Scott Peterson Case Oral Argument

The capital murder case of the notorious Scott Peterson has finally been set for oral argument, 15 years after judgment in the trial court.

Argument is set for Tuesday, June 2, at 1:30 p.m. PDT. Live streaming will be available. Even the lawyers arguing the case will be remote.

Why does it take so long?

The direct appeal to the California Supreme Court has been a bottleneck for some time. When the intermediate courts of appeal were first created early in the twentieth century, it made sense to bypass them for these very important cases. But the state was smaller then, and the legal issues to be decided were simpler.

In 2013, I helped write an initiative that included a constitutional amendment that would have sent the cases to the courts of appeal for the first cut. The vast majority of claims in these cases are clearly without merit and do not require the Supreme Court’s attention. Unfortunately, we were not able to raise the large amount of money needed to qualify that initiative.

In 2015, the committee for the initiative that became Proposition 66 initially included the same constitutional amendment. However, a number of initiatives that year backed by big money caused rampant inflation in the price of signature gathering. (Nobody in California has succeeded in qualifying an initiative with volunteer signature gatherers in a long time. It’s all about money.) A campaign budget that had been enough was no longer enough. The committee decided to retreat to a statutory initiative, which requires much fewer signatures, and the constitutional amendment fell on the cutting room floor. That was a great disappointment, but nothing could be done.

Even so, the initiative had two provisions to help with the bottleneck. First, the collateral attacks on the judgments were moved to the trial court, where they belong and where most jurisdictions start them. This lifts a large portion of the burden from the Supreme Court.

Second, the Judicial Council was tasked with promulgating rules to expedite the process. The Council utterly failed in this task. It appointed a committee heavily weighted with defense lawyers, only two prosecutors, and zero non-government victims’ advocates. The rules do very little to expedite, and in the important matter of appointing lawyers for collateral review actually obstruct the process.

The June calendar has four capital cases. The direct appeal backlog will slowly go down as the Supreme Court hears and decides the cases and fewer come in. The reduced crime rate and the greater selectivity of prosecutors in seeking the death penalty both have an effect. Still, so much more progress toward justice could have been made.

The court’s decision is due 90 days after the case is submitted, which it normally is at the conclusion of the oral argument.