed. "I just had this sinking feeling. We are going to conduct this in an orderly fashion, not like bickering children."
Peterson, 31, is on trial for allegedly murdering his wife, Laci, and their unborn son on or around Dec. 24, 2002, and dumping the remains into San Francisco Bay. The former fertilizer salesman, who has pleaded not guilty to all counts, claims he left his pregnant wife at home to go on a solo fishing trip and returned to an empty house.
During two earlier days of cross-examination, defense attorney Mark Geragos had attempted to paint Brocchini as a bungling cop with the single-minded conviction that Scott Peterson had murdered his wife. But prosecutor Mark Distaso came out swinging Tuesday, trying to show that Brocchini had not, in fact, made a pre-judgment about Scott Peterson's guilt.
On Tuesday afternoon, the trial moved on to testimony by Eric Olsen, who had worked for Scott Peterson between July 2002 and December 2002. Under questioning from prosecution, Olsen discussed "a conversation (in October 2002, between Scott Peterson and a female colleague) that was inappropriate for a married man and a woman who
was engaged."
Olsen also said that in the period before he resigned, there were problems working with Peterson: "A lot of things were starting to not get taken care of about the same time ... It was getting harder and harder to get things done."
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