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As Geragos begins his defense, the one thing that seems virtually certain is that the jury won't be hearing from Peterson himself. His presence on the stand would give the prosecution free rein to focus on their favorite topic: his character. The betting is that Geragos will shrink his presentation down to a few key points. One of the most important: the prosecution's time line the day Laci went missing. Cell phone records show that Scott was in the vicinity of his home at 10:08 a.m. A prosecution witness, Peterson neighbor Karen Servas, originally told police that she found the couple's dog McKenzie running loose at 10:35 a.m. In that time frame it was at least plausible to believe, as the defense argues, that Laci could have been abducted by someone after Scott had left.
But when Servas checked the time-stamped receipt from a local store where she had been that morning she concluded that she had actually gotten home earlier than she had first thought. In court she testified that she had come upon McKenzie no later than 10:18. Suddenly the window of possibility had narrowed to a slit, since it was hard to see how Laci could have gone to walk the dog, been kidnapped and have the dog found, all in 10 minutes. But according to Goldman it now appears that defense team investigators have indications that the store's time stamps are not necessarily accurate, which could give Geragos the chance to argue that 10:35 is closer to the truth after all.
